▲ Recommended
46 hrs
Idle & Incremental Lovers recommends Synthularity:
The most awesome-looking upgrade tree I've ever seen, PCB-shaped. Nice neon aesthetic, fun runs with "choose 1 of 3" boss rewards, good mix of active and idle gameplay, great (customizable!) music. <3 + Navigating the printed circuit board, aka the upgrade tree, has never been so enjoyable. Great reveal animations when showing the way to the next nodes.
+ This is not a rythm game but music is really is a huge part of the whole experience, and the beat matching your attack speed make the runs feel punchy.
+ Talking about music, you can unlock a mixer module that allows you to control the volume for 6 different type of sounds and to attribute special effects to each one (echo, distortion, lowpass). Electronic music enjoyers are in for a treat!
+ The active part is great but idling is also part of the game, especially when you're hitting a wall. The unlockable autopilot module allows you to make a sandwich while the game plays itself. Customize the speed and radius of your cursor, and wait for all those precious currencies to be yours!
+ Along with PCB upgrades, in-runs roguelike-type choices keep the game interesting even during the first easy waves.
- Some of these choices are upgrades based on flat numbers. They become completely useless in the mid and late game and just clutter your choices, which is a bit sad.
*Why does neon glow? Because if it didn’t, we’d call it neoff.*
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▲ Recommended
2 hrs
You play as a black hole moving around the screen with your mouse, destroying shapes with a pulse. The pulse activates at regular intervals, and all you have to do is move the black hole over incoming shapes and follow them until they are destroyed, then collect the shards they release.
The first few shapes can be destroyed with a single pulse, but the longer you survive, the stronger they become. Your run is also limited by energy, which constantly decreases. Once it reaches zero, you implode and have to start another run.
This is an incremental game, which means you gradually become stronger by unlocking upgrades throughout an upgrade tree using the shards you collect. The mechanics are fairly familiar, as most upgrades are hidden until you purchase one of the available ones and reveal paths leading to new upgrades.
What makes the game particularly interesting is the upgrade tree itself. It has a very cool presentation that feels genuinely unique compared to similar games. Although you control a black hole, the whole concept revolves around sound and music, so the upgrade tree looks more like an audio generating machine or some kind of electronic device. The upgrade nodes and paths resemble pins, chips, conductors, and other electronic components, giving the entire system a distinctive appearance.
Some upgrades can be purchased once, while others can be upgraded multiple times. Each purchase, however, significantly increases the cost of the next one. The first upgrades increase things such as your damage, pulse firing rate, maximum energy, enemy spawn rate, and the number of rewards enemies drop. At first, the upgrade tree appears to have a limit or border around it, but this is purely visual. Once you purchase certain upgrades, new paths push through the boundary and reveal additional upgrade nodes beyond it.
The upgrade system also introduces new features. For example, there is a spawner that lets you increase the spawn rate, as well as a generator that uses crystals to add additional weapons to your pulse. The generator offers five different shapes, or weapons, each with its own firing pattern. The circle, for example, releases a shockwave, while the hexagon fires projectiles.
There are also five colors, each providing its own additional perk. White, for example, increases your base damage, while yellow triggers explosions. You have five weapon slots, allowing you to mix and match different shapes and colors. You can experiment with different combinations or even equip the same weapon in all five slots. However, it takes quite a while to unlock all the available options.
Crystals are obtained from bosses when you defeat them for the first time. Bosses appear after a certain amount of time and are defeated in the same way as normal shapes, but each pulse drains significantly more energy. If you cannot keep up with a boss and run out of energy, you can die very quickly. The next time you defeat the same boss, you receive a perk instead of a crystal, which adds a small roguelite element to the progression.
Every run follows the same general structure, with the goal being to survive long enough to defeat all the bosses. The bosses are essentially enormous versions of the five normal shapes. The first is a circle, followed by a triangle, and so on until you reach the star shaped boss. Each defeated boss unlocks a new shape, which then begins appearing randomly in all future runs.
The progression becomes particularly interesting after the first five bosses, which all appear in white. Once they have been defeated, the game starts a new loop with the same five shapes, but this time they appear in a stronger red color. After defeating another five red shapes and bosses, you unlock the blue loop. There are five colors in total, each containing five bosses and corresponding shapes.
Since previously unlocked shapes continue appearing, the screen eventually becomes filled with an impressive spectacle of different colored shapes. It can become surprisingly chaotic, especially during the later stages of a run.
The new colors are not simply there to increase the difficulty. They also introduce new types of shards. Like many incremental games, your progression through the upgrade tree eventually becomes blocked by a new resource. In this case, you need shards of different colors to access certain upgrades. New colors only become available after defeating all five bosses from the previous color, so there is no way to skip ahead.
This means you need to purchase most of the available upgrades and gradually build up your power before you are strong enough to survive the increasingly difficult bosses. The gameplay itself is not particularly complicated. You go on runs, collect shards, buy upgrades, become stronger, and then use that additional power to push further and defeat the next boss. Then you repeat the process until you eventually reach the end.
Unlocking everything and earning all the achievements requires a lot of time, and the overall progression is somewhat longer than in most incremental games. If you want to save some time and do something else, there’s an auto mode where the black hole moves around the screen on its own, and no boss mode where you can simply grind for shards.
