Songs of Syx: A city-builder with complex mechanics (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Songs of Syx: A city-builder with complex mechanics (2020)

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87 pointsBSDobelix15 comments

As a rimworld fan I can heavily recommend songs of syx.

That said, I stopped playing it cause I couldn’t keep track of time with it. It’s the kind of game where you play “just 5 more minutes”, and next thing you notice it’s 3am.

It’s also a beautiful labor of love by a single developer, as far as I know.

In other words, very recommended, but with a caveat.

>I couldn’t keep track of time with it

Same, just 5 minutes to balance something out so i don't have to think about it tomorrow...2 hours later...

It's also really nice that you can download a free "Demo" that is the full game, the demo is just a older version then the paid one, plus the soundtrack is just phenomenal.

Say what you want, but "Demo" is still the best way to market a game. If I can test if the game will run decently on my system before buying, and if there are no obvious bugs right from the start - you have made a sale.

Absolutely, Dwarf Fortress and UnReal World are two other good examples.

But let's not forget that this was "kind of" how Doom, Wolfenstein and Commander Keen (Shareware with limited levels) etc was marketed.

You can effectively do that with any game on steam, as you can return any game if you both 1. played it under 2 hours 2. bought it in the last 14 days.

Yeah but that's a game you definitely want to test much much more then 2 hours....like every city-builder.

I think that’s called playing the game.

You can only do this once, which is a problem for a game under development.

> songs of syx.

Oh no, I hadn't heard of this. Just purchased it.

Given the amount of time I've spent playing Factorio, this could well make the rest of the year disappear!

Your quote makes me think you missed that this submission is about Songs of Syx.

It’s really cool to see this pop up again. I did some of the sound design (not the music, which is done by an incredible multi instrumentalist who specializes in nyckelharpa) for it a couple years ago. The dev behind it is brilliant and made the whole engine from scratch. It has great support for modding too.

In addition to being a great game, I also find Syx technically impressive - in a genre where it's so common to start running into serious performance problems with just two or three digit populations, Syx still zooms along effortlessly as you approach five. I believe its pop cap is 40,000 units.

I'm sure they're greatly simplified in comparison - it isn't trying to simulate complex interpersonal relationships or painstakingly track everyone's hair growth, but they still have a decent amount of detail to them given the scale.

The demo is just an older version of the full game (usually lagged behind 3 major releases, not sure where it is now, I think it's more up to date?) - and far from making it feel like I didn't need to pay for the thing to enjoy it, it instead made it an easy buy.

Big of a tangent, but I really enjoy when I see games pop up on HN. I think there’s a certain tinkerer’s profile for people here, and if a game is highly upvoted here I’m almost always likely to enjoy it. If only steam could be so topical with its recommendations.

Min requirements:

> Pentium 2 266 MHz processor

I guess I have a new obsession now.

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