Synergy Review – A Cozy City-Builder That’s Easy on the Eyes

As someone who enjoys city-builders but quickly finds myself bouncing off of them when they start to ramp up in complexity and management requirements, a game like Synergy is practically tailor-made for me. Let’s be honest — the absolute best parts of a city-builder are arguably the first hours in which you get to come to terms with the game’s basic systems and start to cultivate a small community that, slowly but surely, begins to thrive. It’s a sentiment that games like Against the Storm capitalized on by building that game’s entire loop around redoing the first segment of a city-builder campaign, and it’s something that Synergy also embraces, albeit with a distinctive lean toward narrative-driven elements that really hammer home the game’s message about conservation being just as, if not more, important than expansion.

After spending roughly 15 hours with the game and fully completing one of its story scenarios (while currently chipping away at the other), Synergy is absolutely a great casual city-builder, but its embracing of accessibility could turn off the more genre faithful. The game opts for cozy simplicity and tangible, short-term gains in favor of systemic complexity and the more granular management aspects that city-builder veterans might be looking for. However, one thing that transcends Synergy‘s more polarizing gameplay aspects is its absolutely stunning visuals, which bring a compelling and unique alien world to life in a hand-drawn style that takes plenty of clear influence from iconic artists like Moebius. Put another way, Synergy is a vibe, and that vibe practically carries the whole experience during moments where its mechanics might start to wear thin.

Synergy Embraces the Best Parts of a City-Builder

The best city-builders start small and gradually ramp up in terms of their mechanical complexity, continually requiring more of the player as their settlements grow and managing them becomes a more involved task. Synergy is unique in that it somewhat bucks this trend by sticking to a thematically relevant approach to its gameplay. As the last members of a dwindling race, you must set out in search of a new home in which to rebuild and, eventually, live in harmony with the planet. To do so, you must brave the mostly barren and occasionally toxic wasteland in which Synergy takes place. You’ll need the basic elements for any settlement — shelter, food, and water — but you’ll also need to send out expeditions to learn more about the planet and discover how your settlement’s growth can coexist within an already homeostatic ecosystem.

It’s a relatively simple progression loop that, to be fair, does eventually give way to some interesting surprises in the game’s story scenarios, but it mostly allows the player to focus on a few key elements for survival and growth. Synergy places a premium on not just the “what” of making a settlement grow and thrive, but the “how“, with special bonuses applied to cultivating resources in a way that conserves them versus outright stripping the land for progress. Apropos of its title, Synergy is all about coexisting with the land rather than just pure growth, and that thematic message and underlying element to the gameplay mechanics help the game stay relatively small in scope.

A Cozy Approach to City-Builder Gameplay

The most important resources are food and water, and as long as your citizens are fed and kept cool in the desert heat, it’s never too difficult to figure out a progression path to upgrade buildings, research new technologies, or advance your civilization in other, more novel ways unique to Synergy‘s gorgeously strange alien planet. As a result, everything in Synergy feels relatively low-stakes, even when there are very real dangers encroaching on your settlement. The “chill” atmosphere and vibe of Synergy is only further aided by the game’s presentation, which works overtime to be the game’s definitive element.

Though it’s not quite as simplistic as some cozy games that happen to have settlement-building or farming elements, Synergy is also not nearly as complex as your typical city builder. Instead, Synergy strikes a careful balance between the two, acting as one of a few “cozy” city-building games that places just as much emphasis on its tonality as its mechanics.

Visuals and Presentation Are at the Heart of Synergy’s Appeal

For anyone who’s ever read the groundbreaking Incal or any of the iconic French artist Moebius’ other works, Synergy will be immediately appealing. The team at Leikir Studio has been forthcoming about how much of an influence Moebius’ work had on Synergy’s art direction, but even if they hadn’t, it would be painfully obvious. To their credit, the artists at Leikir have truly outdone themselves with the design of both the planet itself and the many structures and inhabitants that you’ll eventually populate it with, and there were parts during my playthrough of Synergy where I found myself simply pausing the game so I could take it all in. It’s not a stretch to say that Synergy might be the best-looking city builder out there, depending on your taste in art direction, and it’s certainly the best-looking hand-drawn city builder I can think of.

