Watch a 25-minute disaster film set purely in Cities: Skylines

This 25-minute video, from YouTuber TDB Games, begins like a standard flythrough of a Cities: Skylines city build, albeit an impressive, sprawling one. And then the meteors start falling, and it turns into an epic disaster film.

The introduction is arguably a tad too drawn out—the first ten minutes are basically made up of detailed shots of the city at work set to upbeat music. But I enjoyed them all the same, and they made me remember just how satisfying it can be to tinker with a Cities: Skylines build.

But it really picks up when disaster strikes. Multiple meteors, tornadoes, raging fires: the city of Yoko, which is styled after a Japanese metropolis, is battered by the elements.

The camera work is excellent, and the scene selection perfectly captures the city's response to the disasters. You'll see a sky filled with emergency helicopters, buzzing around like wasps, and ambulances stacking up bumper-to-bumper on the streets, struggling to meet demand.

I had no idea you could make something this good in Cities: Skylines, and it's led me down a rabbit hole of impressive creators showing off their imaginations (just click on any of the related videos to get lost yourself).

Thanks, Kotaku.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.