Sintopia Review - A Naughty Little Sim That Won’t Finish Quickly

If you were to get punished for one of the 7 deadly sins, which one do you think it would be for? Do we think you can be gluttonous for video games? Because I spend all my time ravenously consuming any little indie games I can get my hands on, so I am pretty flipped, I would say. But if Sintopia is anything to go by, Hell isn’t too bad, just a lot of waiting in lines to go to de-sinning classes and then getting resurrected into a little bean guy, so not too bad. But is this management sim taking me to heaven, or is it just plain purgatory?

Sintopia is a sim game all about taking control of Hell, to build a profitable and effective corporation that cleanses sinners of their sins before sending them back to the overworld. However, unlike other sim games of a similar type, you also need to manipulate the citizens of the overworld to ensure no demons appear, the ruler is on your side, and that your hell enterprise always has a healthy flow of new souls.

Building a perfect conveyor belt of soul cleansing in Hell is your usual management sim fare. You’ll need to manage the wait times, ensure buildings are connected by paths, and that your costs don’t outweigh your income. But you’ll also need to handle the various requirements of the souls entering your fiery domain. Some souls have sinned so much in the overworld that they have become deviants and cannot be cured by a simple stern talking to. Instead, you’ll need to build sin-specific facilities that can strip them (sometimes literally) of their sins and put them back on the correct path. 

But the key difference in Sintopia is the addition of The Overworld. Where normal management sims will just leave you with a stream of ‘customers’ entering your establishment, in this one you’ll be in charge of ‘playing god’ and dealing with the autonomous societies that inhabit the various overworld islands. These societies are full of Humus. No, I didn’t just have a stroke; the citizens of this world are called Humus, a bunch of little chickpeas with their own lives, jobs, and sins to invest in. 

To answer a question I had about the game, you do not get to control or develop the overworld civilization. The most you can do is use a few powers to kill, heal, or influence the townsfolk. To stop them from boinking and creating more babies (as well as upping their lust sin), you’ll use your wind powers to ring nearby bells and harsh the vibe. If the ruler isn’t sending the humus in the right direction, then you can zap him and let someone new take the reins. Or if your city is being attacked by demons, wargs, or little lizard guys, then you can use your more destructive powers to help defeat the enemies. 

Here lies my first issue with Sintopia: until I unlocked cultists in the campaign (and even then to an extent), I don’t think my ‘manipulation’ ever really made a difference. Killing a ruler only ever felt necessary once their sin level had gotten too high. Their ‘goals’ and plans for the humus I honestly never noticed a difference, and to be quite honest, as someone who loves city builders, I almost wish there was as much management that needs doing in the overworld as there is in Hell. I mostly spent my time in the Hell realm during my playtime because the humus seemed to just get on with it. It only felt necessary to pop upstairs when I was told something was going awry.

Speaking of the Hell side of things, there are a few things with the systems that I feel are either not explained in the tutorial levels or simply end up being a bit frustrating. 

When the souls arrive in Hell, initially they come 5 at a time from the graveyard in the overworld. Once they arrive, they’ll head off from the Hell Plaza and somewhat randomly head towards any facilities they can reach. If you set up 4 Omnisin Doctors, which are the sin-cleansing buildings, the souls seem to gravitate towards either the ones that have someone waiting already or, weirdly, the first or last one in a row, which can be a bit annoying when the number of souls increases. 

Which, hey, doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, no, in general, it is okay, but the thing is, this game takes SO LONG for anything to happen. The facilities themselves take the piss; if you’re trying to set up a waiting booth to remove some of the queuing, it takes ages to deploy someone to a building, and if your souls or employees are walking anywhere, it all takes FOREVER. I felt like I was in a form of purgatory, staring at my objectives ticking up so slowly as I entered day after day of meandering stat changes and slow upticks in money I could spend. 

The third level of the campaign requires you to hit an alive population of 200 and have cleansed 6000 sin points from your souls, which took me hours to do. I rearranged my layout, went back over the tutorials to see if I was doing something wrong, I even left it going while I wandered off, and in the end, I almost had to completely restart the level after all that time because a basically world-ending event was happening, and I entered a race to the finish line between my powers regenerating and a demon destroying my temple. 

