Preview: The Tomorrow Children

I spent the better part of the weekend playing the alpha for The Tomorrow Children, and I still don’t know how to explain just what it is. Or why I couldn’t stop playing it. I’m not sure if I was enjoying myself, if I was suffering Stockholm Syndrome or if what was unfolding on-screen had lulled me into some kind of trance-like state. Whatever it was, it was weird, a little disturbing and quite unlike anything I’ve played before.

My best attempt at describing The Tomorrow Children is that it’s an open world sandbox, with elements of (Mine)crafting, resource management, city building and tower defence games with a bizarre communist theme permeating everything. Make sense? Thought not. The Tomorrow Children is best played for it to be understood, but as that’s not an option let me do my best.

Humanity and everything on earth has been all but wiped out with everything reduced to the Void. An infinite white space the stretches out in all directions. Some people remain as do scant resources including food, wood, coal etc. Everyone congregates in the ‘Town’ which initially hold only a few buildings and a bus stop. The Town centre can be loaded up with crystals (more on these in a bit) which in turn upgrade the building. As it grows larger and more people populate the Town more buildings appear and more options open themselves up to the player. Additional residents don’t simply appear though, they needed to be collected and resurrected from nearby islands.

These islands exist some distance away from the Town, but can only be accessed by the bus or by crafting a hoverbike. Trying to walk to the islands will see your character sink slowly into the void until they die. Bridges are able to be built out to the islands as well, but the bus is much quicker, with the hoverbike being the speediest of all. On these islands (one is which is shaped like a giant head surrounding by floating bombs) you’ll find much needed resources to keep your town going as well as Matryoshka dolls. By bringing these dolls back to Town and placing them in the regeneration building you’ll create a new townsperson and increase the population.

It becomes a cycle. Travel to an island, collect resources and Matryoshka dolls, bring them back and make your Town bigger. That’s not all there is too The Tomorrow Children though. Through crafting you can create decorations and functional improvements for your Town. Crafting is carried out by a simple number sliding puzzle. The more complex the object you want to create, the more complex the puzzle. As you collect more resources you’ll be able to construct increasingly complex objects, however the larger your town, the larger its basal resource needs are. Fear not, you aren’t alone in this. While you don’t play directly with other players, they exist in an ephemeral form in your world.

As they carry out significant actions, be it collecting resources, crafting or defending the Town you’ll be able to see them and help them out. While voice chat will apparently appear in the final game, the alpha was restricted to rudimentary communication. Somehow though in all the games I played I was able to get my point across and work with my fellow players. There was a real sense of community as everyone was working toward a common goal. I really felt like I was part of it. Especially when the Town comes under attack from monsters.

At what seemed like fairly regular intervals I would spy hulking black behemoths in the distance. These are monsters that exist in the void and seem to have only purpose; destroying the Town. Whenever they appeared, everyone would scurry to a turret (another craftable object) and frantically defend the town. It was a welcome change of pace from the slow and deliberate resource management and collection that the alpha featured heavily. Killing monsters was also the only way to gather the crystals (mentioned before) that upgrade the Town centre.

Eventually I settled into a holding pattern and learned what I needed to do in order to grow the Town. Being an alpha it wasn’t long before the Town had reached its limits and I was forced to start again from scratch and so I did. Three or four times. There’s something indefinable about The Tomorrow Children. Something that I can’t quite explain, but it’s definitely intriguing. While it likely won’t be released for some time, what I’ve seen so far shows a lot of promise. It’s very weird, it’s very different and yet it’s very familiar. Time will tell if it can provide an experience that entertains beyond what was contained within the alpha.

The Tomorrow Children will be available exclusively for PS4 in 2015.