Synergy

About

Synergy is a single player strategy game. It was developed by Leikir Studio and was released on April 16, 2025. It received positive reviews from players.

Synergy is a single-player strategy game with compelling mechanics and fabulous graphics. As a governor, your goal is to build a city for your citizens in a strange yet mesmerizing environment. You'll need to analyze the natural elements, conduct research, and ensure the safety and prosperity of your city through sustainable approaches, all while adapting to the unforgiving environment.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

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82%

Audience ScoreBased on 393 reviews

graphics88 positive mentions

grinding16 negative mentions

The art style is stunning and beautifully designed, reminiscent of Moebius's work.
The game offers a unique blend of city-building and ecological management, encouraging players to interact thoughtfully with the environment.
The gameplay is relaxing and engaging, with a focus on exploration and resource management that keeps players invested.

The game suffers from performance issues and crashes, especially in late-game scenarios with larger populations.
The tutorial and early game mechanics can be confusing, leaving players unsure about how to progress effectively.
Some gameplay mechanics feel tedious, such as the need for multiple buildings to manage resources efficiently, which can lead to micromanagement fatigue.

graphics
159 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
55%
43%
2%
The graphics of the game are widely praised for their beautiful and unique art style, heavily inspired by Moebius, which creates a captivating and immersive atmosphere. Players appreciate the vibrant color palettes and thoughtful design of the environments, although some note that the animations could use improvement. Overall, the visuals contribute significantly to the game's appeal, making it a standout in the city-building genre.
- “Synergy is a beautiful game, both in art style and in its way of representing the pursuit of ecological sustainability while overcoming the arid desert climate.”
- “The art style is absolutely stunning, the general mood is peaceful, the themes are pretty unique and relevant to today's world - without feeling heavy-handed - and the gameplay sends me delightful classical management/builder games vibes.”
- “The visuals are just striking, simple but unique.”
- “The graphics and style are successful in generating an oppressive yet hopeful atmosphere, but the gameplay itself divorces from that and is mostly just a let down.”
- “Update 2025-05-15: many months later, even after the 1.0 release, the game still has major lag/performance issues at all graphic settings level.”
- “Ultimately, I think the game leans too heavily on its art style and storytelling, but these things alone do not make a great city builder.”
gameplay
125 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25%
70%
5%
The gameplay of the game is characterized by a mix of intriguing mechanics and significant flaws, leading to a generally clunky and unclear experience. While the art style and atmosphere are praised, many players find the mechanics repetitive, poorly explained, and lacking polish, resulting in a frustrating balance between engaging elements and tedious gameplay. Additionally, technical issues such as crashes and lag further detract from the overall enjoyment, leaving players with mixed feelings about the game's potential.
- “The gameplay can swing between extremes: sometimes punishing, sometimes relaxing, and often a serious time sink.”
- “It is familiar yet foreign, and a lot of mechanics are simplified or automated so you can focus on the most interesting parts: studying the surrounding environment, understanding how to survive and expand.”
- “Overall, this is a beautiful relaxing world-building game with beautiful graphics and amazing mechanics.”
- “The gameplay can be very unclear and clunky.”
- “Overall it has a decent gameplay loop, but with this random hitching and the crashes it's really made me lose my flow and enjoyment.”
- “It's tedious, with poorly explained mechanics, a tutorial that manages to be both long and insufficiently informative at the same time.”
story
79 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
24%
72%
4%
The game's story is often described as underdeveloped and vague, lacking the depth needed to elevate the gameplay experience, with many quests feeling like chores rather than engaging challenges. While the art and environmental storytelling are praised, the narrative struggles to maintain player interest, leading to a sense of frustration with quest mechanics and a lack of meaningful progression. Overall, the potential for a compelling story exists, but it remains overshadowed by gameplay issues and a need for more engaging content.
- “The art, story, and subtle game design polish all line up into a memorable experience of turning a wasteland into a paradise.”
- “The story element is also strong, with a decent narrative and plenty of goals to reach, one after another, to progress through the campaign.”
- “Great environmental storytelling and a clear love of the source material.”
- “More a trudge of maintenance; the 'storyline' felt like a checklist and the occasional quests felt like punishments, and that made both feel like chores rather than accomplishments.”
- “There are two campaigns, but the story is fairly bare-bones and unlocked slowly as objectives are met.”
- “It lacks the engaging dynamic and storyline from Frostpunk or Ixion.”
music
34 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
47%
44%
9%
The music in the game is widely praised for its mellow, atmospheric qualities, contributing to a relaxing and immersive experience. Many players appreciate how the soundtrack complements the stunning visuals, creating a soothing ambiance that enhances gameplay. However, some reviews note that the music could benefit from more variety and depth, as it occasionally feels limited or backgrounded.
- “The art is stunning, the music is mellow and atmospheric, and the writing feels deliberate and well-paced.”
- “The moebius styled art direction and the music score hits that sweet spot of being memorable at parts and then blending back into the background as you get lost playing, researching, exploring.”
- “A lovely city builder with absolutely fantastic art and music.”
- “The graphic style is nice, but the audio/music are a bit poor, resulting in a pretty dull and flat experience.”
- “As of the time of writing, the OST is a bit limited but sets the mood well.”
- “Surprisingly the music, but honestly, it was just kind of there.”
optimization
26 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
12%
76%
12%
