The Tomorrow Children: Phoenix Edition PS5 Preview – A Cult-Classic Returns
With its gorgeous Soviet-inspired fantasy visuals, social gameplay system, and vague midnight electronic soundtrack, the original PlayStation 4 version of The Tomorrow Children stood out as a strange but special game.
Unfortunately, the thoughtful and immersive game conceived by developer Q-Games was tainted by poorly implemented free-play mechanics and confusing onboarding, which plagued many players. But those who loved it really loved it and urged Q-Games to buy back the license from Sony for the next re-release on PS4 and PS5. And after spending a few hours on the newly overhauled PS5 version (the properly subtitled Phoenix Edition), it’s clear that Q-Games doesn’t take the fan’s dedication for granted.
The core loop of the game is basically the same. A player must rebuild her town and restore humanity by visiting the mysterious islands that emerge from the void, the empty expanse of human consciousness, and mining them for resources. Control a wooden doll that is. As before, you can collaborate with other players via a loose online connection, just like Death Stranding. (The children that Tomorrow Children did first.)
The more you play, the more tools you can unlock for mining, and the weapons you have to protect your town from invading monster-like monsters known as Izvergs. And for each Matryoshka doll you find while exploring, you can revive another cheerful human NPC peasant to live in your town. It’s a game where you can work on your plans or just immerse yourself in busy work for hours at a time, your mind is full of game dreamy soundtracks.
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Phoenix Edition adds this core experience in several meaningful ways. First, everything that can be played for free has been completely removed, and the gameplay loop has been significantly improved so that players can work in their town without paying extra or doing too much. became. This has a huge effect and makes the game more familiar and enjoyable.
This time, the game doesn’t disappear suddenly, so fans can rest assured. Solo mode has arrived. In this mode, players can work alone or with fellow NPCs without having to go online. Multiplayer games, on the other hand, are peer-to-peer connected and avoid the problem of killing the original game when the server was turned off by Sony. It’s been a year since its release.
Solo and multiplayer are intricately linked, so progress is carried over regardless of which mode you play. Personally, I loved the isolation of Tomorrow Children, a rare sensation in games that rely on multiplayer capabilities. That’s excellent. Here you can see that the new smart tweaks have improved the mood.
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The Tomorrow Children is all about working alone and working together, and you now have more control over your town. You can create it by yourself or invite your friends to collaborate via a party code. In both solo and multiplayer modes, issue commands to your NPC buddies to collect more resources, focus on town repairs, prioritize defense, or simply help your efforts. You can get support for the cause, such as. This means respecting the core concept of the game, even in solo mode, struggling together for greater benefit. It also means that you can leave the busy task of generating electricity and collecting resources to your NPC colleagues while focusing on the activities you enjoy most.
Even in multiplayer, these concepts are sophisticated. Players will continue to help build the town as before, but they can interact in new ways. For example, you can give an item to another player by visiting the house and dropping the item from the door, even if you are offline at that point. You can drop a tape recorder to leave a hint, or use a megaphone to yell out what others need to leave a Dark Souls-style note. You can build a bench in your town and sit on it with other players to heal. You can now share a tent that acts as a portable respawn point. This allows a fallen player to immediately join the battle without having to prepare their own tent. There are many such small additions and improvements.
Playground items that were purely frivolous in previous games now generate Toil currency. In it, seesaws provide a fun way for two players to earn currency together. You can also work together to set the right conditions for your town and invite your friends to win trophies. Or, if a player is sad in your town, you can report it more quickly and easily via a “snab” emote and eventually put him in jail to ponder their actions.
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There are new islands to explore, totaling over 40. Also, each has its own name for easy tracking. Three of these new islands are based on the design of the gaming community. For example, one new island I visited consisted of a huge glowing orb with a secret in the core. Also use new tools such as grappling hooks that can be used to explore these islands using the good old jetpacks of the original game and other tools, or to fire from guns to reach high altitudes. You can do it.
As you explore the island, new monolithic structures may appear. When enough players get together and touch it, the island’s geology changes, creating new areas and caves filled with goods to plunder.
On the other hand, when the Izwerg monsters attack, they will continue to desperately defend the town, jump into the turrets and use rocket launchers to defeat these giants. And when you do so, and when you mine their bodies for resources, you will find that they have a higher drop rate than they are now. Similarly, installing vending machines at the bus stop in front of each island makes it easier to find the consumable Void Kaboost, and the Void Power capacity is more abundant and varied than before. This generous extra sprinkle of items and rewards is the most obvious result of abandoning the mechanics that you can play for free, which means you can enjoy more variety and more fun.
Another very much appreciated change is the overhauled tutorial. The original version of The Tomorrow Children threw the player into the sandbox with minimal instructions and a complex description of a misleading set of currencies. Economics was so sophisticated here that Q-Games took much longer to explain to players the basics of exploration, town building, item usage and more. It’s still a very loose tutorial and players have to explore and understand things themselves, but the opening sequence of the event (entering the town, getting mining equipment, visiting the island and digging resources, etc.) Before being guided more than now. When the game detects that you haven’t progressed through the tutorial, it doesn’t hold your hand too much and gently nudges hints on what to try next. Some players may want more specific onboarding, but for all games where playing in their own way seems to be well-balanced.
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Oh yeah, it looks gorgeous. Also. The original PS4 game uses state-of-the-art lighting technology called cascading voxel cone traces, similar to ray tracing, to bring a concrete Pixar-like quality to the textured surface, flooding the screen with light. I created a beautiful scene. It emerged from the opening of the cave. The original PS4 version of the footage still looks great today, but when run at 60 fps on the PS5, the Phoenix Edition has a smoother, cleaner experience, darker dark areas and brighter highlights. ..
As for other next-generation enhancements, the PS5 version unfortunately doesn’t take advantage of the DualShock’s tactile feedback, but uses more of the controller’s speakers (listening to the screams of a nearby hidden matryoshka doll). Tilt), gestures are now mapped to the touchpad.
The Tomorrow Children: Phoenix Edition is more than a port of this PS4’s hidden gem. It’s a completely overhauled game, clearly given the love it deserves in the original. It’s still a rather esoteric package, but it’s much more familiar than before with in-game economics, tutorials, changes to social elements, and a brand new solo mode. Importantly, despite these welcome major changes, the game remains cozy and engaging. My three hours are gone and I’m excited to get lost again properly in the vague world of The Tomorrow Children when the Phoenix Edition is released on PS4 and PS5. September 6th.
