14 DAY TRIAL // Developer Q-Games has unveiled more information regarding the quirky upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive open-world adventure video game The Tomorrow Children.
The unusual and highly atmospheric video game was announced during Sony Worldwide Studios' press conference at Gamescom, last month, in Germany, among many other PlayStation 4 exclusives.
The game comes from PixelJunk developer Q-Games, and as such has a rather eccentric quality to it, being a bit out-there as far as design goes, borrowing heavily from '60s Russian children books aesthetic.
What the game entails
The game places you in the shoes of a clone exploring a strange post-apocalyptic landscape, scavenging for resources in humanity's bid to survive amid fearsome beasts and an unforgiving environment.
While the trailer was quite intriguing, it didn't reveal all that much regarding what the actual game was about and how it would be played, looking more like a stop-motion animation video than a proper game.
"Very difficult! It's basically an open-world sandbox game with some rules in there to encourage a feeling of 'togetherness' – that you're working together to build things," Q-Games founder Dylan Cuthbert replied when asked whether he could sum up the game in a sentence.
"If you were to distil it down to the most action-based elements – you explore the surrounding islands; you mine resources; you work out a way to get them back to town, then you use them to expand your town. You can even craft tree saplings and do some farming if you want to – you can farm apples to feed the population you're restoring," he further explained.
In addition to gathering resources, players will also have to deal with various marauding monsters that will come and destroy their buildings, and that will pretty much be the base gameplay loop.
Since the game follows the evolution of the post-communist descendants of a group of Russian survivors, everything that you do will be sanctioned by the state. You can go to the labor office and get a print out of every action you do, which will then award you a sum of money that you can use to buy various perks and tools.
How it came into being
Cuthbert revealed that the team wanted to make a game that had a strong social element to it, set in a living world that you could interact with and manipulate.
"As for the art style, I really like wooden puppets from the Czech Republic, especially from the '60s. And more generally I like the fashion from the late '60s too. As we wanted the game to have this social experiment element to it we figured the best basis for that would be a Marxist setting – that 'behind the iron curtain' Cold War feel always gives you a bit of a thrill," the designer added.
The team experimented with a lot of different visual styles, before settling for a novel way to present the game, offering it an almost pre-rendered outlook, just like animated films.
Furthermore, the team is committed to offering long-term support for The Tomorrow Children.
"We've got all kinds of ideas and want to release updates very regularly. There'll be plenty of content in the initial release but there are all kinds of things we want to keep adding because it's such an interesting world to build on."
"Being able to build giant robots, for example – they can then go out and defend your town for you. There'll be big content like that, but lots of bits of small content too, such as being able to buy your own house on the black market, and then just going in there and hanging out, should you want to," Cuthbert revealed.
