‘Synergy Land’ RPG on Polygon Gives Off ‘Animal Crossing’ Vibes

Synergy Land is an upcoming motion role-playing recreation (ARPG) that gives customers a sturdy economic system with NFTs, plus advanced crafting mechanics. In our hands-on playtest of the sport’s restricted alpha launch, we acquired a sneak peek at Synergy Land’s enjoyable, extra idle points.

Designed for Home windows PCs with a deliberate launch on the Elixir Video games launcher, Synergy Land is off to a promising begin. 

Followers of video games like Animal Crossing, Farmville, and MapleStory will benefit from the island improvement course of, however could discover the customization choices restricted in its present state.

A lot of Synergy Land’s early gameplay on this model is concentrated round choosing from just a few empty plots the areas for a blacksmith, sawmill, stonemason, and plots for farmland on which meals and bushes may be grown. Livestock will also be nurtured and eggs hatched.

Difficult crafting

Synergy Land’s present crafting system entails a good quantity of working across the small island to accumulate supplies, which then have to be “processed” into different supplies—and might then be used to “craft” gadgets or different supplies. The crafting course of in its present state will make a number of busywork for gamers.

Crafting in Synergy Land is just not instantaneous, like in Animal Crossing: New Horizons or many RPGs. As a substitute, the employees take their candy time to craft gadgets and supplies, and gamers could discover themselves ready round for wherever from one to 4 minutes or extra with out a lot else to do.

The sport additionally limits the variety of gadgets that may be crafted at a time, which additional slows down the method. It’s attainable that the crafting course of has been designed to take a considerable period of time to encourage customers to go to the sport’s market (which isn’t but stay) for extra instantaneous purchases.

As a result of Synergy Land plans to supply totally different biomes, sure supplies and craftable gadgets will solely be out there from sure areas, which the sport’s white paper states will incentivize gamers to purchase gadgets from these in several biomes through its market.

That mentioned, it’s definitely attainable that these present crafting mechanics could possibly be modified in future recreation iterations.

Actual-time challenges

Synergy Land has been designed to be a real-time, “totally on-line expertise,” the event staff instructed Decrypt in a message. 

What does this entail? In our playtest, crops spoiled after a day or two of being offline, and incubated eggs shortly suffered in our absence. This dependency on every day logins is paying homage to the Tamagotchi craze, or every other form of “actual time” recreation that pressures customers into logging in every day to finish varied duties and chores. 

Whereas this can be interesting to some players, others could discover it irritating to really feel like their in-game forex is being wasted on spoiling crops and struggling livestock in the event that they select to go AFK for the weekend.

That mentioned, the Synergy Land improvement staff instructed Decrypt that it plans to supply some flexibility for gamers in future iterations by implementing trip durations the place gameplay may be frozen in time for a preset interval.

An interesting affair

Whereas Synergy Land’s present alpha model could also be a sliver of its closing kind, the sport already gives interesting graphics, reasonable shadows, and spectacular sound design. Synergy Land additionally has a transparent grasp of RPG questing loops and narratives. Contemplating that Synergy Land’s present alpha consists primarily of dwelling island crafting quests, it might depart RPG gamers feeling a bit underwhelmed.

Happily, these looking forward to the discharge of dungeons and extra adventurous gameplay in Synergy Land received’t have to attend too lengthy, as these parts are deliberate for launch in This fall of this yr. The sport’s white paper additionally lists player-vs-player (PVP) arenas, PVP pet battles, and RPG-style boss fights as deliberate options.

Synergy Land has already launched two NFT collections. One is its Synergians profile image (PFP) assortment. The opposite is its Synergian Badges assortment, which grants holders entry to recreation characters of various rarities, in addition to different advantages.

In line with the sport’s white paper, Synergy Land has plans to launch characters, bosses, pets, and employee stations as NFTs sooner or later, however is not going to be promoting gear or sources to gamers. Synergy Land initially launched NFTs on Solana, however started migrating them to Ethereum scaling community Polygon earlier this yr.

Whereas its alpha model lacks the core RPG recreation loops and deliberate PVP modes, Synergy Land already feels immersive, well-designed, and comfy, with potential for an expansive recreation economic system that encourages gamers to purchase and promote gadgets in its fantasy world.