WIN: Cities Skylines - the Board Game

Win a copy of the new co-operative urbanisation simulation to play with your friends and family this winter

Crime is rampant. The city’s streets are overflowing with garbage. Giant factories spew pollution into the air over neighbouring homes and schools. And emergency services can’t reach the beleaguered citizens as the roads are clogged with traffic jams. Just another Tuesday in New Prezzleton, my fledgling – and failing – first attempt to build a thriving metropolis in Cities: Skylines – The Board Game.

You may remember the best-selling videogame Cities: Skylines, covered on this site previously – an ultra realistic city-building simulation that has seen players recreate real-world versions of Buenos Aires, Hong Kong and Manhattan, as well as millions of creations of their own.

Cities: Skylines’ appeal comes from its staggering levels of detail. As well as laying out complex road networks and assigning areas to be residential, industrial or commercial zones, players can delve deep into the game engine to micro-manage mayoral budgets, assign garbage pickup routes, tweak output levels on power stations, rename streets and even adjust the frequency of individual traffic lights.

Now this highly addictive simulation is making the transition to your tabletop with Cities: Skylines – The Board Game, an analogue recreation of the videogame’s city planning highs and lows. And to celebrate, Geographical has teamed up with publisher Kosmos Games to give away three copies of this gorgeous-looking board and card game to our lucky readers!

The board game version sees you working with your fellow players to balance your city’s levels of power, population and pollution levels, always striving to keep things growing, money in the coffers, crime and traffic under control and the all-important happiness rating on the up. Unique buildings give each city a sense of personal flavour, while an ever-expanding main board means you can continue to grow your city as the game progresses.

The game features varying levels of complexity, a modular board that can change your city’s layout from game to game and, in a nice nod to its videogame roots, it can even be played solo for those times when your fellow city planner friends are otherwise engaged (probably building metropoleis of their own).

It’s a great interpretation of the best-selling videogame version, perfectly capturing the mind-twisting headaches and complications that come from building and expanding a city that is constantly on the verge of spiralling hopelessly out of control, but one that can be played through in less than two hours and, when finished, leave you pondering what you could have done differently, strategies that could have worked better and whether to invite Colin back next time as his plan to build a dog-walking park next to that abattoir was never going to end well.

WIN!

To get your hands on one of three copies of Cites: Skylines – The Board Game, simply send your answer to the following question to win@geographical.co.uk with the subject line: Cities: Skylines – The Board Game Competition before 11:59pm on Wednesday 11 December. The first three correct answers selected at random after that date will be building their own cityscapes across their dining room tables!

Which country is about to move its capital city due to sea level rise?

Indonesia

Click here to send your entry via email or send it via post to:

CITIES: SKYLINES – THE BOARD GAME COMPETITION

Geographical Magazine

Suite 3.16, QWest

Great West Road, Brentford

Middlesex, TW8 0GP

Winners will be notified via email or by post. Editor’s decision is final. For a full list of our competition T&Cs, please click here.