So I'm giving this a thumbs up but not because I really like it or it's really awesome.

I'm giving this game a thumbs up because it's average. Because it does what it set out to do.

This isn't some amazing or great game. It's an average city builder with a different take on city building.

I don't wanna come across as angry, bitter or unforgiving. I'm not. It's just, for 25 dollars I expected more. Now granted the game looks better in person then it does on the steam store page. In fact I really liked the art style.

But the idea of living in sync with nature rather than adapting to nature doesn't feel right in a city sim game.

Instead of farming you're constantly harvesting, but have to be careful not to hurt the harsh deadly planet trying to kill you for some reason.

Everything you do is to live in sync with the planet which makes the gameplay a bit wonky as you're trying to figure out how best to adapt and survive without being invasive.

Overall the game doesn't really do anything that bad in it's overall design but it still wound up being mostly boring, awkward at the resource management and gathering and just a bit of a chore in my opinion.

TLDR: It's a typical average city sim game.

If you'd like a more in-depth look at the game with footage then please check out my review on my YouTube Channel (link below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yWVGvSu-BI

Otherwise thanks so much for reading and I hope I managed to help some of you out there spend your money wisely.

I've become a bit of a city builder fan over the last year or so. I've tried my fair share and tend to pick them up on release. I've been excited for Synergy since it's Nextfest demo as I'm also a comic fan and I could happily stare at the Moebius artwork all day. I've played the tutorial and started on the campaign scenario. The tutorial is a little dry but now i'm on the scenario i'm enjoying applying what i've learned about the mechanics. There's also a sandbox mode. It's typical city builder for the most part, collect what you need to make buildings and keep your citizens happy to make more things with more buildings to make them happier but...

This game has some interesting mechanics that differentiate it from other city builders, mainly it's focus on interacting with and learning about natural resources in the environment in order to best use them for your city and peoples benefit, particularly plants from which you can get multiple resources depending on how you interact with them. It's neat and adds an extra dimension to the tried and true berry gathering of early stage builders.

Other pros: Houses can be build from multiple differing materials so you can use what you have access too without everyone going homeless because you don't have any wood or stone. There looks to be a deep research tree to unlock more buildings etc. as you progress. The art is obviously chefs kiss and the music is pretty great too. The UI is clear and relatively minimalist. Arranging your buildings to optimize your workflows is good times and clearly a key component. Aside from an initial crash after first launch I've had no stability or performance issues but we'll see how it holds up as the population increases as high pop counts is where these games always start to chug under CPU load.

Cons: Despite the great art it's not as atmospheric as I'd like. This partly because you're in a desert I suppose but it'd be nice to have more plants blowing in the breeze or animals moving around beyond the odd bird. Haven't seen any weather effects yet. It also seems to be daylight (and sunny) all the time although I swear I've seen my peeps go home and stay there like they have a sleeping cycle.

Overall I'm having a great time and eager to dive into it more. It definitely has everything it needs to be a great builder so far.

Four-Minute Review: https://youtu.be/PCY7FCx4jtI

I never expected to not like Synergy. After all, this eye-poppingly adorable survival city builder based on the supremely influential comic book illustrations of French artist Jean Giraud, AKA Moebius, is everything I want on paper. A rich and rarely seen visual rendering of a strange alien planet that—dare I say— synergizes nicely with its thoughtful and intricate resource gathering mechanics that encourage patient research and exploration effort rather than combat.

What’s not to love, right?

Well, after 10 hours with Synergy, I am surprised and saddened to report that I find it all a bit... boring? You see, after the initial wave of art-induced infatuation wore off, I gradually began to realize that Synergy isn’t meant to simulate an intense, punishing, and consequently thrilling fight against the world’s harsh climate as is the case in games like Frostpunk and Against the Storm. Nor is it here to push you to your production-chain resource micromanagement limits as do games like Cartel Tycoon, The Settlers, and Pioneers of Pagonia. And, given Synergy's near total deemphasis on your city’s individuals, it's incapable of delivering those fun AI storylines seen in colony simulators like RIMWORLD and its upcoming medieval clone Norland.

Instead, Synergy is about the biggest number on the screen: your city’s prosperity score, which visualizes the city’s sustainability and well-being. Synergy wants your main focus to be basking in the wonderful art style as you build toward a beautiful, culture-rich utopia that doesn’t overexploit the world’s fragile ecosystem, which you can see grow and die in real time. Dealing with the harsh climate, producing enough food and water—these survival mechanics that drive other games are inconveniences in Synergy rather than the game’s deciding factors. Now, does this design decision mean the game is easy? Absolutely not, as there’s still plenty of depth here and still plenty of ways to screw things up (trust me). But don’t go in expecting an exhilarating experience, which is what I personally wanted.

That in mind, let’s get into the game.

GAMEPLAY & CONTENT

You’ll start out as you do in many survival city builders—with a store of starter resources and a handful of static, slowly starving settlers (poor little guys). However, after laying a building from your construction menu, your settlers will snap out of their comas and get right to work. After building early game structures like shelters, warehouses, and “picking cabins,” you’ll want to lay down a field lab so you can start researching the world’s strange plant life. These lab results will then inform you about the plant’s properties (e.g., is it edible?), as well as the different materials you can gather from it by either picking, trimming, or ripping the plant out of the ground entirely.

In between all of this rippin’ and tearin’, you’ll need to build a research center and start unlocking new buildings, like an infirmary to treat worn down workers, an arborist’s workshop to help replant whatcha de-plant, and an explorer’s hut from which you can launch expeditions into the unknown. Upon reaching a new area or point of interest, you’ll get a short text-based scenario and an RNG choice or two, but watch out because rolling the die can result in die-ing. Oh, and keep an eye out for ancient tablets along the way, as collecting and then translating them will unlock buffs for your village.

In other words... from an objectives and mechanics standpoint, Synergy is a lot like most of the survival city builders I’ve covered on my channel, albeit with an attractive and intuitive user interface that makes a fun little ASMR sound when you hover over it. I would like to see more map variety by 1.0, however, as the level designs currently feel pretty synonymous.

Lastly, I didn’t encounter any figurative bugs in Synergy, though I do think the game would benefit from some literal ones—I just know my villagers must be tired of eating the same “watery pod” veggie pie every day, plus, this art style is simply begging for some colorful and creative Dr. Suess-esque animals.

CONCLUSION

I had originally planned on a longer review of Synergy, but the game’s text-based story in which you seek out fellow settlers and study the world’s strange glowing phenomenon doesn’t currently feel fleshed out enough to fairly score. So, we’ll give the game a subject-to-change aggregate MEGA score of 3.22/5 (full scoring breakdown available in the video) and plan on revisiting it closer to full release. Between now and then, I'm happy to answer any questions you have about the game or my review.

Thanks for reading!

STEAM CURATOR: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42044015/