Sintopia is hellish fun in its God Sim business simulation mashup.

There are some great business sims released every year, but I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a decent new sim. My favorite so far is the Black & White series. It will probably never appear again. But other than that, the most recent series I enjoyed was Tethered, released for PSVR in 2016. There's definitely room for someone to release a strong god simulation game, and that game might just be Team 17's Sintopia.

As someone who loves business management and god simulations, Sintopia's blend of the two genres was so tempting that I checked out a preview for myself at Gamescom last August and spoke with Piraknights Games founder Eric Le Ru.

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In Sintopia, you are the manager of hell, and the more sins you remove from your soul, the more money you earn to help grow the hellish economy. You must expand your territory by building roads and structures, hiring personnel, paying salaries, and keeping everything running smoothly to punish incoming souls according to the sins they have committed.

Le Ru likened the gameplay to other well-known titles as he showed me around Hell and various facilities featuring various buildings customized to punish souls for each deadly sin. “It’s a mix of Two Point Hospital, a little bit of park builder, a little bit of Factorio, because there’s also automation.”

Another aspect of the game is the Overworld, where the gameplay becomes more god-sim. When you come across the strange but lovable and quirky chickpea people, you can influence their behavior and ultimately curse them for the sins you provoke them to commit. Plus, you can kill people for fun, which is always fun.

The population has its own little life. They have jobs, gather food, eat at lunchtime, and go to bed at night. Everything is automated so settlement happens automatically. But of course, it wouldn't be fun if you couldn't interfere with them in any way.

Le Ru acknowledges Black & White, which is my favorite, and says it doesn't have any creatures, but it works similarly to spellcasting abilities. “You are some kind of divine being. It's a hellish existence, but it's divine. You can influence them, manipulate them, kill them, help them. You are free. There are no moral judgments. It can be cruel or it can be helpful. The problem is that the two worlds are connected through the cycle of death and life.”

Instead of being overwhelmed with too many spells, Sintopia gives you a range of choices that you can use creatively. Lightning spells can destroy buildings, kill people, or even resurrect the dead. Another example is the Push spell, which can irritate little people around it, but can also be used to push a flaming torch into a building next to it. You can then push the fire to spread it, effectively turning the push spell into a fire spell. You can unlock appropriate fire spells later, but they cost more, so it's important to think outside the box with the spells at your disposal.

You are not the only force at work in your civilization any more than a king oversees the masses. Your coronation will grant you a random personality that determines your civilization's priorities. Le Reu showed that the current king was a restless patriot. “He focuses on being a soldier, a bit of a doctor, and is pretty bad at buildings. He hates merchants and he hates clergy. So more military stuff. “If you need defense, he’s a great guy.”

Citizens may be attacked by barbarians, zombies, demons, and wolves, so they will need some form of defense. But this isn't an RTS game, so you can't give orders when battle comes to your land. You can cast spells, but most of the time you're just a spectator. However, trying to help or harm your citizens may mean inadvertently helping or harming your enemies. Le Reu explains: “All orders must not be overly precise. “We want to learn more about collateral damage.”

These foolish little chickpea people will sin as long as they live. You can see each person's seven crimes, and the grade changes depending on the person's situation or behavior. People who do not have a home or lack building materials become more jealous, and people who do not have a job have a higher level of laziness. There are many factors that can contribute to sin, which, if left unchecked, can lead to epidemics. You can step in to help them, or you can let it all play out and watch them commit their sins and end up in the worst punishment room.

When a person dies, their soul goes to the cemetery. The Reaper Bus comes regularly to collect waiting souls and take them to Hell. This continues the cycle of switching between the two gameplay elements. The soul is taken to the public administration before being distributed according to the layout and eventually sent to the appropriate punishment chamber.

“I find it very bureaucratic and very inefficient,” says Le Reu. “There’s a lot of paperwork and stuff like that. Holy hell, you are at the forefront of it. I go to a public administration office and I'm waiting in line and I need to get some documents, but I lost the file or something. And no matter how many hours I wait, nothing happens. This is the kind of thing we're trying to emulate here. Basically you create it. “Your own poor administration.”

How you choose to organize the entire layout is your own hell, and you can make it whatever you want. You can also use logic to sort out the little chickpea sinners. For example, you can filter people with Greed over 30 to go to Exit A, people with Lust over 30 to go to Exit B, and so on. By creating custom routes using specific rules to keep things orderly, you can ensure high Envy sinners make their way to the Envy specialized punishment chamber.

So what happens after sin is removed? Well, souls can be resurrected if they pass a thorough test of innocence after all that punishment. They will rejoin the overworld. There you can repeat the hellishly ridiculous cycle and make money by making them sin painfully once again.

But this is not a simple cycle, as Le Reu warned me. “If you don’t do the work, they will be resurrected with the same level of sin they had in the beginning. And from death to death their sins will get out of hand and something bad will happen.”

When people reach 50% for any particular sin, they will become deviant for that sin and their behavior will become uncontrollable and detrimental to civilization. When it reaches 100%, it transforms into the devil of that sin. Each demon has a unique appearance and skills, and is a corrupting being that makes others more vulnerable to their sins, allowing their sins to snowball out of control.

You may want to hunt down deviants to make sure they don't go that far, or you may want to encourage certain sins and the deviants who spread them to have a hell tailored most effectively to your sins.

“You can be a corrupt person just to take advantage of it, or you can be a good person who always wants everyone to be at the lowest level possible,” says Le Reu. “There is no wrong way to play, but playing as a Corruptor is more dangerous because you are playing with lane when I should be killing them.”

I already know that I'm going to try to be the worst god, aiming for absolute chaos and killing everyone for the fun of it. How much that will affect my income remains to be seen. Syntopia is scheduled to be released in 2026.

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