Synergia is a Yuri Genre thriller Visual Novel set in a Cyberpunk future. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the story was released July 27, 2020. It is currently available
on itch.io, as well as through Steam.
Cila, a veteran cop with a sour outlook and anger issues, expects nothing more from life besides the smell of ozone, blinding neon lights, and the ever-present manhole steam. At least, until a shady friend replaces her broken-down housedroid as a favor. Advanced, more efficient, and remarkably perceptive, unit M.A.R.A. begins to penetrate Cila's toughened exterior, and possibly even heal her new owner's old wounds — if Cila can decipher the recurring nightmare the process brings. Soon Cila and Mara forge a unique — if sometimes uneasy — bond.
Unbeknownst to Cila, just as her life begins to find its new normal, the technological giant Velta Labs gets wind of Mara's existence and takes a mysterious interest in the android. A war unlike any before it is brewing on the horizon, its players are silently being selected, and one android's fate may spell the difference between peace, war, the blossoming of a new religion, or a technological singularity beyond comprehension.
Tropes:
- Amicable Exes: Cila and Yoko used to be in a sexual relationship.
- Artificial Human: Androids are mass-produced for common labor, though M.A.R.A. is a suspiciously advanced case. There are also people such as Cila, who are mostly organic, but were created in an artificial womb.
- Big Bad: Valentine, the head of Velta. You only meet him in the Bad Ending Route.
- Big Damn Heroes: If you make the right choice, Sal arrives in a samurai android to save you from Veltra.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Cila turns out to have been this as a result of her loving an android in the past.
- The Cameo: There is a brief appearance of the protagonist of Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story, another Cyberpunk story by their publisher. Similarly, Cila makes a cameo in Sense.
- Cast of Snowflakes: The store page boasts "20+ characters, all with interesting backgrounds and personalities deeply woven into the narrative."
- Catastrophic Countdown: Each of the chapters is separated by a countdown of days until the Synergia incident.
- Companion Cube: Essentially what a lot of people use androids for as their personalities are simulated, not real. Amusingly, Cila turns off the vast majority of Elaine's companion features because while she uses her as one, she doesn't want her to be too human.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Velta is described as being closer to a mafia than an actual corporation.
- Cyberpunk: The Humanist Empire is full of corruption, Fantastic Racism, poverty, and hypocrisy. Our heroine is a barely functional cop on the way out too. Yep, it's cyberpunk.
- Cyberpunk Is Techno: The visual novel has a separate soundtrack from its main game that is a bunch of techno songs and synthesized music in order to underscore the digital world that has been created within the game.
- Death of Personality: Elaine suffers one of these, returning her to her factory default, effectively killing her. It also forces Cila to "buy" Mara.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The severe social consequences and religious pressure of the Humanist Empire towards human / android pairings is similar to those that LGBT romances face.
- The Empire: The Confederacy of the New Colonies, also known as The Humanist Empire.
- Fantastic Racism: Humanists (not the philosophical school) are a religion that believes androids are non-sapient and meant to serve humans. For the most part, they're right.
- Flat Character: What the majority of androids are supposed to be. However, Cila's encounters with them show that more advanced models have a lot more going on under the hood than most humans realize.
- Forbidden Love: The Central Theme of the visual novel is a human woman falling in love with a gynoid, which is expressly forbidden by society as a whole.
- Freudian Trio: Mara, Nina, and Anna are a trio of Hive Minded androids.
- Hardboiled Detective: Cila, who's naturally strong and intelligent due to being created in an artificial womb, but recent events in her life have left her alone and resentful.
- Hypocrite: It is illegal for humans to sleep with androids, but the Emperor keeps a vast harem of them.
- Also Val hates the genocidal and supremacist empire and plans to destroy them, via genocide of their people and also abandoning the "inferior" prior generation androids. Cila immediatly calls him out on having the same philosophy. The hypocrisy potentially goes deeper than that as the epilogue chapter implies he is a hybrid fourth generation model who learns via net connections rather than human learning methods, making him more like the very androids he derided as non-sapient than his sisters.
- Infodump: The game has numerous breaks in the middle of the action to explain elements of the world-building.
- La Résistance: There's a rebel group opposing the empire that hide in the Yellow Ocean desert outside the empire's walls, known for hacking androids, and provoking anti-machine sentiments.
- Lethal Chef: A Downplayed Trope example with Mara, who knows nothing about cooking.
- Manipulative Bastard: Yoko, despite being on the heroes' side, lies every other time she opens her mouth. She also hides numerous plot details from Cila, even if it would actually get her to go along with their plans.
- Megacorp: Velta Laboratories is one, and it's just one of many.
- Multiple Endings: There is a Good Ending and a Bad Ending with the primary difference being whether you escape the city with Mara or not.
- Noble Bigot with a Badge: Cila has a lot of complicated feelings regarding androids.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Cila is a sour antisocial introvert, while Mara is an excited emotional extrovert.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Mara is almost indistinguishable from a human being, up to the point that she can feel pain.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Cila suffers PTSD and often wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.
- Those Two Guys: Kyle and Darla, who are Cila's unwanted "partners" assigned to her by corporate.
- Transhuman: Cila is a "witch" and was genetically engineered by Velta. Her blood is extremely valuable on the black market as a form of medicine.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Elaine's fate after she's handed over is never addressed.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: 4th generation and above androids are increasingly human-like with their own thoughts and dreams. The Humanist Empire finds this obscene, but market forces continue to push the technology forward.
- White-Haired Pretty Girl: Mara and her sisters.
