Yuri! Visual novel! Cyberpunk! That’s right, there’s yet another new visual novel on the block. Well, not new exactly as Synergia from Top Hat Studios and Radi Art actually released on Steam last summer. But it’s definitely new for the Switch from publisher Eastasiasoft and this visual novel might not be what you’d expect! When you think of yuri visual novels, you think of some touching, often questionable girl-on-girl erotica. And while that yuri might be the core design of Synergia, it’s wrapped in an incredibly complex narrative that goes in directions you’re likely not expecting. This is a game that’s entirely story-based with limited interactivity and limited story paths but that doesn’t matter. Everything is about the narrative here and the narrative is damned good.
You are following the story of Cila, a cyborg woman who works for a quasi-police organization in the Empire, hunting rogue androids. Synergia has so much Blade Runner energy that they might as well have called them synths and talked about how the androids dream of electric sheep, but honestly, that’s entirely fine. In fact, the game makes no qualms about its inspirations, repeatedly directly quoting Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and even Akira in the introductions to various sections of story.
Cila has a sordid history with androids, severe personal issues, and some unique and colourful friends. Eventually she makes the acquaintance of Mara, a new type of android and they slowly start to come around to each other. It all sounds very contrived and predictable but by the time you hit the end game, everything gets spun on its head so quickly that it’ll rock your socks. There are plots within plots, no one is who they seem, and everyone is more interesting than they appear in Synergia. Well, except Kyle. Screw Kyle. Anyway, the interesting bit about Synergia being sold as a yuri game is that it really isn’t. This is a story where romance takes a backseat to political intrigue, violence, and worldbuilding on a much larger scale than you might expect. Toss in a fair chunk of dystopian science-fiction, a smattering of literary cyberpunk, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a story!
Now, there’s no sense in ruining the plot of a game that depends entirely on its story so we definitely can’t do that here, but be assured that the game’s short run time of 6-8 hours depending on your reading speed is well worth the cheap $15 admission price. Just so you’re aware, there’s a second loop to the game as well, after which an epilogue ties up the loose ends. By now, you’ve gathered that Synergia is incredibly well-written, nuanced, and fascinating. Now let’s take a peek at the visuals!
As soon as you start playing Synergia on the Switch, you’ll notice a few things. The game uses a fairly limited color palette and focuses on purples, pinks and reds very heavily. While highly stylized, these artistic choices may not resonate with everyone. Images are mostly static, but you’ll see the occasional eyebrow raise or flicker of light to add a bit of motion interest. It would be nice to have slightly more movement, but it really draws the eye when characters do move as a result of the minimalist choices. Some of the characters do have a weird look though, like rough pencil drawings out of a sketchbook (not bad ones mind you, but rough) which makes some characters, especially the lesser supporting cast, feel unfinished. Fortunately, character designs and imagery (when it’s used) are great, mostly making up for this. In the V.1.2 update, some significant changes were made to the way dialogue boxes present, making it easier to tell who’s talking and when there are alerts on-screen. This was pretty rough in the review copy of the release but was fixed almost immediately after launch with the update. The HUD was redesigned slightly and the color selection was shifted toward readability, vastly improving the dialogue. Text is still a bit small, especially on the undocked Switch, but it’s definitely easier to read, and the game as a whole flows more cleanly with crisp HD imagery for backgrounds and character art, even with the Switch docked.
For some reason though, the only way to advance the story on a controller is by pressing the Y button. This cannot be reconfigured, even after the update, and that’s a shame as Synergia would really benefit from button mapping and some slightly better menu design. The only way to save, by moving to the unlabelled floppy disk icon and loading is from the book icon. It’s not particularly intuitive either. No hotkey menus, nothing. Most of the buttons on the controller are useless, except A, which is required for in-game computer menu navigation for no apparent reason, and combining L & R to blaze through text at high speed (useful for a second run-through to get to that epilogue). The Y button is extremely sensitive too, making it easy to skip past dialogue. Normally in a visual novel, that wouldn’t be an issue due to dialogue histories, but to check the dialogue history in Synergia, you have to hit the X button and go to a History sub-menu, which is mildly irritating. It would have made a lot more sense to map this function to a face button. In the review copy of the game, the history was also cut off, as you can see below, but this has been patched in the release update. The text is still incredibly small and red with a fairly difficult-to-read font but it’s all there, which is still a huge improvement.
There’s only one other navigation issue here and that’s choice selection. When using a controller to play Synergia, it’s difficult to tell which option you’ve selected when you have a choice. This is due to the selected option being the one that’s presented visually as greyed out, not the one that’s in dark black, allowing players to easily select the exact opposite of what they meant to. Fortunately, if you play the game in undocked mode on the Switch, almost all navigation issues are eliminated due to touchscreen compatibility. Synergia is entirely touchscreen enabled on the Switch, making for incredibly streamlined and easy to navigate play. On top of that the imagery does looks a hair nicer on the small screen, almost as if the game was designed for portable play and docked play on a large screen was more of an afterthought. Overall, the game is significantly improved by going portable.
The music is solid in Synergia too, a definite bonus. The quiet electronic music that permeates the game provides the perfect accompaniment to this dark and gritty love story. While there could have been a few more tracks, what music there is manages to be interesting and outstanding, both fading into the background and taking the forefront as the need arises. Since there is no spoken dialogue and there are almost no sound effects, a good soundtrack really makes a difference and Synergia really nails the ambience here.
Synergia is a short game, even with multiple loops, you’ll be done with this one in a day or two if you play regularly. With the improvements from the release update the game looks and handles noticeably better and this is one absolutely gripping story that will easily suck you in. The story of Cila and Mara is incredibly realistic. Cila thinks, acts and talks like a real person would in her situation. Mara is cute and interesting, but there’s more to her than you’d expect, and the dynamic between all the characters is unabashedly human, ironically. Characters and dialogue are everything here and Synergia simply smashes it out of the park, especially towards the end where everything that you’ve seen manages to tie itself together. If this was a Mages game (Steins; Gate, Muv-Luv, Robotics; Notes, etc) it would be an instant sellout, but even with the rough edges, this is a must-play visual novel, even if you’re not a yuri fan at all. If you want a powerful sci-fi story that will stick with you for days after you finish it, do yourself a favour and check out Synergia. Well, unless you really, really don’t like shades of red and purple at least.
NOTE ABOUT THE IMAGES IN THIS REVIEW: Please note that the images used in this review were taken from V.1.1 of Synergia. Visuals and control issues were cleaned up significantly in the V.1.2 update and this review has been altered to reflect those changes. Unfortunately, the screen captures were all from V.1.1. The game looks much better after the update, with improved color usage in many scenes and cleaner HD images, as well as repairs to the history function. There IS still a lot of red and purple though.
This review was based on a digital copy of Synergia provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played significantly better in undocked mode. Synergia is also available for PS4, Playstation Vita, and PC on Steam.