Synergy Is City-Building Chess for the Cozy Gamer [Review]

I spent the last week racking up hours in Synergy, an ecosystem city builder from developer Leikir Studio and publishers Goblinz and H2 Interactive. The title recently launched its 1.0 release following a year in Early Access. Set in a barren post-apocalyptic landscape, the stylized Synergy is a polished gem that plays just as smoothly.

I divvied up my play time between the game’s tutorial and two story modes — Firestorms and The Anchoring — and its two difficulty settings to get a feel for just how varied the gameplay experience might be for players with different objectives. You can also go with Sandbox mode for freeform play. A new player myself, I spent a good chunk of time with Synergy’s recommended tutorial mode to learn the ropes.

The tutorial works like Synergy’s story modes; establish your settlement and prioritize builds and other tasks to ensure growth. Those accustomed to city builders — especially titles on the tougher side, like Frostpunk — can go ahead and skip this mode, as the function and order of your builds and research priorities are fairly intuitive across the genre. But if you’re a beginner, you’ll want to get the basics down before braving the barrens on your own.

From the get-go, tutorials are timed well. They’re well-written, easy to follow, and, most importantly, their purpose isn’t solely utilitarian; each block of text contains interesting tidbits about the game’s setting while leaving just enough to the imagination.

As helpful as it is to get the hang of desert living here, it also doesn’t give everything away. When you start a new story mode, you’ll still need to think on your feet and assess your surroundings to the best of your ability to make the most out of the resources at your disposal and keep your citizens healthy and happy. You may start off with no Sunshade trees in sight, or you’ll have to make do prepping meals with Cabbage Shrubs versus the Diluvian bush’s Sour Pods, as I did when I started The Anchoring. Details like this inform your best strategy to survive, expand your districts, and explore neighboring regions.

Strategy Is Everything

Depending on the difficulty you choose — Harmony or Balance — the world of Synergy is either forgiving or entirely neutral. If you’ve spent enough time with city builders, you know neutrality can often feel pointed, like the odds are stacked against you. Synergy is no exception. Shifting temperatures, resource availability, and additional scenarios must be taken into account on top of population growth and daily expansion efforts. Though it isn’t the hardest game on the market, the heat and sand can be brutal, and a lack of resources is enough to spell the end of your people, even when playing the easier of the two settings.

Starting out, I didn’t spend much time planning my next move from one build to the next. I quickly ran out of housing and usable space in areas suitable for citizens to stay cool. Long story short, I had to rework a good portion of my infrastructure to keep well-being up. And that was in the game’s tutorial mode.

Fast-forward to the start of my build in the Anchoring story mode, I had the foresight to prevent this hiccup from reoccurring. But that didn’t stop me from running into new problems. My starting map, fixed with a wash of green perfect for laying down a square and temporary housing, also featured a water source much farther off from the snug hub I’d confidently built. I set up a pontoon and placed a water tower within range of housing, and called it a day. Well, that didn’t work as planned, either.

Synergy is a lot of that in the best way. It makes use of many of the genre basics you’d expect to see, but doesn’t skimp on challenge or unpredictability. It plays fast and keeps you on your toes all the while. If you’re looking for a side of strategy with your next cozy gaming session, you’ll find it in Synergy’s fascinating desert, a world beyond our own.

Synergy is available now on Steam.