Synergy has had an impressive rework for its official launch. While this does mean you have to say goodbye to your early access saves, I’ve been playing the final build and can assure you it’s a worthy trade for loads of new features like new plants, seasons, and storylines.
I remember when Synergy was but a little city builder. When I played the Steam Next Fest demo early last year, everything was very small-scale: I was constrained to building on a little patch of land, interacting with limited resources, and playing through a truncated storyline. Even still, I adored it.
Its solarpunk influences are Synergy’s biggest draw. I love all the creative ways I can grow my city side-by-side with nature, and that it gives what I’m building a real purpose. I’m looking after a small group of refugees who have had to flee their homes due to a climate disaster and need to provide for them while also looking after their new settlement located in the middle of an unforgiving desert.
It used to be that all you had to really worry about was dehydration during the dry season, which would come around every few seasons. While this may result in a couple of sick villagers, it wasn’t too hard to prep for with the help of a reliable spring and a ton of water storage towers. But in the full release of Synergy, you have to deal with a fluctuating temperature, which will only worsen as time goes on.
There’ll be harsher dry seasons, which will test the resilience of your city, and the extreme heat will now impact productivity. Output in exposed buildings will slow down, and its only remedy will be new tools that you have to plan and create before you encounter the problem. If you start work when things get bad, then it’ll likely be too late for your city.
I’ve had to do even more preplanning than I’m used to. I have always liked getting a healthy jumpstart on food and water, as these variables depended on the shifting weather, but now I have to add tools and collect the right materials as I’m establishing my city.
Alongside rising temperatures, your city will also now face threats like contagious diseases. There are events which, if you fail, will bring about the collapse of your city, so it’s a good idea to have a working hospital up and running as soon as possible alongside a functioning scientific district.
One sick person may not seem like a huge issue at first, but boy, can things snowball quickly. Once I didn’t get on top of an outbreak straight away, and one ill person turned into two, then four, and then before I knew it, there was a queue for the hospital that went around the block.
There are tons of other new features, and I am nowhere near done exploring them all yet.
Thankfully, not everything’s harder in the new Synergy. There are some helpful updates to the underlying building systems, like a unified water supply. Before every water station was solitary, so you’d have to move the water stock around according to consumption in various parts of your city. It was a bit too micromanagey. But now all your water towers are linked and will automatically redistribute water for you.
This is a great addition, especially considering I used to use a ridiculous number of villagers to just keep on top of water distribution during dry seasons or crises, which was a massive drain on resources and productivity.
There’s also improved resource monitoring, which is perfect for my control freak approach to managing a growing city. Now you can see a breakdown of single and ongoing actions with a chart showing production and consumption trends, and production limits, so you don’t have to watch every factory like a hawk.
There are tons of other new features, and I am nowhere near done exploring them all yet. So far Synergy’s full release has been everything I’d hoped it would be, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for me as my city grows. That is, if I manage to make it that far.
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