I've been keeping an eye on it synergy Since we demoed the city builder during the PC Gaming Show in 2022. I'm a simple city builder anyway, but Synergy's Moebius-style art with its delicious pastel sci-fi charm really sealed the deal. So far I've only been able to admire screenshots, but Leikir Studio has now made a demo available for Steam Next Fest. It hasn't let me down.
While Synergy doesn't shy away from novelty, the fundamentals are very familiar, having evolved from the formula of classic impression games like Caesar and Pharaoh. When your settlers arrive in a new, extremely foreign land, they begin with only a fleeting supply and a firm determination to make a home for themselves in an inhospitable land. From there, houses need to be built, resources gathered, and jobs assigned until you've ticked all the basic boxes.
But pleasant quirks soon appear. For example, all water is toxic, so you get your first production chain by having your settlers collect the water, purify it, and then store it for consumption. Collecting more resources, especially from the unusual flora, also requires some additional steps that highlight the alien nature of the ecosystem.
Various plants produce fruits and other edible resources, but since your settlers have never seen this type of flora before, they must study them first. Sending field researchers to carry out a surface analysis will then show how the plants can be used safely. After all, you don't want the residents of your new settlement to go out and get stabbed by poisonous thorns.
Many of the plants I encountered actually had multiple uses depending on how they were interacted with – harvesting gave me fruit that I could use in the kitchen, while pruning gave me canes that I could turn into tools could transform. By constructing two fruit-picking buildings, I was able to send out teams to prune and pick, after which the plant slowly grew back. In an emergency, all of a plant's resources can be harvested without specific buildings, but at the cost of destroying the plant.
Some resources, such as logs, can only be harvested by cutting down trees, which has a downside: these trees provide shade from the harsh sun, which helps improve the well-being of your settlers. Maintaining the balance of the ecosystem is therefore a top priority when trying to balance the need for resources with the quality of the environment. So you don't want to get too greedy, but at the same time you definitely need to maintain a healthy surplus of resources to protect your settlement from the vagaries of the weather.
The changing seasons can bring new challenges, such as the dry season, which causes plants and trees to wilt or water to evaporate. With a good supply you can withstand these crises. Failure to do this can lead to illness, starvation and ultimately death. Good times.
Learn to survive
Research and exploration will help you build a settlement that can deal with these problems more effectively. The former allows you to unlock new buildings, tasks and buffs, while the latter allows you to send out expeditions that can return with new settlers, resources and even flora that can be planted in the area. Eventually, you'll be able to build wells, irrigation systems, experimental labs, and schools while filling the surrounding area with new vegetation.
Once you've set up an explorer's hut, you can access the world map and select a destination. In the tutorial, a narrative event tasks you with visiting a cave where a “chaotic blinking light” has been spotted, so these adventures can also have a story-based component. While this event only offered a linear path, the language used suggests that other events allow you to choose your approach.
When organizing an expedition, you can choose its size: the larger the group, the more resources are needed, but they can also take more with them and the expedition will go faster. It is a risk, however, as I discovered when my explorers arrived at the aforementioned cave and found themselves entranced by the flashing light. They never made it home again.
The demo ends with this failed expedition and I desperately want more. My settlement has only grown into a fairly large village, but it looks like we'll eventually be managing a metropolis full of different districts, each built around town squares that give the area special benefits and require certain requirements to be met. Even though it's about survival, this game isn't just about desperation and making a living. With new technology and the introduction of new crops, you can create gardens and fields and allow clean water to flow through your settlement, allowing your settlers to thrive, not just survive.
You can also get involved in beautification measures and add decorations to give your new home a bit more character – not that it won't look striking from the start. Each building is rich with character – even more so when you put workers in it to bring it to life, bringing previously dormant buildings to life while they earn a living. There isn't a single structure in the demo that doesn't look both strange and beautiful, but always with a cohesive art style that ensures nothing looks out of place.
You still have almost a week until Next Fest ends, and with plenty of demos left after the event, you may have even longer to try out Synergy – and you definitely should. There is no exact release date yet, but it is expected to be released in the first half of 2024.
For more City Builders worth paying attention to, check out Chris' list of the seven City Builders he's dying to play this year.
