We have shown you some first pictures of the “Pedestrian Zone Pack” Cosmetic DLC in late August at gamescom – but now, with release less than a week away, it’s time to take a closer look at the contents of this CDLC. Did anyone say “canals”?

What’s in the pack?

A quick recap: In April this year we once more presented you with several potential themes for Cosmetic DLC, with “Pedestrian Zone” winning the vote together with “Vibrant Cities” (to be released at the end of the year).

With this Cosmetic DLC we’re adding a bunch of ornaments to your game that focus on your downtown area to help you improve the daily life of your inhabitants there. Public toilets, convenient during long shopping trips and market halls, especially useful for the traders from the “City Lights Pack” Cosmetic DLC.

“With this DLC, we wanted to create a set of ornaments, that is focusing on the city centre again. With our last Season 3 DLCs, we introduced a lot of new city centre focused content like the hotel or the skyscrapers, so we wanted to provide ornaments that are fitting the cities with are getting even bigger and more modern now.”

– Tim, Lead Artist

A busy downtown area with railroads for electricity and streets for the transport of goods to the Restaurants and Shopping Arcades can be a dangerous terrain for pedestrians in these early industrialized times. Help them out with a Pedestrian Bridge or go below ground with an Underpass.

Generally, we focused on ornaments that fit the city centres and the now more advanced look of our players’ cities. That also meant using more modern construction materials, for example for the underpasses or the market hall. You could find a lot of these structures in big cities back in the days.

There was something several of you have mentioned you would love to see in Anno 1800 and also our Art Team was very keen on implementing: Canals for your cities!

In addition to various ponds and fountains, your population will now be able to take a stroll along the new canals which you can use to decorate your cities. And not only that: The “Pedestrian Zone Pack” does include two types of canals. One fitting to your population centres, a much more decorative and elegant design filled with fresh and clean water. The other for your industrial areas in a darker, dirtier design with sewage pipes to complete the look.

Add to that new ground plates and ornamental trees to create and decorate plazas in your cities with, as well as Pavilions to relax and the Enclosed Greenery system for little park areas and you have a packed bundle of ornaments for your pedestrian zones.

(As with previous Cosmetic DLC, please note that they’re purely ornamental and do not serve any gameplay purposes. While your inhabitants, the “feedback units”, will interact with the ornaments, your transports will not, for example, use underpasses or bridges.) 

Canal System

We already mentioned the new Canal System above, but with it being the highlight of the “Pedestrian Zone Pack”, it certainly deserves some special attention. We once again brought Tim, our Lead Artist, onboard to provide some insights for this section and answer some questions, like:

Were two types of canals planned from the beginning?

I remember we initially had only planned the urban version that fits the city centre. While discussing and scribbling the first ideas how the canals could look like, there was also this one more industrial-looking canal as an idea. So, we ultimately decided to do both, one more city-themed, and one more fitting the industrials areas.

The system gives you a lot of freedom to be creative with the look of your city. You can decide the whole look by yourself: Do you want to build small, tight canals or big rivers or even lakes? – It’s up to you, with the tiles (like you might be used to from “Land of Lions”) automatically combining themselves to larger water areas when placed next to each other. You will even see some of your citizens enjoy a boat trip on the canals (not the sewers, though, brrrrr). 

Designing and creating a system like the canals is always more challenging to create than single ornaments because we need to create a whole set of assets (different canal tiles, different corners, “open” tiles for when multiple canal tiles are combined etc.), so you can build any shape you want with them. On the other hand, there are a lot of technical constraints. It takes a lot of time to test this feature in game, because with all the other assets and the corresponding game mechanics it can create a lot of issues and edge cases we need to find and fix (e.g. crossing with roads, with the new bridges, …). 

Defining the style, on the other hand, was very much straight forward. There are a lot a real-world references we used as inspiration. The most famous one is probably Venice. But there are also a lot of other European cities like Birmingham, Amsterdam, Bruges or Annecy, for example, that are iconic for their canal systems. 

What is left to say? Well, below you can find a full list of all ornaments included in the “Pedestrian Zone Pack”. Stay tuned for Tuesday next week at 6PM CEST, when the Cosmetic DLC will be available for purchase for the usual 4,99€ (or your regional equivalent). 

We can’t wait to see how you’re incorporating these new ornaments – and especially the canals – in your cities!  

List of all ornaments: 

• Pedestrian Zone Entrance Gate 
• Pedestrian Bridge 
• Archways (3 total: one with a lamp, one with flags, one with a clock) 
• Underpass 
• Underground Toilet  
• Toilet House 
• Market Hall 
• Pavillon 
• City Canals (consisting of multiple elements) 
• Sewer Canals (consisting of multiple elements) 
• Canal Bridges (a small, a medium and a large one) 
• Groundplanes 
• Enclosed Tree 
• Enclosed Greenery