I love a good city builder. There’s a special corner of my brain that loves to spend a chill evening watching my little citizens go about their day, build houses and survive in the big wild world. Historically, these have been games like Frostpunk, Cities: Skylines or Rimworld. I’m happy to say that list now includes Synergy as well.
It’s very rare that a game comes along that adds something fresh and new to a genre as long-lived as city builders, but Synergy really changes up the formula. From the artwork and mechanics, thematics and how you interact with the world — Synergy is fresh, and it’s an easy recommendation for anyone wanting something new in the genre.
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For Science!
The world of Synergy is a futuristic survival, where citizens must eke out an existence on a blasted, deserted planet — think Tatooine or Arakis. You’ll have to stockpile water to keep everyone alive over long, hot summers and deal with invasive alien plant species.
The big thematic twist that Synergy brings to the table is a scientific approach to almost everything tried and tested in the survival genre. The core loops of food, water and shelter are all twisted in a way that feels like Matt Damon surviving on Mars in The Martian. You’ll place harvester buildings to set your people to harvesting plants, but taking the time to study the plants will yield more information.
The scientific approach to survival is wonderful — it constantly feels like you are studying the land and learning more about it, which gives you new options. The basic berry bush, for example, lets you harvest its fruit. Still, by studying it further, you can turn its fruit into healing salves and determine which plants it can cohabitate with, potentially increasing the yield.
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Another example is the Whipping Gourd, a bulbous fruit that can be harvested for water in a pinch, but can injure your settlers in the process. By studying it, you find out that it doesn’t attack if it’s in moist soil, meaning you can tweak the environment to make it easier for your settlers to harvest. This back and forth with the natural world really makes it feel like you’re a group of scientists learning to survive an alien planet.
Once you start to realise the effects that some environmental things have on each other, it helps you to better understand the world and adapt.
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One time, I noticed all my berry bushes dying, and when I zoomed in, I saw creeping roots growing into them. Cutting back the roots immediately brought the berries back, and it made me wonder what other neat little interactions there are.
This sense of discovery stayed with me most of the way through the campaign, which slowly introduces you to the game’s core systems and gives you ever-increasing challenges to test your burgeoning society.
Through A New Lens
The art style of Synergy is spectacular, it somehow manages to feel both vibrant and desolate. On the one hand, you have tracts of barren desert landscape baking under a hot alien sun. On the other hand, you have rolling swells of pastel green water, creeping alien vines and bright blowing tapestries.
The French artist Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) popularised this colourful, dense modern sci-fi style through lines to Star Wars, Bladerunner and Dune. Most recently, the 2024 series Scavenger’s Reign was the last sci-fi story that I thought was so incredibly original in its world, creature and set design. It’s in this bucket that I want to place Synergy. Its vibrant, dense, alien and alluring in a way that makes other sci-fi look like it’s playing safe.
Check out this Moebius art and tell me you can’t see all our favourite sci-fi worlds (and Synergy) within it:
In the wider world of fantasy games, we get so used to seeing elves, dwarves and goblins that when something unique like Elden Ring pops up, it feels alien and strange, in an incredibly exciting way.
Synergy feels the same — there are expected templates in city-builder games that Synergy throws entirely out the window. While you’ll manage your population and grow your little enclave of scientists and survivalists, in nearly every instance, there’s something Synergy does differently. As you study and learn about the plants in your region, you’ll find out more about how they tie together and how you can use these dependencies to make life better for your people.
The game is chock-full of little animations that make the act of managing your settlers so spectacular. That vibe of dense, detailed, colourful sci-fi popularised by Moebius is on full display here. Each little house you build includes decorations and hanging tapestries, and you’ll watch your scientists study plants in the wild, stir water pots as they’re filtering and carry materials from one site to another.
Synergy is a feast for the eyes, and that alienness of the setting, with all its ingenuity, means you’ll be constantly surprised by the quality of this world.
Survival of the Fittest
Surviving on a barren, dry planet is always going to be a challenge. And while you’ll find a steady equilibrium with the environment, you’ll constantly encounter ways that the environment pushes back.
To start with, your first citizens’ tents will need to be placed in the shade of trees to keep the temperature down. When you’ve progressed, you’ll be able to place shade cloths and water fountains to help your people stay cool. You’ll also place pontoons where your people can filter clean water and eventually draw up the green brackish water, which is quicker but needs to be treated.
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The first time I encountered a dry season was an absolute shock. The systems I had set up to keep my society happy absolutely fell apart as I watched all the water dry up. This immediately crashed my ability to keep everyone hydrated and hamstrung my medicine and food production. I learnt a hard lesson about life on an alien planet.
One drawback is that during the campaign, it feels like some of these objectives are forced on you to teach you these lessons, though. Not an hour or so after learning the water problem, I faced an identical challenge with my food production. I love learning a hard lesson in a game, but these felt artificially created.
As you expand your town, you’ll unlock new ways to interact with the game. You’ll send scouting parties and research expeditions out across the desert to uncover secrets and small stories. Most of the time, these are simple choices with some accompanying text. Still, they contribute to the thematic nature of a society trying to survive in a harsh alien world, particularly when you need to speak with other groups and make deals.
You’ll also unlock districts, which act as a way to build and develop parts of your town to specialise. Each district fills its own section of the tech tree, and lets you build specific areas for science, culture and other specialties. Each district has a set of buildings that are tied to it, and building these helps you focus your citizens and level up the district.
Should I Buy Synergy?
Synergy does exactly what I was hoping it would do – it shakes up the genre. For someone who loves city-builders and survival games, it gave me plenty of new mechanics to chew on. It’s also one of the most visually unique city-builders I’ve ever played, drawing on elements of classic sci-fi and artwork to create a colourful, dense world.
Quest Daily Scores Synergy:
8/10
Synergy is available on PC via Steam for $36.50 AUD.
A review copy of Synergy was provided to Quest Daily for the purpose of this review.
