Synergy Land

Overview

Synergy Land is an action role playing game akin to that of Diablo or Path Of Exile in early stages of its development. Synergy Land has a pleasing aesthetic to the visuals, taking more of a cartoon appearance opposed to the games previously mentioned. The game is set in a world that is divided into four ecosystems, which are based on the elements of earth, water, fire, and cold. This is apparent instantly from the unique look of the characters depending on their elemental background and special abilities.

Gameplay

The current state of Synergy Land, pre-alpha for clarity, has a great bite size experience of what we can expect from the Synergy Games development team in the future. It was pleasing to find that even in this small appetizer you are required to do more than just hit attack and move forwards to complete the demo dungeon. The enemies require you to employ all of your available skills and movement to outfox their different mechanics and diverse combination of offensive maneuvers.

Currently sitting at four different enemy types, this gives hope to what the team can achieve in the future if they can keep this sort of need to out smart the monsters skill mechanics as well as the variety of enemy types throughout your adventure.

Whilst having this level of skill and thought required to complete the dungeons, it appears to be a great fit for a mobile variation as well. This can be down to the simple yet distinct art style, which does not lose out on atmosphere due to this simplistic and clear approach, allowing combat to not becoming a confusing ball of bodies once you have cleared a hectic dungeon. The development team already confirmed this is the plan upon full release, with the demo currently only playable on PC.

Not currently available for testing in the Synergy Land demo are the private islands, which I believe will create the much needed sense of progression found in other dungeon crawlers, both from the traditional gaming space and within web3. Whilst having the traditional tasks such as crafting, creating and maintaining armor and weapons, there are plans to allow players to dip their toes into the more relaxing side of farming and land maintenance, giving players a much needed break from all the constant hack-and-slash action-packed gameplay.

Review

Future implementations of the randomized dungeons and new bosses will lead to giving players the sense that there is more than just a repetitive grind ahead of them. With the bosses I hope they plan to introduce mechanics like World of Warcraft, again to save from the often stale feeling of just requiring your health not to go to zero whilst wailing on all of your skill cooldowns to reset so you can hit the corresponding keyboard key as soon as possible.

Whilst randomization will help with this, there is still potential for a main driving storyline, otherwise there is likely the chance again to sadly slip back into the feeling of a grind if the overarching narrative of a greater purpose is lost for the sake of the randomization. On top of that, the game's characters, world, and artistic style from this tiny demonstration showcases tremendous potential for incredible lore and a captivating PvE experience that would be a wasted opportunity if not expanded upon. This demo has given a great taste of what is possible to come, and I shall certainly be keeping my eye on the project to see if it can meet expectations.