Review | Synergy - Gorgeous But Deadly
What do you do when you’re stranded in an hostile environment with very few resources to tide you over to the next season? You build a new civilization, of course! You choose a piece of land, erect some tents in shaded areas, and start gathering resources. But soon you’ll realise that you can’t just use up all the resources around you: you’re going to need to make informed decisions, so you start analysing the terrain that surrounds you, researching new ways to make new advancements, sending people on expeditions to find out what’s out there, and on and on. I could go on forever on all the steps involved into making a successful civilization in Synergy, but let’s take things one step at a time, because Rome wasn’t built in a day after all — nor in a desert with toxic green water and strange plants that whip you if you try to harvest them, but that’s neither here nor there.
My main district. Here you can find my residential area as well as the research and health related buildings.
Synergy does a great job at explaining just how to do all of the aforementioned tasks in its first scenario, a much needed tutorial considering the many elements that make this city builder unique. I will admit that despite being a big fan of the city building genre, I haven’t played a game like this in a fair amount of time, but I was able to pick things up relatively quickly thanks to the pop-ups which recount the story of your citizens alongside beautiful illustrations.
Between the different kinds of districts your town will have — nine in total, each with its own unique specialty — you will soon have your hands full juggling many different tasks. You’ll have to make sure your citizens aren’t starving, that they’re not overworked, or that they have enough clean water instead of that green sludge that’s in every river flowing through these lands, but the story will guide the player along on everything there is to know about the game, adding new things little by little with each new advancement you make in your research.
Synergy’s take on ecological elements in a genre that doesn't often explore them is ironically refreshing, considering the harsh temperatures you’ll have to shield your citizens from. At the start of the game you choose between two campaigns, with each having different scenarios to unlock. Each scenario focuses on a specific challenge to go up against: for example, the first scenario after the tutorial focuses on surviving the arid heat during the dry season by creating shaded areas and buildings to shelter yourself from the sun. I really enjoyed finding out the right way to go about collecting each resource after having every plant and rock properly analysed by the citizens assigned to work at the field lab. Their research will show you that some of the elements you can find around your town are better left for when you have unlocked new structures to handle them, as the only action available to you at the start of the game is “ripping out” an ingredient, which will give you its materials but will destroy the original plant or mineral in the process. Fortunately, you don't have to wait long, as one of the first buildings you unlock is the picker’s cabin, which allows you to harvest materials without destroying its source.
My commercial district. It was a bad idea to build it so far away from the main district, especially in the desert, as all of the people living in those tents are sweltering in the heat.
Sometimes the resources you can find around you are not going to be enough to advance your town, though, so you will need to go out and explore what’s out there by sending a handful of your citizens to brave the wilds armed only with a supply of food and water to survive. The explorations are done in a charming choose-your-own-adventure style where you’ll see how your adventurers are faring in their journey and choose what path to set them on through a series of multiple choices the player can make depending on the amount of resources gathered so far. The right choice might be rewarded with new materials, new opportunities, or new traders to barter with. The wrong choice might have harsh consequences — like getting your explorers injured or ill — but sometimes the best choices are the ones you take a gamble on by choosing a risky option that will roll a dice to determine the result, you can manage to get a good reward that way if you’re willing to make a sacrifice for it.
In one case, I planned very poorly for an expedition and didn’t give my explorers enough food, but luckily I found a woman who gave us so much food in exchange for our fiber that I was able to explore a lot more than I expected after that.
A splash screen of the possible choices during an expedition
Synergy’s illustrated art style is what drew me initially to the game and it stayed consistently gorgeous throughout. Even on the lowest settings, when I installed it on my potato of a laptop so that I could bring it with me on the rare occasions I’d choose to not stay indoors, it was still able to run smoothly and look as beautiful as ever. The pastel colours contrast nicely with the survival elements, almost creating a soothing dissonance that helps make what could be a very stressful concept into a cozy experience. The ambience is made even more relaxing by the sound design and the comforting music that create an almost nostalgic feeling to the atmosphere. I don’t know if it’s just because I haven’t properly played a city builder in quite some time, but zooming in on the townsfolk and seeing them go about their day while hearing the sound effects of the bustling neighbourhood reminded me of when I’d do the same in games such as Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom from back in the day, one of my fondest memories from my childhood.
Probably the only gripe I have with this game is that you can’t rotate the camera angle, so you’re stuck with one perspective. It would have been nice to have at least an angle from each cardinal point. One other thing I would like to see added in a future update is the inclusion of wildlife as, besides some interesting-looking creatures flying through the skies every now and then, there’s nothing there besides plants and minerals.
With several scenarios to complete, there’s plenty of material to explore in a game that could’ve just been a sandbox with no need to add story elements to it. Granted, the story is somewhat generic and you could just as easily ignore it, but it’s a nice extra element that I personally appreciate, and it helps present the elements of the gameplay in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the player with too much choice, especially considering the game’s survival elements.I can easily say Synergy reignited my dormant passion for the genre, as I had been waiting for a game with a new enough spin to make it interesting for me again.