There are 3 main types of currency to be gathered from processing souls in hell: purgadollars, faithcoins, and Hearos, all of which do different things. When a soul goes through a processing center, you earn a lump sum of purgadollars. These are what you will use to buy new facilities, pay employees, and develop your processing in Hell. Hearos are gained when you have managed to get a soul’s sin points down below 50 and they have turned into a Hearo. These are used to unlock new buildings, skills, or powers in your Liber Administratum. Then there are faith coins, which are gained by having cultists (later on in the game) or by sending souls through certain entertainment buildings. These are used to do your powers in the overworld. 

There are ways to sort your souls to make the layout the most effective. Gates allow you to add rules onto paths and control which way a certain human will head. If they’re already pretty low on the ol’ sin-o-meter, you can send them straight to the resurrection portal. But if they need a bit more work, need to keep their cult level up, or they’re so gosh darn horny they need to go see a demon do a strip tease, you can send them round the houses again! But make sure you’re not stupid like I apparently am because it took me about 3 hours to finally figure out what the rules should be to make them work.

There is a sandbox mode and a challenge mode if you’re looking to branch out, but the main campaign follows a story where we have been given the job of the new Administrator of Hell by The Chairman, who mysteriously looks a lot like a certain G.O.D. He is trusting you to handle the cleansing of the humans after a certain naughty angel, aka Lucifer, betrayed him. So you, with the help of a collection of little demons and a very raunchy Lilith, aka Lili, will need to complete tasks, avoid being exiled, and potentially take down the big dog in charge!

One of the highlights of the game is the fantastic graphics and how well-designed all the animations are. The colorful and cartoony world of Sintopia is reminiscent of games like Two Point Hospital and other quirky management sims of a similar vibe. All of the humans are rounded and wonky looking; they also all have terrible posture and are in desperate need of a chiropractor… though not sure chickpeas actually have spines, so not sure that would help. 

Then, my favorite part is the imps and the many animations each of the different ‘imporiums’ have. The anti-pride animation involved a poor soul being crushed in front of a live studio audience, our lust sinners are treated to a tasteful striptease from a little imp, and lots more. These little animations are so detailed and full of depth, which is a real treat given these buildings could’ve just been rabbit holes that souls disappeared into for a minute at a time.

Another thoroughly detailed and perfectly crafted element of Sintopia is the sound design, and specifically the music. There are songs, with lyrics might I add, that have been fully created for the game, and are something I feel should be shouted out more in their marketing. There are of course background tracks without lyrics but it all complements the quirk that is rife throughout the game.

Plus with a fully voiced cast, in both French and English there is even more personality to be found within the slightly evil walls of Hell Inc.

The game runs great on PC, even with all the little goobers running around, and in general, sat at 60fps the whole time (which, incidentally, can be seen in the overlay I left over a chunk of the footage… oopsie). 

There are a few accessibility settings but not an awful lot of visual changes, i.e., making text bigger, making enemies or humans stand out amongst the background, etc. And if I am being honest, the ability to zoom out a bit further than currently available in Hell would’ve been a great help when placing down roads and buildings. Hopefully, these can be implemented in patches down the line.

I’m struggling with Sintopia, I really am. I want to praise it for all the fun and imaginative content they’ve created; the songs, the animation, and the art style are all great, and the introduction of the god game mechanics into a management sim game is such a clever addition to the already great genre. I suppose I wish it had just been a bit more… fun?

There is, as so often there will be, a speed-up button, but even then, it didn’t feel like things were moving particularly fast. Perhaps processes are just a bit too long; maybe making money should be easier so you can expand quicker, or perhaps sins should decrease at a faster rate? Either way, perhaps some fine-tuning is in order. And maybe I am wrong, and I simply don’t know how to patiently wait for things to happen, like a good little Catholic, but if I were to assign this one a sin… it would probably be greed for how keen it is to take all my time.

TABLE LAMP/MEDIOCRE