2Synth

Some games are just hard to review. That might sound like a copout, nothing statement to someone browsing this website, ostensibly looking for video game reviews to know what to buy, but really, it’s the truth! Every time I pump one of these suckers out, I have to essentially magic into existence from my own inner monologue the correct sequence of words to make a game sound appealing and interesting, hoping that I manage it well enough to do a game justice while conveying understanding. It’s pretty intimidating to me, especially for a game I’m excited to talk about, and doubly so for a work like 2Synth.

In 2Synth, you’re playing as a robot that’s tasked with syncing your monitor with another robot’s. Syncing is accomplished by pressing buttons and fiddling with knobs on a remote control synthesiser, each one changing a different aspect of the image on screen. Some of these settings are self-explanatory, like changing the source image or colour, while others, such as polarity and blend, are far more nebulous and require some hands-on tinkering to come to grips with. To keep things simple in the early stages, you’re only given access to a few of these dials on your remote, but even by the fourth level or so, things will already start ramping up quite a bit when it comes to difficulty. This is compounded by the fact that you only have 60 seconds to frantically try and decipher each image before being judged via a percentage score rating and then whisked off to the next puzzle, with you needing to retain an average score across all the puzzles in a level to be able to move on. 

These puzzles are all presented with an absolutely spot-on turn of the millennium, low-poly aesthetic, and a fantastic drum & bass soundtrack. Everything about the game just kind of exudes the spirit of an abstract Windows ‘98 screensaver, and I mean that in the best way possible; not since Neon White has a game’s aesthetic transported me so completely to a specific time and place, and I truly relished each time I unlocked a new level and got to take in the sights of another low poly mountain or melted plastic body of water.

If I have a complaint with 2Synth, it’s that the game’s lofi, chilled-out aesthetic was frequently at odds with the actual puzzles for me. Specifically, my brain was pretty thoroughly wrinkled at the “blend” setting—around the midpoint of the game, you frequently have to mix two images together to create the final product, and the different ways in which those images merge together, the blending of them, baked my noodle so thoroughly that I had to take long breaks from the game before coming back with gritted teeth to have another crack at it. I generally found the onboarding explanations for the rest of the settings to be pretty good, but even going back to earlier chapters in which blend was first introduced, hoping I managed to internalise any kind of understanding about the setting and would be able to set a higher score, usually left me disappointed in my own cognitive prowess. 

There is, of course, value in learning a thing by doing (and failing) repeatedly. I mean, hell, that’s the entire foundation of the medium. But the learning portion of this game feels a bit strenuous with that 60-second time limit, and I found myself wishing for some kind of accessibility setting to give myself even just an extra 15 or 30 seconds, even if it removed any kind of score multiplier; there’s just a smidge too much friction between the game and me, and I wish that wasn’t the case, since in all other ways it’s everything I love about arcade-y puzzle games like this. 

Speaking of accessibility features, there’s not really anything here to speak of beyond the functionality to rebind your keys, nor is there controller support. While the scroll wheel on a mouse does feel extremely good and intuitive for manipulating the dial on a remote in a game like this, I do hope that controller support gets patched in down the line for people wanting to play 2Synth in a less rigid and upright manner.