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We chat about sins, god games, and simulators with Sintopia's Creative Director Eric Le Ru.
"Hello everyone, I'm Alex here at Gamescom, I'm here with Eric, we've just been checking out Sintopia, a game that I think is very, very one of the most unique, if not the most unique games I've checked out at Gamescom so far.
Eric, could you tell people who maybe aren't aware of Sintopia a little bit about the game, what they can expect, why they should be hyped about it?
So in Sintopia you are the master of hell, and you are supposed to build an administration that is kind of crappy, to hunt down the souls and punish them for their sins."
"It's a hybrid game where on the surface it's like a good game, like black and white, and in the underworld it's more like a simulation, building game, park builder, two point hospital kind of references.
And what made you go for that sort of god mechanic, because a lot of people do sim games and management games, but there's a lot of freedom in what I saw from Sintopia in letting the player really, really just do what they'd like to with managing both hell and the overworld.
What was the decision making behind giving them so much freedom to do what they like, and as you said before, sort of break the game if they want to?
Well, one thing we noticed with god games is that you get given a lot of power, but when you use it too much it bites back against you."
"You can kill a lot of people, but you shouldn't really do it.
In Sintopia when you kill someone it's a customer in hell, so you can really mess with them and don't feel guilty, it's not overly penalizing for the game, so most of the time it's good for you.
Obviously if you wipe them out it's too much, maybe you shouldn't do it, but yeah, you can really mess with the world and the game supports it, encourages you to have fun, and you're not penalized to just play with your tools."
"So yeah, that's one of the freedoms we wanted to aim for and give a lot of tools for that, and the game sustains it.
How do you balance that with making sure that there's some limitations on a player's ability to not just immediately make the game futile in a way, you want that journey of them to be able to build up their power and not just have it all straight away?
I saw before we were talking about how you earn money from exploiting people's sins down in hell, and I asked about how do you stop that from being exploited by people just letting the sins build up and up and up?
And there's demons in the game, could you tell me a bit more about the demons and how they sort of stop players from getting too powerful too quick?
If you don't do your job well, the Umus will accumulate a lot of sins, and when they reach the maximum number of sins they will turn into a demon, and that demon will be like a mini-boss that will invade the world and send small armies to crush the Umus and push you towards the game over."
"The demons are entities that are kind of a vessel for us to mock the real world, to troll a little bit everyone.
So, for example, you have Succubus, which is an only fan girl.
You have a Raz Demon, which is kind of a Balrog from The Lord of the Rings mixed with a raging gamer, so maybe some of you guys, if you play the game and lose, they will turn into a Raz Demon."
"Gluttony Demon is an Uber driver, which kept everything for himself.
That kind of stuff can be fun in the game, yeah.
So how do they influence the gameplay style as well?
How do they stop the player, can they stop the player, and how does the player fight back against them?
For now in the game they are mostly like, again, mini-boss summoning armies to crush the Umus."
"But later in the game you will be able to leverage them, to be able to capture them like Pokemons and use them in Hell, because after all you are the master of Hell, so demons should work with you.
But as everything in this game, you have to earn it, and you're kind of always playing with fire.
So if you start creating demons in the spirit of vanquishing them to recruit them, we are fine with that, that's the goal of the game."
"But if you mess up you will kill your own game, basically.
And a lot of things are like that, where you can create your own doom out of greed, and yeah, so that's the spirit of the game.
So your sins in a way can affect the game's sins.
Yeah."
"We talked a lot about the overworld and the humans and what you can do to them.
I wanted to talk about Hell and sort of the management systems in there.
Is it mostly something that you'll be setting up as automated to go in Hell, or how much control do you have over what goes on in Hell, what your minions can do, how active is the gameplay in Hell, I guess?
So, basically when you start the game you have to set up everything, right?
So you have a lot of things to do, all the roads to build, buildings to build, people to recruit, resumes to check, and you are starting your administration, so a lot of things to do."
"And then things start to settle down, and other features come online to keep you engaged with the game.
So the game's complexity will explode exponentially as more humors are created, more sins are committed, new invasions from barbarians or from demons, new stuff to handle, and your toolkit will progress in parallel to that.
So as some features come offline, some things get automated so you have less to do, more will come in and ask you to step in, basically."
"So that's kind of the equilibrium we're trying to find, where you always have something to do, and the hybrid aspect of the game really helps us with that, because when you have nothing to do in Hell, you can just go spend your mana in the overworld, and when you have no mana in the overworld, you can go spend your money in Hell.
So it balances itself out.
Is this just sort of that sandbox experience, then, of things will pop up over the time, or do you guys have challenge modes and campaigns as well for people to look forward to?
So at the final release, we'll have three modes."
"We'll have a fully narrative campaign with high ambitions about character-driven stuff, plot twists, a lot of lore.
The game is extremely silly, but it has very robust lore to support it, and we want the player to be able to dive into that dumb world, really.
We will have a sandbox mode for people that just want to be left alone and enjoy the game and just start their stuff and leave me alone."
"And then we'll have the challenge mode, where it's more like the end zone approach, where you have all the features unlocked at game start.
We are asking you to perform random objectives, and if you succeed, you will accumulate experience points that you will be able to use into unlocking boons and new traits that will drastically alter how the game works.
And the plan is for the players to be able to break the game in a way to find ways to drastically change how the game is actually played and change the core ruleset of the game."
"So we'll provide the tools for that, but you will have to play many maps and spend many hours into the game to unlock all the tools you could get and find ways that we don't know about to kill the game, basically.
I like that you touched upon the look and the bizarre style of the game, because that was something that I was really interested in from the first trailers and the first images and things like that.
Did you guys have any specific inspirations for your designs in making this version of Hell and the characters up above?
So two things about that. The first thing is a disclaimer. So if you've seen the trailers, you might have noticed that the humanoids are a bit strange."
"It's because they are made of chickpeas. They are not pregnant. We have seen many comments about them being pregnant. They are not. They are chickpeas people.
So that was my shot to clarify that. And basically, when I mentioned the barbarians earlier, they are named the guacas, made of guacamole, avocado stuff.
So as you see, it's a very, very smart game. And as for Hell, the inspiration was basically the French administration, I guess."
"But as I can see, most countries have the same issues with bureaucracy and administration and paperwork being everywhere to annoy us.
And that's kind of your shot to create your own and take it out on the hummus. So Hell became an 80s administration.
Nice. What do you think it is that draws people to games like Syntopia and Black and White, as you mentioned before, and these god-type games where you're given ultimate power with some limitation?
Cruelty, I think. Deep down, we all crave to be able to do terrible things without feeling guilty."
"And this type of game just gives you a lot of power to do absurd stuff and just feel good about it.
So yeah, maybe that's not the right thing to say, but I think you all are naughty people and we are too.
Eric, one last question for you. When can people see more of Syntopia and what can they see it on?
Well, we'll keep communicating on it in the coming months, obviously, but the first half of 2026 should be where we come out."
"Brilliant. Eric, thank you so much for your time. Thank you."
