Synergy

A brilliant game crushed by corporate greed ​Synergy is a true gold mine in the city-builder genre. The visuals inspired by Moebius comics and the pacifist mechanics based on balance, respect for nature and resource management in hot periods make this game an incredibly relaxing and profound experience. The passion of the development team is felt in every detail. ​Unfortunately, the story behind the game is a revolting one. In January 2026, the parent company (PulluP Entertainment) decided to permanently close the Leikir Studio development studio, after 14 years of activity. The reason? A dry business decision to "optimize the portfolio", after another project of the studio did not reach the unrealistic profit targets of the corporation. The developers were fired, and future plans were cut, leaving this gem without the support of its original creators. ​Buy this game to honor their hard work and talent — it's worth every penny and provides dozens of hours of peace. It's extremely sad that a corporation would choose to trample on such art just to curry favor with investors. Eternal respect to the team at Leikir Studio. And Goblinz publishing for keep it on steam. Thank you!

It's difficult to recommend something that has been ruthlessly abandoned via a corporate takeover, but there is still a great game at the core here and it's worth engaging with the original studio's work. Music, art, and the overall vibe of becoming environmental stewards in a strange land are great. There are no enemies per se - only surviving in a harsh land. Unfortunately, campaign mode feels like an uneven tutorial, where your hand is held too much, while at the same time, certain concepts are poorly explained. Scaling feels off, with long stretches going very slowly because of aggressive resource bottlenecks. There are difficulty modes to mitigate this, but still, the standard mode needs tuning. The game also seems to punish adept city builders who expand too quickly -- not so much for lack of resources, but for timed popup quests that have unobtainable victory conditions because you need a tech too deep in the tech tree, or an extremely limited resource that is dependent on expeditions. It's easy to accidentally soft lock yourself into failures. Still, the setting is compelling enough for an on-sale purchase. This is a very imperfect game with lots of great ideas. Hopefully someone will step up to one day become its spiritual successor.

This one breaks my heart cause its like playing a piece of Mobeus' art. but no real updates in a year now means I can't recommend it because it was never done. The science aspect really needed to be expanded it seemed like the most interesting thing this game had going for it. Other reviews say that you can get softlocked or that there is a game breaking bug with resources. I don't know if thats true but if it is all the more reason to give this a bad review. Really sucks man. I hope they come back.

the art is very nice, it's a bit dry but i'm okay with low key environmental grower, exploring plants and the resources you can get from them. i got it on a sale so im not mad about it, but you shouldnt be able to soft lock two hours into a tutorial. as others have said the ingame information is woefully lacking and confusing. the complexity of it means finding out how to do certain things just are not available. the dev tutorials are im sorry to say very unhelpful. low recommend on a deep discount if it interests you, but i think the frustrations and clear incomplete-ness of the game really sour the experience and explain a lot about it's lack of engagement. check out tera nil instead.

I really enjoy city builders, stuff like Anno, Factorio, Civilization, Stellaris, Timberborn, and more, and thought I'd really like Synergy too, but somehow the game just doesn't scratch the itch. 30 hours in and I've maybe played 4 games and none of them have felt satisfying. Something about the pacing, progression, everything just feels like a slog. Upgrades don't feel all that rewarding. I feel like I devote all my time to ensuring my people have enough water, and then needing to tediously reallocate them during the dry season when they can't work the pumps. The problem is absolutely everything takes water, so one wrong move - like letting some people make medicine or building materials during the dry spell - and you'll end up with too little water and your people will get sick or worse. Before a settlement ever gets satisfyingly large the game punishes you with size problems, wants you to split to a new settlement, and there aren't many good habitable areas anywhere on the map that don't come with their own problems - problems you can't really do much about. A good survival/builder game like this should have a progression arc that goes from "surviving" to "thriving" but with Synergy I can't help but feel like I'm spending the whole time "managing decline" and as my settlements grow they just feel worse off and no amount of careful planning or managed scaling seems to make that go away. I think part of what the game needs is a whole additional set of a meta upgrades available to buildings. Like a way where I can further make my buildings more efficient, like 10/15/20/25% more food, more water, etc. The game already does provide many ways to do this, like upgrade paths to allow you to use dirty water for manufacturing instead of clean water, or more efficient crops, or careful building placement, but it just doesn't have enough of them. Synergy was a good idea on paper but feels like the game loop never really got where they wanted it and disappointingly it doesn't seem like it's gotten much love since release a year ago.

Genuinely one of the most frustrating and unfun games I have ever played in my life. In something like Rimworld, I care about my colonists, and try to make them happy and safe. In this, I actively *hate* my colonists and colony. The more people you have, the worse things get and I don't think you can't stop the colony growth. Some things are covered in the tutorial but there's a lot of non-intuitive stuff you will struggle with until you figure out what the stupid design actually is, because the encyclopedia is just for plants and there isn't a wiki online to search. I think I've made it mostly to the end, I'm at the 'after the storm' segment, but who knows? There's no way to tell in the game and that info doesn't exist online and I'm too emotionally exhausted from playing this garbage. I really thought I could push through it and I feel really bad for giving up like this, but it's actually really affecting my mental health trying to beat this. Don't be fooled by the cool aesthetic, this game is either boring or frustrating and stressful 90% of the time.

The game itself is okay but the logistics(a critical part of most city builders!) are horribly broken. Villages will prioritize the southermost warehouse instead of closest and will spend all their time carrying random junk to that specific warehouse until it fills up, leaving actual important supply work never done. It's a great shame such a critical issue is left untouched in a supposedly released project.

i like graphic, i like concept, its hase deep systems but you have a resource game with no resource indicators, no overlays no summaries, book of knowledge without some knowledge, bad user interface but try it