But Synergy also happens to deliver with its music, offering up a great original score to back up its compelling narrative and gameplay. The score to Synergy is both understated and soothing, conveying a subtle sense of mystery about the planet on which this civilization is struggling to rebuild while simultaneously discovering its secrets and learning to live in harmony with the endemic life. It’s incredibly “chill”, and it helps to support the more low-stakes gameplay on offer in Synergy‘s two story scenarios. The one knock against Synergy‘s sound design is that the excellent music is the only audio accompaniment players will have, as there’s an almost complete lack of any ambient sound effects or other sound design.

How Synergy’s Gameplay Connects to Its Title

For a game to be diegetic, its interactive, mechanical elements need to work in concert with its storytelling in a way that communicates an intended theme or message. As far as city builders go, Synergy is one of the very few diegetic ones I can think of, with both mechanics and narrative elements that communicate a message about environmental conservation and a homeostatic relationship with the planet. In that sense, it’s a lot like Terra Nil. And like that excellent title, everything on offer in Synergy works overtime toward that motif.

You’ll incur penalties that affect your settlement’s long-term viability if you ignore the game’s warnings about accruing more resources through cultivation rather than pure collecting (which the game labels as “ripping” to hammer home the lasting damage to the environment). Instead, you have to gradually build your settlement up in a way that honors the land you’ve settled on, complete with learning more about the flora and fauna and researching ways to make the water drinkable without outright inflicting damaging change on the planet’s natural ecosystem.

In Synergy, your settlement will grow, and you’ll gradually learn more and more about the game’s visually distinctive setting, but true success comes from realizing that your city and its inhabitants are a mere link in the chain rather than the end-all be-all lifeform on an already thriving planet. Unlike Terra Nil, which required tearing everything down to return the planet to a state of homeostasis, Synergy is all about just that — learning to live in sync with the planet and coexist while also ensuring that the settlement’s survival gradually gets easier. The more you respect the game’s message and take it to heart, the easier the game’s interactive elements become.

Synergy Might Leave Die-Hard City-Builder Fans Wanting More

For all that Synergy does well, some things will no doubt prove frustrating to city-builder genre veterans. One element that some players might find disappointing is Synergy‘s relative simplicity, which is prevalent in its gameplay but also in its structure. Players have the option to begin Synergy with a helpful tutorial scenario, and then the game gives way to two story scenarios and a sandbox-style Free Mode. While the two story scenarios, “Firestorm” and “The Anchoring” do a great job of gradually introducing more and more mechanics to add to Synergy‘s systems and complexity, they’re ultimately held back by the game’s core drive of making sure that you research the planet’s history, improve your settlement’s technological advancement, and collect plenty of food and water.

Similarly, there’s somewhat of a lack of rules or prescribed progression paths when it comes to researching technology and advancing your civilization, which ultimately impacts the end-of-scenario score that players can earn in each gameplay mode. Synergy‘s simplicity is arguably one of its strong points for players going in looking for a more casual city-builder experience. But for those who are longtime fans of the genre, the game’s less-rigid systems and emphasis on balancing expansion with conservation could end up proving more frustrating than anything else. That’s only exacerbated by the fact that, despite having a clear message that’s thematically connected to some impressively diegetic gameplay elements, Synergy‘s story doesn’t offer any satisfying answers.

Bottom Line

Ultimately, Synergy is a game that comes across clearly as a work of passion. The title spent roughly a year in Early Access before its recent 1.0 launch, and in that time, the community provided plenty of constructive feedback that, to its credit, Leikir Studio has made great strides toward addressing and turning Synergy into a game that balances both the creators’ vision and the players’ desires. I came into Synergy as a total newcomer, not having played the game in Early Access and as someone whose modern city-builder experience almost exclusively begins and ends with Against the Storm. I was drawn to Synergy by its eye-catching visuals and art style, but after playing it, I’ve come to appreciate Synergy for its narrative, important message, and soothing vibes during gameplay.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Synergy is one of a small handful of games that are perfect gateways to the city-builder genre. The title requires just enough from the player to keep them engaged without ever overwhelming them, while also keeping the moment-to-moment gameplay satisfyingly rewarding and simple. That same simplicity might put some longtime city-builder fans off, but it’s honestly what I found most refreshing about Synergy. But on top of its more accessible gameplay and readily apparent progression loop, Synergy‘s ability to embrace the human desire to explore and seek out an understanding of the planet helped to cement it as a game I won’t soon forget and will happily come back to any time I feel like I need a quick city-building fix with a relaxing, and beautiful, atmosphere.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Synergy key art.