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The Vacation Season DLC for Highrise City was recently released on August 5th. I was meant to write about it in my original review of the game, but I had run into some issues during my playthrough. After speaking with the developers, the problem seems to have resolved itself, which means I was finally able to welcome tourists into Megatropolis!

This DLC is priced at £9.99 and offers even more opportunities to expand and customize your city. Like most DLC, you must own the base game before you’re able to enjoy the content offered in Vacation Season. I received the DLC for free (along with the base game) in return for my honest review. So what exactly is offered in Vacation Season, and is it worth nearly £10? Let me break it down for you in this Highrise City: Vacation Season DLC review!

The Building Blocks of Tourism

Once you’ve unlocked tourism for your city (aka the Vacation Season DLC), there are several new buildings and resources to explore. These are vital to not only welcome tourists into your city, but to keep them happy. As is typical for Highrise City, even when it comes to tourists, you are managing every aspect of their experience. This is mainly comprised of hotels, attractions, and city tours. If you can successfully implement these three major pieces of tourism into your city, your tourists will generally be happy. Happy tourists means more income for your city, allowing you to pursue new industries or expand your borders.

While the concept of pleasing your tourists can sound a bit daunting in the beginning, it’s not too complicated once you begin working on it. Plus, the game will continuously provide you with tips related to tourism. These tips are stored with all of the ones before them in the ‘Tips’ tab located in the upper right corner of your HUD. Overall, Highrise City does a great job of breaking down tourism into small, manageable tasks until you’re comfortable with it.

Hotels – The Hubs of Tourism

The first crucial part of bringing tourists to your city is hotels. Without them, your tourists will have nowhere to stay, which means they won’t bother coming in the first place. You’ll want to find a good place to put your hotel; somewhere that will allow you to keep attractions accessible. It’s also important that you don’t place the hotel in an industrialized area, as your tourists will judge your city on its beauty. I would suggest to make a section just for tourism, if possible. That way, you can place plenty of attractions and buildings with positive ratings from your tourists. I haven’t been able to do this yet, but I suspect it’ll help achieve maximum happiness levels.

Once you’ve found an appropriate spot for your new hotel, you’ll be able to click on it to open up the hotel’s menu. This enables you to view what your tourists’ wants and needs are. The biggest thing is to implement a city tour using bus stops. This is considered elementary for your tourists, as it allows them to visit attractions and enjoy your city. You could build every attraction available, but it won’t matter without the city tour. Using the hotel’s menu will show you what specifications your tour needs to meet. These specifications change as you meet tourism milestones and unlock nicer hotels. If you create the ideal city tour, your tourists will be happier, which means extra income for you!

Attractions – Hello New Resources!

Similar to hotels, you’ll begin with just a few attractions when you unlock tourism. Your first two are the museum and the Japanese restaurant. For your tourists to enjoy your attractions, you’ll need to supply them with flyers and souvenirs to produce ‘leisure’ and tourism income. It’s yet another resource for you to manage, adding to the detail and complexity I’ve come to know and love in Highrise City.

The good news is that you can take the tourism aspect as seriously or casually as you’d like. There’s no pressure to expand your hotels or attractions once they’re established, meaning you can take a break from tourism at almost any time. If you expand your tourism industry enough, you’ll reach the next tourism milestone. This is completely separate from your regular city milestones, unlocked by having the appropriate number of tourists. As you unlock each milestone, you’ll be rewarded with new attractions to build. I’m really excited about this aspect of the game! I can’t wait to build my little tourism corner and design it however I want.

Metro & Planes DLC – For Diehard Fans

The developers were very generous and also provided a code to the Metro & Planes DLC, which originally released on December 21, 2023. This DLC is only £2.49, and honestly, I can see why when comparing it to Vacation Season. Metro & Planes comes with exactly that: a metro system (aka subway system) and an airport. While I much prefer the metro system to the regular public bus system, neither one seems to make a significant difference in my city traffic. It seems like you’d need to create a very complex/grandiose system to see an impact. Frankly, I had other things that I preferred to do over meticulously planning public transportation routes.

Then there’s the airport. It was fun to build; it lead to unlocking several new resources and having to build them up, which I personally enjoyed. I also had to find the space to build it, because that thing is huge compared to most other buildings! Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like there was much of a “reward” for finally getting it placed. The airport gives you three new trading slots and a 5% happiness boost across the board. Now, you could say that three trading slots is generous considering regular ports only give one. Except that regular ports require significantly fewer resources, meaning I could’ve easily built three in the time it took to achieve building the airport. For under £3, I probably wouldn’t have been upset if I’d paid for it, but I think this DLC would be most appreciated by diehard fans of Highrise City.

Verdict

Just as Highrise City did, the Vacation Season DLC sucked me in for several hours at a time. I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to improve my city tour, build new attractions, and bring more tourists to my city! The extra revenue they provided allowed me to work on new projects I had pushed to the side before. I was already having a blast playing this game, but all of the new content adds an extra layer of fun. I really want to build the Ferris wheel featured in the trailer!

All things considered, I think that the Vacation Season DLC is a fantastic addition to Highrise City. Whether you’re a new player or have been playing Highrise City from the beginning, I think this DLC has a lot to offer. It adds a lot of new content with the potential for dozens of hours of gameplay, if not more. I think it’s well worth £9.99 and I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in Highrise City!

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