Synergy

by Aethyna Jun 2, 2024 | 1 Votes | 89 Played | 0 Reviews

8 rate

Genres:

Simulation

Graphics:

Labels:

City Building

Platforms:

Publishers:

Goblinz Publishing Synergy is a city-builder that’s a lot more strategic than most. Sustainably exploit the resources in your surroundings, survive the harsh weather of the desert, develop new technologies through rigorous research, explore the lands beyond your settlement, make contact with other survivors, and unravel the mysteries of the planet! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Synergy is a city-builder that’s a lot more strategic than most. Sustainably exploit the resources in your surroundings, survive the harsh weather of the desert, develop new technologies through rigorous research, explore the lands beyond your settlement, make contact with other survivors, and unravel the mysteries of the planet!

Gameplay

In terms of gameplay, Synergy isn’t exactly your typical city-builder. For starters, the terrain you place your city on, at least the homes, can be crucial since houses heat up during hot spells and may cause a whole lot of issues for your people. Unfortunately, this little important fact isn’t clearly conveyed during the tutorial.

The game also focuses on segmenting your city into districts, but this districting aspect only comes into play in mid-game, which, by then, you might already have your city planned out and not in a way that makes efficient districting possible. Setting up good districts is important here as well since it’ll contribute to your people’s culture score, which in turn unlocks culture-related research, and the districts also interact with each other, providing useful bonuses to the structures they cover. Having to rebuild your city from (almost) scratch just so you can fulfill the requirements of a district can be a tad bit frustrating. Thankfully, at least you can get 100% resources back for any deconstructed buildings in this game.

Resource gathering and management is fairly unique here as well. Unlike most games where you already know what you’re harvesting and gathering, the world your people are surviving in is filled with strange plants and trees. Before you start gathering away, you’ll need to have your people research the plants via the Field Laboratory to discover ways to gather the useful items from them, be it food or building materials, in a sustainable and safe way... after all, some plants may have thorns or secrete dangerous sap.

Once that’s done, you can then set up pickers’ huts to gather what you need. As you progress, you can set up arborists, which would allow you to drill into trees to gather resin and conduct a variety of analyses, which will allow you to determine the best terrain to grow new plants through the plant nursery. Eventually, you can even set up Arranged Caves and head underground to gather Borelean stone

Sustainability is at the core of the game, and without it, you’ll quickly find your people running out of crucial resources to survive, let alone to grow. This is why you’ll need to choose the right gathering method to get what you need while ensuring that the plants don’t die out.

In Synergy, people management is also key to a thriving settlement. There are two main ways to get new people to join your settlement – through procreation, which relies on having enough housing space for children, or through emigration, usually by having your exploration team bump into other survivors and offering them a place to stay. These two methods are rather unreliable in this game, with procreation sometimes tanking for no apparent reason, and well, it’s not always you’ll encounter other survivors whom you could successfully convince to join your village.

Due to this, it’s important to assign people to the right facilities just so you can get the most out of it. You see, buildings have work efficiencies, and only by filling them up with workers will you get 100% efficiency. However, sometimes, there’s no need for a hundred percent, such as when you have way too much water (both clean and toxic), you could scale back on the manpower allocations for the pontoon and have them go work someplace else.

It’s crucial to leave some workers as idle workers here, too, since you’ll need them to do odd jobs around the place, including building new structures, clearing anything you’ve manually designated on the map, and, of course, hauling goods from production facilities to storage and vice versa. In fact, for hauling, it’s better to set up an Assignment Tower and assign some folks there just so they can capitalize on the bonus the facility provides to haulers, allowing them to carry more per trip.

Your people also have needs that you’ll fulfill well. This includes the basics like food, shelter, and drinkable water, but also health and comfort – after all, you can’t expect your people to be at their best when the sun is scorching the sweat off their backs, even when they are at home resting.

This brings us to the challenging aspect of the game. Aside from sustainability, the weather patterns can sometimes turn quite harsh, depending on the forecast. Due to this, it’s important to prepare well before the harsh weather hits, whether it is to set up structures that can help cool down the area or by stocking up more clean water for use.

Progression in Synergy is marked not only by the size of your population, but also by your advancement through technology… all thanks to research! There are two parts to research here – technological and cultural, with each requiring a specific building to conduct. However, the upside to having two separate buildings for research is that you can carry out two different types of research at the same time.

Although the map you get to build on is quite big, there’ll come a point where you’ve discovered everything there is to discover and are eager to venture out into the world beyond your little plot of land. This is where the world map comes in!

Through the Explorer’s Hut, you can assemble a team of explorers and have them venture out into the world beyond, where they may meet other survivors, encounter strange creatures, and find areas rich in resources that they can then haul back. They may even experience harrowing events that might just turn out to be incredibly rewarding if you choose the right actions or have the right items at hand.

Note that although your team carry limited food and water supplies, they apparently can access your settlement’s entire available (not assigned to a facility, such as an infirmary) inventory in case of resolving specific events. You can only have one expeditionary team at a time though, even if you have the people and resources to assemble another.

Aside from the options to speed up time or pause it, the game also provides players with various “views,” which will clearly highlight certain important aspects of the game on the map, such as humidity, fertility, and the mineral content of the soil. There are also helpful buttons around the mini-map that allow you to quickly head to the world map, for instance, or to the technology tree. You can also easily keep track of whether you have a research ongoing, be it a technological or a cultural one.

As fun as the game is, Synergy isn’t without its flaws. Aside from the ones mentioned before, the game’s UI could definitely use a bit of reworking. For example, there are just so many different ways to “harvest” a resource from a plant, and there’s no easy way to do it. It would be great to have like a wheel panel with all the available options listed there. There’s also no way to, for instance, trim a plant’s branches AND pick the fruits for further cooking in the kitchen. I also think that the different types of research, as well as whether they can be researched and subjected to available resources, should be more clearly defined on the research tree. Oftentimes I find myself just going through all the different kinds of research just to find one that I can take on and is useful enough to invest in.

There isn’t enough explanation about how you could cool down homes in this game, either. Despite setting up irrigation canals and greatly increasing the humidity of my settlement, the people still got heatstroke during hot spells because their homes were too hot. Short of the massive effort of moving the entire housing area to better terrain – what constitutes a better terrain for housing, though? -, it doesn’t seem like I could do anything to combat the hot weather… short of stocking up on cooling balm and re-opening the second infirmary that I had built just for this purpose.

That being said, the game is currently in early access, and these might just be the issues that the developers are addressing as the game progresses.

Graphics/ Sound

One of the most striking things about Synergy is its Moebius-inspired art style. The hand-drawn visuals are beautifully captivating. The amount of detail that went into each structure in the game is fascinating as well, though I still hoped for more variety of housing aside from the three provided. There’s a nice zoom option that allows you to literally go down to ground level and watch as your people scurry about the settlement, doing what needs to be done.

In terms of sound, the game features a selection of relaxing tunes that serenade you while you build, manage, and explore. In fact, the music does sound like the sort of meditative music that works great during a meditation.

Conclusion

All in all, Synergy is a pretty unconventional city builder that focuses on sustainability and not just the exploitation of natural resources, allowing you to build and develop a city alongside nature and the environment. The game has sufficient content even as an early access title, though players may find themselves encountering the same events and plants in subsequent runs. For what it’s worth, Synergy is a solid city builder that requires players to figure things out as they go. It may still have some kinks to work out, but overall, the game looks promising and provides a much-needed breath of fresh air in the city-building genre.