The Tomorrow Children Review – Grinding In The Void

Developer Q-Games have really taken a complete turn from their interesting games of last generation and spun it all around into their new work of art, The Tomorrow Children. And though this game is a bit rough around the edges, utterly confusing to start out on, and sometimes just strung with “what the?” moments, it has aching moments in it that will hopefully be improved upon later down the road. But for right now, what is present upon release really isn’t as intriguing as all of the trailers have made it seem. You will find a developer who have dug deep to bring a much darker tone than their previous work, with a touch of Russian culture, and a whole lot of bland moments blended in.

The Tomorrow Children is an free to play, online multiplayer game where everyone works towards a united goal of building towns and raising the world’s population in the process. An awful catastrophe occurred when a global experiment went wrong. Everyone’s consciousness has been sent off into what is called the Void, the leftovers of it all. The Void is just as it sounds: an emptiness designed to bring everyone together, and these people, including your character, are known as projection clones. These projection clones look like little, carved, wooden dolls that store your conscious to help restore order to the Void.

"As I stated earlier, this is a community game where you will be creating buildings in the town with others, but never actually with anyone. You will see another player for a short time in what is effectively the lobby, but nothing further."

Strangely enough, the game never really gives a clear presentation on what you should be doing, why, or how often. Hitting up on the D-pad will give off a few one-liners from a character who’s trying to give some guidance (for better or for worse), but the overall feel of the game, with its oddly placed platforming, and terrible, but brief, combat in between all the time you’ll be spending on building. And you’ll be building a lot, for a long time, and you’ll never truly know why.

As I stated earlier, this is a community game where you will be creating buildings in the town with others, but never actually with anyone. You will see another player for a short time in what is effectively the lobby, but nothing further. You’ll never see them working hard at creating a building, though as time goes on you will see buildings coming to life from others you know are there but can ever actually see. When you are not working on buildings, the only other big thing to do is to gather resources. You must find the bus, board it, then allow it to shoot you off towards a new location which randomly appear and go away.

These buses go on a tight schedule and are not influenced by anything other than time. So no matter how many characters are waiting, the bus will come when the time is right. As the bus drives to the new location, you can’t skip the travel. You will be forced to see every inch of the trip from start to finish. If there was some fun or interesting backdrops or characters along the way, the ride would be somewhat tolerable. However, the Void you work in and travel in is an ashy white, completely lifeless, and filled with nothingness. It’s just plain boring.

"After you’ve gathered what materials you believe you need, put them in your backpack, and then head back to the train. But be warned, you can only carry up to three slots in your backpack, which turns this entire experience into an endless grind-fest for materials."

After you’ve gathered what materials you believe you need, put them in your backpack, and then head back to the train. But be warned, you can only carry up to three slots in your backpack, which turns this entire experience into an endless grind-fest for materials. When you’ve caught the bus, returned back to the Void lobby, it’s then  up to you to manually place each resource within a pre-selected location so it can be counted for further use. It’s a painful experience to have to go back to the randomly generated areas again and again to find more resources, place them in their slots, and do it all over again. What makes it worse is that some of the randomly generated locations you are sent off to in the bus may not have the resources you need for certain things you’d like to build.

Being a game that places emphasis on a online community makes it just very odd that you cannot communicate with anyone in the game. Everyone is doing what they want at their own pace, creating buildings, traveling afar, gathering what’s needed. The result of this miscommunication is that the towns often turn out to look nothing like a miracle city in the ruins of the old world, but a blind collaboration of things constructed in several different attires with no true rhyme or reason behind any of it.

"Hopefully down the line Q-Games will add in a few mechanics that help the game, such as gathering resources at a much faster rate than the sluggish wait-for-the-meter-to-run-out-before-resources-can-be-collected style and make a bus that moves at my own schedule rather than waiting for it."

The game provides Soviet style propaganda that comes shooting through the airwaves from time to time and stats for in-game progress. However, nothing of these additions really matter. Statistics are just a pile of information that don’t effect the game one way or another from what I could tell, and the propaganda is too often obnoxious and uninteresting to pay attention to.

Hopefully down the line Q-Games will add in a few mechanics that help the game, such as gathering resources at a much faster rate than the sluggish wait-for-the-meter-to-run-out-before-resources-can-be-collected style and make a bus that moves at my own schedule rather than waiting for it. Hopefully down the line we can get a much better online experience where we can actually communicate and work together as a community.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.