Sintopia Review: Who Knew Hell Could Be So Fun

When it comes to management games, I have a love-hate relationship with them. Although part of that is because I’m terrible at them, for the most part, it’s down to getting overwhelmed. Sintopia managed to keep me from feeling overwhelmed with the perfect balance of dark gameplay and humor, as that does an amazing job of making me forget that some parts can be tedious. It’s a style that I’ve come to expect from a game produced by Team17, which somehow manages to make any of the tedious parts of the game forgivable.

What is Sintopia About?

Sintopia places you as the administrator in charge of running hell, punishing the sins of a species known as Humus. Straight away, we’re told that we are stepping into the shoes of the previous administrator, who was let go. But what does the administrator of hell do? Your job is to essentially build a processing plant, similar to what you would do in games like Satisfactory, but instead of stripping a planet of its resources, you’re stripping sins from dead Humus (not the delicious savory Middle Eastern dip).

It starts off fairly straightforward; the Humus at the beginning of the game haven’t really built up much sin to purge, meaning you can get them in and out of hell quicker than a billionaire scrubbing their Twitter (sorry, I mean X) history after a PR disaster. But, as I found out as soon as I hit 40, it’s all downhill from there. Before long, you’ve got Humus running all over the top, becoming greedy, full of pride, and pretty randy, as they perform their nightly Shaboinking (yes, they actually use that word in the game).

Sintopia really shines as soon as the Humus start to get a little naughty. As their sins go through the roof, the usual treatment causes them to still be too sinful to leave hell, and be brought back to life, renewed, so they need to go back for more, and sometimes, even more treatment.

Often, the Humus needing more treatment causes massive queues unless you’re amazing at adding the one-way pathing system to build the perfect conveyor of dead people to process. A little like working at a meat processing plant, I guess, but with more chances of the dead things coming back to life.

Yeah, dealing with massive queues of dead people can be stressful; if you drop the ball, you end up with a Beetlejuice-style waiting room mess, but that’s the fun of Sintopia, making sure that doesn’t happen.

The Humus Up Top

The overworld, sadly, is where the game lets itself slip a little. Up top, the Humus crack on with their own lives. You can help them by protecting them from Zhumbies (zombified Humus) and other threats, using a few Populous-like spells, but for the most part, they just crack on with their lives. Unlike games such as The Universim, where spells have a massive impact on the game, they feel like a minor extra here.

You can’t build anything up top or do too much to impact their fate. But one thing you can do is change who is in charge. And yes, by changing who is in charge, you are right, I do indeed mean find an inventive way to murder the ruling monarch so a new one can take its place.

Why would I want to kill the monarch, I hear you ask? Well, it’s fun. That and if the current ruler supports policies that don’t match your agenda, just help them have an accidental fall over a cliff, and wait for the coronation of a new monarch.

But, beyond killing kings and queens, and watching a super-sized humus go on a rampage, there’s not a huge amount of control to be had up top, which is found a little disappointing, especially with the rest of the game being so enjoyable.

There are cultists who slip away in the night to give offerings, and a few other things going up top, but it’s hell where things are really going down.

The Fun Gets Hotter in Hell

One of the biggest complaints I have seen about Sintopia is that the game just leads to tons of souls waiting in line. While that is true, at the same time, it couldn’t be further from the truth. The game challenges you to process as many hero (pure-ish) souls as possible, and even rewards you with a unique currency – the Hero Coins, for doing so. Your main job is to make sure this is done efficiently. Therefore, if you’ve done it right, there’s not going to be a lot of angry souls waiting in line.

There are several tools you can use to help you push things along more quickly. Motivational items that you can unlock and place around hell make your Imps work faster, while fear items send your guests into a frenzy and get them moving quicker than someone closing incognito tabs after hearing ‘can I use your computer real quick?

Yeah, hell can be a little stressful, getting all the Humus in and out isn’t always easy, even with the massive list of new spells, perks, and buildings you can unlock with Hero Coins. But that’s the point of management games, they’re not meant to be easy, unless you’re incredible at micro-management, or suffer from that medical condition where you’re really good at paying attention to detail and always being right, you know the type, I certainly do.

Is It Worth Heading to Hell?

It’s been a long time since I have had this much fun playing a management game, so I’m going to be straightforward with you. Buy it. It’s good. You get to run hell, fire lightning bolts at little Humus people, and be more efficient than you’ve ever been in real life, what’s not to like?

Sintopia finds the perfect balance of ludicrous humor and serious management sim that requires a lot of thought and effort. This, in my eyes, is a balance that a lot of games manage to fudge up. They either take things too seriously and lose me, or focus all their effort, and presumably funds, on quirky writing. But not Sintopia, the devil is in the details, and this detail smashed it all the way back to hell – yes, that’s a compliment.