Songs of Syx is a base building game with massive scale battles

Songs of Syx is an upcoming strategy game from developer Jakob de Laval that promises to dwarf its competition in the survival strategy/colony builder/base building genre. It’s a fantasy city-state simulator where you start off with a small colony and build yourself into a prosperous mega-city with a powerful military and detailed international relations. It’s also huge, with plans for massive battles and cities with tens of thousands of residents. Songs of Syx’s real banner feature is scale. Cities promise to have “5-digit populations” and battles with tens of thousands of warriors on each side. It’s a pixelated Total War writ extra, extra large:

Songs of Syx is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter. You can try a proof of concept prototype for free at itch.io. There’s also a Steam page.

Like genre staples RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress, your progression in Songs of Syx focuses on building up new industries and supply chains, keeping up with your peoples’ food needs, and extracting natural resources. Beyond that, though, Songs of Syx plans to include domestic concerns like nobility you’ll have to appoint yourself and then keep in line—else they usurp you. I quite like its approach to low-micromanagement building, relying on your subjects to figure out the supply lines once you’ve laid out the blueprints rather than forcing you to place objects step by step.

Enthralling. I’ve played some of the demo and my favorite bit is that somebody has to make the beds before they can be used again, just like momma always said. Again: You can find Songs of Syx’s free demo on itch.io or wishlist it on Steam. Its Kickstarter campaign lasts until March 4th.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.