The Tomorrow Children Phoenix Edition Review

Revivals are a rare event in the video game space. You get a few good news stories here or there (No Man’s Sky comes to mind), but when a game struggles to find an audience or comes to a halt because of technical issues, it’s a big hole to try and climb back out of. Q-Games will likely feel like the road taken to bring back The Tomorrow Children was seemingly impossible, with the original PS4 release shutdown by Sony barely a year after its launch six years ago. But having regained the license and now re-releasing the title for a new generation of players, I’m happy to say that the road was worth walking down.

If you’re new to the experience, let me fill you in, and bear with me here because it gets weird. In an alternate world, humanity attempts to meld itself together into one by uniting the minds of humanity within a digital landscape. Of course, it doesn’t work, so you’re sent into the blank canvas of the Void as a childlike projection to recover those lost within it and build up a new civilisation in the process. If Zion and the Matrix were in the same digital space, that’s The Tomorrow Children, with a heavy layer of Soviet Union paraphernalia and design thrown over the top.

Within the void you’ll have a small space in which you can build a town, surrounded by weird and creatively designed islands that randomly appear from out of the goo that hold resources to mine and matryoshka dolls hidden away that can be restored back to their human form. You can only carry so much, so there will be a lot of back and forth as you store away what you find back at camp, rescue who you can and build up the buildings and defences to keep your village running smoothly. Every island has a limited shelf life and will eventually sink back into the void itself, while all around the space, various evil critters will descend through the digital landscape to cause mayhem.

Oh good, the postman has arrived

The original release of The Tomorrow Children was a vastly different, free-to-play experience that emphasised online co-operation and micro-transactions to purchase important items, where every area was a communal space that you built together. For The Tomorrow Children: Phoenix Edition, a couple of important changes means you have complete control over your own personal island that online players can randomly visit and contribute towards at any time. You can choose to be entirely offline if you really want to, but there’s a unique sense of accomplishment when players suddenly arrive to your home and work diligently to bring home what you need. It’s also considerably faster in terms of upgrading your town and finding all the dolls if you allow players to join, as opposed to doing all the work yourself.

When you’re ready to call it a day, other players get a timed countdown until your local server closes, so there won’t be any nasty surprises waiting for you when you log back in. You can also visit other places at any time through the subway if you’re so inclined, either to help other new players build up their town faster or simply experience different towns and still level up in the process. Everything you do, whether at home or abroad, goes towards leveling up your character, improving their stats to carry more, dig faster or survive longer in the dark. Speaking of, darkness isn’t your friend in the void, so you’ll need to keep a light with you and cover your town lamps and the like in order to avoid an awkward death.

Now I realise that, having already said it gets weird, that much of what you’ve read so far sounds normal enough, but the truth is whatever I say here doesn’t do the game justice in terms of how strange it gets. Everything about this game is eery, from the heavy emphasis on Soviet life, weird monsters like giant blowfly’s and a Godzilla (of sorts) and the myriad of different island designs, from abstract art pieces to giant heads and even a TV. It’s that kind of unusual presentation that made it vastly more appealing to me than I originally anticipated, given most of my time was spent running back and forth carrying ore and gold around.

Making my way downtown…

I do have my gripes, however. The camera doesn’t do you many favours if you get into a tight space, sticking into walls or behind them if you get unlucky. There’s also a layer of frustration early on with your limited amount of inventory space, meaning if you don’t have a player or two helping to build platforms or mine steps, you’ll be going back and forth even more often to grab the right equipment or quickly purchase a new item (with in-game currency) to replace a broken one. You’ll get the chance to increase the amount of things you can carry and purchase equipment that can last longer, but the early grind can be both challenging and frustrating, especially if you’re going it alone.

Honestly, if you’re going into it hoping to just build up your town on your lonesome, it’s just not anywhere near as enjoyable. Exploring new islands becomes a greater chore as you work against the clock to find everything, and the limited inventory space means you’ll be wasting more time dropping things back home (at least until the islands form further out and the bus appears that can transport loot back home for you). What’s worse, defending your home can be a pain unless you spend wisely, and as much as you can ignore it, spending hard earned currency to fix everything or rebuild lost property can put you right back at square one. It’s that kind of balancing act that might turn off a lot of players.

Final Thoughts

There’s an element of luck to finding enjoyment in The Tomorrow Children, because it all comes down to how committed you are, and those who find your town online. If you’re sold on the idea of a Minecraft kind of co-operative experience that isn’t for kids, then I’m more than happy to recommend The Tomorrow Children. When it works, it works very well, and its at times creepy nature makes it a more compelling playthrough despite the work to build things up. It’s especially great when the online clicks and random players join your cause, but playing solo is a massive grind to the point where it just isn’t as enjoyable, so keep those online functions active.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

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