Cities: Skylines 2 latest region pack heads to the Netherlands, 'the land of windmills, clogs, and stroopwafel,' and includes new hospitals, fire stations, and hyperrealistic cemeteries
Cities: Skylines 2 just got a free content update in the form of the Netherlands Region Pack. This will provide Netherland-loving players the opportunity to build up a Dutch-inspired city with a bunch of new service buildings and an eerily realistic cemetery.
"The interest and size of the Dutch Cities community is not a secret; it represents a large and very active side of the playerbase, which is passionate about urbanism, transit, and city building," a Paradox staff member, REV0, says in an official blog post. "Even during the production of original Region Packs, we as creators had an interest in working on a Netherlands Region Pack and saw the interest the community had in including this region.
"However, back then, the budget, manpower, and time constraints didn’t allow for the creation of a 9th Region Pack, but following the completion of the original packs and the positive reception of the content, our collective interest in a Netherlands Region Pack was re-ignited, and PDX gave us the green light."
The dev diary is pretty lengthy, but in it REV0 explains what kind of features players can expect in this Region Pack. There's medium row density zones aimed at replicating historic city centres, something that can mimic cities like Amsterdam, service buildings like two fire station variants, small clinics, a hospital with early 1920s design motifs, and an incredibly realistic cemetery.
"I wanted to include a cemetery in the pack in order to have an asset that players can customize to the max, deal with the deathcare properly as their cities grow larger with an aging population," REV0 explains. "As a result, the cemetery became the most complex asset of the pack, offering more than a dozen functional and beautification upgrades, having its own small gameplay loop. A proper shoutout is deserved here—Peanut—as he provided his technical knowledge when it was needed in order to get this complex asset working the way I intended it to."
The cemetery will be a standalone building that can begin functioning straight away. It also allows players to "customise your deathcare towards crematorium or burial sites," via upgrade choices.
"Around 60% of the Netherlands prefers cremation, due to the challenges and costs of finding a burial site," REV0 says. "Even then, these sites are 'rented', offering burial services for 10 to 30 years with yearly costs, making cremation a more affordable and respectable alternative." It may sound pedantic, but these are the kind of specifications that I, and I'm sure plenty of other Cities: Skylines players, appreciate seeing in things like Region Packs.
"Despite its long Developer Diary, the Netherlands Region Pack was made in a short time, and based on our experience with other Region Packs we worked on, the process was rather smooth," REV0 says. "As a personal note, this pack was special for all of us, since the Netherlands has always been the top suggestion for a Region Pack. I am glad that we were given the opportunity to work on it, and hopefully, you will enjoy the results of our work."