Synergy Review

The city-building genre has become a staple in the gaming world, offering players the chance to create sprawling cities, factories, or even survival outposts. Recent titles like Frostpunk 2 have captivated fans with their complex resource management and intricate city-building mechanics. Meanwhile, games like Cities: Skylines 2 and Foundation have allowed players to really tap into their creativity, allowing them to get into making the perfect metropolis.

Now, enter Synergy, a fresh new take on the genre that merges artistic design with resource-focused gameplay. In this survival city-builder, you build a thriving settlement on an unfamiliar planet while maintaining a delicate balance between exploration, sustainability, and technological progress. But with so many city-building games already out there, does Synergy offer something new, or does it blend into the crowd?

While many survival city builders focus on chaos and punishing difficulty, Synergy dares to take a different approach. Set on a hostile alien world, it shifts the focus away from surviving harsh climates or micromanaging production chains. 

Instead, it emphasizes harmony with nature and eco-sustainability, challenging players to build not just a thriving settlement but a society that flourishes without overexploiting the fragile environment. Inspired by the art of Jean Giraud (aka Moebius), Synergy presents an eye-catching world that seems perfect on paper.

Synergy is a survival city-building game that challenges players to establish and manage a settlement in an unfamiliar environment. The concept is nothing new, as seen in the likes of Surviving Mars, but the emphasis on eco-sustainability and the detailed research systems set it apart. Developed by Leikir Studio, the game invites players to manage the delicate balance between growth and environmental conservation.

In a genre dominated by more intense survival mechanics like Frostpunk's, Synergy promises a more laid-back, exploration-driven experience. The design answers the question of whether Synergy can achieve its lofty ideal of balancing sustainability with the inherent tension of survival, but the real challenge lies in whether it manages to achieve that balance effectively or falls short.

At the outset of Synergy, you're greeted with a handful of settlers stranded in a sparse and hostile environment. You have traveled hard and far, and your people have been wandering the land for a while now. Fleeing from your old home, you finally come across a suitable area. The building system utilized here is gridlike, asynchronous, with a lot of the classic city-builders like Anno or Worshippers of Cthulhu.

Your city revolves around districts, which act as town squares. Afterward, you will need to build temporary housing—tents. While these tents will do for now, you will have to meet your citizens' needs. These include not only food, water, and shelter but also adequate temperature. 

Other than that, they also have secondary needs that are not as important, but if you fulfill them, their satisfaction increases, giving you certain bonuses. You need to build housing within the district area and have it in zones of adequate temperature. The best places, at least at first, are areas with shade, so look for trees.

Next up, you should probably build a Field Laboratory to research and learn about plants to figure out what you can actually get from them. Afterward, you can place structures such as picking cabins to actually collect. You also need storage for these goods.

Now, in Synergy, you can actually harvest in two ways. Well, you can rip out plants and minerals, basically destroying the thing producing whatever it is that you get from it, and maybe something more, but not really needing a lot of hassle while doing so. 

On the other hand, you can assign workers and then safely harvest resources. Some resources, such as the Rocky Amalgam, can only be ripped out, but worry not, as formations called Rocky Emanations will gradually cause Rocky Amalgam to pop up nearby.

Like many other city builders, you will need to build paths for more efficient travel and generally plan ahead. The real challenge begins when the environmental complexities of the planet start to unfold. Resource management is at the heart of the game, but it's handled in a way that's both intricate and thoughtful. Adding to that, it is city-builder where planning is essential.

Food, water, and building materials are the key resources, but they don't come easily. Players are encouraged to avoid overexploitation, as overharvesting plants like the Whipping Gourd can injure your settlers. Challenges also come in the form of Dry Seasons, periods of high temperatures that gradually get worse over time. 

These act as a ticking clock that slowly nudges you to find ways to alleviate the rising temperatures. The focus is not on punishing resource management but on maintaining harmony. The harshest threats you face aren't blizzards or bandits; they are the environmental challenges, like the Dry Seasons, that arise when you push the ecosystem too far. 

