City-building games have been a mainstay of PC gaming since the first SimCity launched way back in 1989, but the current king of the genre is, without a doubt, Cities: Skylines. If you haven’t yet tried out Colossal Order’s serene city-builder, you’re in luck: it’ll be Epic’s free game of the week starting March 10.
This week, of course, you can pick up the rebooted arcade classics Centipede: Recharged and Black Widow: Recharged – as well as an Epic Slayer Kit for free-to-play monster hunting game Dauntless. Starting March 10 at 8am PST / 11am EST / 4pm GMT, the free game will change over to Cities: Skylines, which normally sells for $29.99 or your regional equivalent. You should definitely grab a copy if you don’t already own it, because Cities: Skylines has turned into an expansive and expressive city builder that’s managed to eclipse SimCity as the standard-bearer for the genre.
Once you’ve got the base game in hand, there’s plenty of add-on DLC to consider picking up. The most recent is the new Airports expansion, which – in addition to allowing you to build and manage an airline from your city – also adds new forms of ground transportation like high-speed light rail and high-capacity buses.
Here’s the launch trailer from 2015:
You won’t need to fork out any cash if you want to expand your Cities: Skylines game, either – we’ve assembled a handy list of the best Cities: Skylines mods that add new maps, buildings, and much more to the game.
If Epic’s not your cup of tea, or if you already own Cities: Skylines, you can always check out or list of the best free Steam games available now, too.