Synergy Steam Charts & Stats

Synergy is good, but it feels like it yet has some wrinkles to iron. Inventory visibility should be a priority, days feel a bit too long and information in general feels obscured even when everything's been researched. The tech tree feels a bit too restrictive and UX/UI isn't always 100% clear on what's happening in a certain spot. Still... all and all, it's an entertaining game, the learning curve can be quite sharp, but I think that's due to a lackluster tutorial and, again, information being obscured. It's got potential to be improved, but it's a satisfactory experience.

Wow, I'm really enjoying it! It's a strory-driven survival city builder with a great artistic style and a twist: you need to nurture and can influence your raw materials nodes (that is, plants). Rip out a plant and you get all resources, but it won't grow back. Scatter its seeds, and you'll get less but with a chance of another similar plant growing nearby. This isn't all though, since plants interact with each other and with the climate, with factors like temperature and humidity. You won't know all this at the beginning, so you have to study the plants and progress in your research tree to gain means to study them better. This mechanic is very well fleshed out, with a lot of plants and a lot of interaction between them. Plants aren't the only thing subject to the elements - you have to balance water availability and temperature for your people too, since cycles vary and dry cycles will put pressure on your water reserves and production efficiency. This is kinda similar to Timberborn, but the effect on temperature and humidity is more nuanced, as various areas of the map will be affected differently (also based on which plants are present). So overall we have a survival element, which is maybe not as extreme as Frostpunk, but definitely still present. The story element is also strong, with a decent narrative and plenty of goals to reach, one after another, to progress through the campaign. I prefer city builders that have clear goals rather than pure sandbox experiences, so Synergy is not disappointing in this area (there's also a sandbox mode). Other notable elements include expeditions, with plenty of locations you can visit (again, think of Frostpunk), and a massive research tree. New buildings can influence heavily how you handle plants and how you process resources, which keeps the interest alive. Supply chains are not overly complex, but you will have to do a lot of balancing to make sure things are kept under control and your limited production means are directed where it matters most. Speaking of which, there's quite a lot of micromanaging, especially in early stages. I didn't mind it much, since I enjoy fine-tuning my production chains, but some people may find it a bit annoying. This is also noticeable when you fulfil your citizens' needs, not just water and food, but also wellbeing, socialisation, culture, and knowledge. These are affected by where and how you place your buildings and decoration, so you need to carefully design your settlement if you want to maximise satisfaction. It's not as far as a puzzle game, but you need to be very mindful of placement and areas of influence. So you can't just plop down a million buildings and start extracting resources (this isn't Factorio), and the focus is on balance and careful management, considering both your resources availability and the effect of climate. The artistic component is also amazing, and it's a pleasure the animations in your settlement that you spent so much time and energy build. In terms of negatives, the UI is a bit confusing at times: for example, it's not super clear to distinguish between how many rations your expedition party has and how many would be consumed if you take a certain route. You'll also switch quite a lot between the various display layers (temperature, humidity, minerals, organic matter) when you're trying to plant and manage trees in a new section of the map - that part could be improved. I also haven't found any bugs, although I've experienced the occasional slowdown when some display layer is on. But aside from this, I think it's a very solid city builder with an original take on the genre. Very recommended.

A positive post-apocalyptic city builder. The game has a beautiful comic book stylization that really complements its atmosphere. The whole feeling is generally positive and optimistic, despite the desolate setting. It does not fall into a trap of building a new civilisation, but being relliant on some lost technology - the gradual buildup of a city eventualy reaches a complete self-sustainability. There is no conflict in the game, interactions with other settlements is generally friendly and cooperative. The economy is based on reasource gathering and processing and some services (knowledge, culture). A lot of resources is derived from various plants, whose ecology must be researched and properly managed, to a point reminiscent of simple terraforming/environmental engineering. The game has a generally relaxed tempo, sometimes feeling a bit slow. There are two campaigns, but the story is fairly bare-bones and unlocked slowly as objectives are met.

[list] [*]Bad balance - too many things become useless too quickly [*]Bad pacing - you are always blocked by shortage of something, while everything else is overflowing [*]Bad QoL - game doesn't even show building ranges correctly [*]Moving building is slow and doesn't preserve settings - replanning is a slog [*]Plenty of crashes [/list] That's the point where I should "thumbs down" it. But to be honest - I feel bad about doing so. Graphics, art style and overall atmosphere are pretty good and I feel captivated for some hard to explain reason. IDK. Get in on sale or something.

It's fun enough. I was really hoping for a modern SciFi take on Pharaoh and Cleopatra, but instead what I got was a SciFi take of Frostpunk. If you like Frostpunk, this game is the same idea.

Synergy is a city building, resource management game in a more fantastical post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi setting with a unique and beautiful art style and soundscape. The game attempts to bridge the gap of a city builder with a survival game, by making the worlds ecosphere react to the player. Resources are scarce and many items in the game have properties that play off one another, like plants and structures. This development of the nature progressing and changing takes time and does not seem apparent immediately, which makes one of its strong suits a bit of a hidden feature, as it will take probably 2 hours to become noticeable. It also has a lot of synergies between different aspects of the game that play on each other, where you manage the growth of aspects of your city like food and water production, keep enough construction materials around and develop some more abstracted aspects like city center levels. The game has a few issues, where the user interface feels a bit like a hindrance, for example resource limits being their own submenu, rather than being changeable like storage settings. There are also some bugs that I have encountered, like a UI element becoming stuck or the game not loading correctly. But those were rather low, about 5 oddities in 17 hours of playtime. I would recommend this game for people who like to build cities with a cool art style and are not afraid to keep learning as they go. You will be learning new aspects as you go, which will change your approach to how to stay alive and your city will have to evolve to represent that. It feels like there might be many ways to succeed in this game and an optimal path has not presented itself yet, which is a good thing to me, but maybe not for everyone.

If you're not a huge fan of city builders but love the art style, this is a wonderfully approachable appetizer to the genre with its more forgiving difficulty modes and excellent quest logs that point you in the right direction and don't overload you with too many things to manage.

I'm a big fan of this genre, and therefore I am always looking for a new game to hit the spot. This game did just that, very relaxing music and aesthetics. The plant species and expeditions make this game different enough that it is enjoyable for a veteran city/ colony builder player. 8/10 Hope they bring out some new maps or DLC because I would jump back into it every so often. That being said I got 70 hours out of this, so I take that as a win. Great game... now what next *sigh*

The balancing is not well designed, it could lead to frustrating gaming experience. The art is nice but the city builder aspect doesn't feel rewarding for the hours invested.

Game feels like it has good bones, but there are just too many things that make it feel off. You are super limited by the tech tree, and even throwing a full 3 people at each research building, earning research points feels soo slow. The game in general feels slow. The days take quite a while, and I run into worker management issues all the time. It is unclear to me at any given time how many people are doing what, and what the impact of adding or removing people from each station is. More game speed multipliers would help with the slow pace greatly. and either better worker management screens, or a better tutorial would likely help with the latter. Quests have such nebulous timelines. "due in several cycles" does not let me manage the quest very well. While I can sense a lot of promise, once you get through the learning curve, I am not enjoying getting through the learning curve.