While these elements do add tension, the game never fully embraces the heart-racing, life-or-death struggle that some players might expect from certain city-builders. Instead, Synergy provides a steadier, more deliberate pace that leans heavily on thoughtful decision-making and long-term planning.

Exploration in Synergy plays a significant role in expanding your settlement's reach. New areas are unlocked through expeditions, which you can send your settlers on from the explorer's hut. This also ties in with Research.

Technology in Synergy is attained through using Heritage Points and Science Points, which are primarily found through tablets that you gain from exploration. The Research Tree itself is unique, with many circular sections that branch off into succeeding rings. Naturally, you need to unlock the ones preceding certain techs to be able to research them. 

Exploration, however, primarily gives you new people or some resources as you find places, come across other people, and trade with them. The exploration mechanic is fun overall, with a lot of risk involved in your decisions and the expeditions as a whole.

However, despite the potential for thrilling discoveries, exploration often feels secondary to the main gameplay loop. There's little narrative weight behind most of the exploration, and the event choices rarely carry much consequence beyond the resource reward. Essentially, outside of the expedition itself, they don't matter.

There's certainly more to the game, with its water mechanics, satisfaction, and overpopulation. A lot more than what a review might get into. There are many neat minor mechanics, such as how trees provide shade, how plants can naturally propagate, and how some can become invasive and thus require removal.

 Synergy currently offers two campaigns and a free mode. There is also a tutorial that does a neat job of getting you started. It introduces you to research, resource management, and settlement construction in a manageable sequence of tasks. The two campaigns have a solid narrative and have you go around completing objectives and following a story.

The free mode gives you room to play around, letting you try out different layouts, expansion plans, and eco-friendly setups without too much pressure. It adds some decent replay value if you're the kind of player who likes to tweak and optimize your cities.

The campaigns are a solid way to learn the ropes, but they're pretty short and don't give you much reason to revisit them once you're done. Some extra missions or a more fleshed-out story would go a long way toward making them feel more worthwhile.

One of  Synergy's standout features is its stunning art style, which clearly draws inspiration from Jean Giraud's work. The planet you inhabit is rendered in a visually striking way, with lush landscapes, vibrant colors, and meticulously designed flora and fauna. The world feels alive, and the visual beauty of the environment is a testament to the game's art direction. 

The overall 2D-looking style mixes really well with the game's 3D environment, and each screenshot and frame really looks like a painting of its own. While the landscape and terrain all look great, some variety would be nice, as well as some more distinct biomes to work around. Maps could use some more diversity in general. But overall, they're great with what they have. The user interface is clean and intuitive. There's a lot to keep track of, and the game does a remarkable job of making it easy to manage resources, assign tasks, and monitor your settlement's progress. 

Interacting with the UI has a satisfying ASMR-like quality; simple actions like hovering over buttons or assigning citizens to tasks produce gentle sound effects that make the experience feel more immersive. There are some nice quality-of-life tools in there as well, especially with the grid that appears while building. As a bonus, it also makes you feel like you're a city planner.

The soundtrack of Synergy complements its visual aesthetic, providing a soothing backdrop that reinforces the game's environmental note and exploratory tone. The music is subtle and atmospheric, with sweeping melodies that enhance the sense of immersion without becoming overpowering. Sound effects are equally well done, from the gentle hum of machinery to the rustling of alien plants.

While the music fits the tone perfectly, there's a noticeable lack of variety. Over time, the soundtrack can become repetitive, particularly in longer play sessions. But then, when you're obsessing over the placement of your storage buildings to ensure maximum spread and effectiveness, you'll hardly be bothered by the music, which really settles you in.

Synergy is undoubtedly a beautiful and well-thought-out game. It stands out with its unique systems and art style, and it's a nice break from the usual city-building formula. That said, the slower pace and chill vibe won't be for everyone. The game's visuals are definitely a high note, although unlike other games that rely on strong visuals, Synergy has the gameplay to match it.

It's not a high-stakes survival game, and the exploration and story elements feel a bit thin at times. But if you're into thoughtful, relaxed city-building games and like the idea of shaping a society that works with nature instead of against it, there's a lot to enjoy here.