#synnergist

[supergreatfrien]

Trying out Synnergist for an hour

Journalism, in the far off future year of 2010!

[retrocgads]

USA 1996

[adventurerooms]

[slantac]

Ghettos are a lonely void

[feedergoldfish]

It's a world where the 90s were just kind of frozen in amber and then a sort of failing retro-futuristic layer was dropped on top of it. Like humanity waltzed into the future with unearned confidence, building Akira motorcycles and levitating couches before realizing that... I mean, what was wrong with the old couch?!

Grimbeard in his review of the 1996 adventure game Synnergist.

[hardcore-gaming-101]

Synnergist

Think back to adolescence, where dreams were bigger and ideas seemed brighter because they neglected their harsh complexities. The ideas were so exciting that you may have shared them with family, friends - heck, anyone willing to listen. You were so wrapped up in them at the time that you didn't notice talking about what you wanted to do was infinitely more fun than actually doing it - probably because it was easier.

Synnergist (inexplicably spelled with two n's instead of one) plays like one of these adolescent dream-ideas played-out, only fully-realized. It's a dedication power-trip, a crash-course in persistence and childlike enthusiasm getting ahead of skill and talent. Conceived by brothers Karthik and Guha Bala (the founding duo behind the mega-developer Vicarious Visions) over a 1991 spring break amidst their high school years, it seemed their vision of an FMV cyberpunk point-and-click adventure game stuck to them like glue, because a whole half a decade later the game was out and published in Europe-only by 21st Century Entertainment. It retains every shred and ounce of their naive energy from their high school years, evident from its juvenile writing to its imagination-fueled set-pieces and backdrops. It's a fascinating mess of a game that still manages to be compelling, and more often than not its shortcomings work accidentally in its favor. There's something strangely endearing about the whole experience, and not just from the extensive unintentional humor.

Read more...

[thenumbedgrace]

♪ /rolls out

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