The game's optimization has received mixed feedback, with many players reporting significant performance issues as city size increases, particularly in the mid to late game. While some users noted that the game runs well initially, they experienced lag and frame rate drops when managing larger populations, suggesting that optimization needs improvement. Overall, despite its potential, the game's performance problems detract from the experience, especially for those aiming for complex city designs.
- “And while lower tier buildings will only require the building cost, T3 and further also have a significant upkeep - so you either place them in the most efficient, optimized and soulless way - or your city will be unable to keep those buildings working.”
- “The mid to late game can start to wear down on performance, but with so many systems in play, I can easily forgive that.”
- “Pretty enjoyable spin on a city builder, and while there are some late game performance issues, it's in a better state than most Paradox games I've been happy to play on release.”
- “The only issues I had were that it needs some optimization, as once you get a ways into the game, the frame rate drops through the floor, which is unfortunate.”
- “There was almost something special here, but as it stands right now, the gameplay is flawed and performance at later stages of a playthrough decreases horribly.”
- “The game can also get really slow after you build up your town; I'm not sure if it's memory leaks or just poorly optimized.”
grinding
16 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Reviews highlight that the grinding aspect of the game can feel tedious and overly complex, particularly due to poorly explained mechanics and a lack of engaging challenges. Players often find themselves stuck in repetitive tasks, such as resource management and harvesting, which detracts from the overall enjoyment. While the game offers promising concepts, the execution leads to a frustrating experience that can feel more like a chore than fun.
- “The first one is completely meta-dependent: there is no randomization, so once you encounter the plants and memorize their effects - exploring your local map turns into a tedious process that you have to endure.”
- “It's tedious, with poorly explained mechanics, a tutorial that manages to be both long and insufficiently informative at the same time.”
- “I paid for the $40 dev support option, and hoped to at least get a solid 40 hour week out of playing this, but basically, it's too easy, and the game loop is tedious.”
atmosphere
15 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
67%
13%
20%
The game's atmosphere is characterized by stunning visuals, a mellow soundtrack, and a unique art style that captivates players, creating a blend of oppressive yet hopeful feelings. However, there is a noted dissonance between the relaxing ambiance and the gameplay mechanics, which can feel rushed and frustrating. Overall, while the graphics and music contribute positively to the atmosphere, some players feel that the immersive experience could be further enhanced.
- “The art is stunning, the music is mellow and atmospheric, and the writing feels deliberate and well-paced.”
- “The game has a beautiful comic book stylization that really complements its atmosphere.”
- “A very slow-burning colony survival game with great hand-drawn art and an atmospheric soundtrack.”
- “As others said, there is a certain dissonance between the relaxing atmosphere and game situations where you made a mistake and can hardly do anything to fix it.”
- “The graphics and style are successful in generating an oppressive yet hopeful atmosphere, but the gameplay itself divorces from that and is mostly just a let down.”
- “The atmosphere says 'take your time,' but the systems say 'hurry up or die.'”
stability
13 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
23%
92%
The game is plagued by numerous bugs and stability issues, including frequent crashes and freezes, particularly during menu interactions. While some players find the art style appealing, the overall technical performance is concerning, especially given its early access status. Despite these issues, some users remain optimistic that future updates may improve stability.
- “The game runs smoothly most of the time, and I rarely encounter any major bugs that disrupt my experience.”
- “Despite being in early access, the developers have done a great job maintaining stability, making it enjoyable to play.”
- “I appreciate how the game remains stable even during intense moments, allowing for a seamless gaming experience.”
- “Game could be a nice little game but instead is a buggy mess.”
- “The technical stability is also a bit concerning; in 20 hours of gameplay, I've experienced two crashes and fairly frequent freezes (when selecting a new recipe or closing a menu after selecting a value).”
- “The game lags a lot and I do have 16GB RAM; if I hover over the question mark in the top left of a building menu, the game freezes most of the time.”
replayability
9 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
44%
23%
33%
Overall, the game's replayability is a mixed bag; while some players find it lacking and suggest improvements like custom difficulty levels, others appreciate the variety in production chains and the potential for future content updates. Currently, it offers enough challenges and discoveries to keep players engaged, but many hope for enhancements to increase its long-term replay value.
- “There's enough to discover, challenges to complete, and strategy to make the game super fun and replayable.”
- “This makes the game almost infinitely replayable and satisfying on multiple levels.”
- “So far there is a decent amount of content, so I am really looking forward to seeing how it develops and hopefully we'll get a lot of variety and replayability in the future when there are more tech, buildings, and plants available.”
- “The biggest minus is that there is practically no replayability.”
- “There are a few things that clearly could add more replayability and should be easy enough to tweak - I'd love to try making custom difficulty levels, for instance.”
- “But other than that, there is little replayability.”
emotional
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the game evokes a sense of peace and wholesomeness, enhanced by its art style and the rewarding experience of exploration and learning. However, some feel that the emotional connections to characters and stories are underdeveloped, lacking the depth needed for a more significant impact. Overall, while the game fosters a calming atmosphere, it falls short in creating strong emotional ties with its narrative elements.
- “It made me feel peaceful.”
- “There are many things to do and see, but the wholesome feeling is always there for me.”
- “Interestingly, synergy is the first game in my experience that made me feel good for taking my time and learning about something before harvesting and using it.”