Review: The Tomorrow Children: Phoenix Edition

destructoid.com:

While Q-Games is best known for the PixelJunk series, the studio’s otherworldly resource-gathering, town-rebuilding, kaiju-stopping game The Tomorrow Children left a mark. Assuming, of course, that you were around to catch lightning in a bottle back in 2016.

With an online shared-world foundation, this peculiar social action-adventure game let players roll into town to pitch in with exploration, hauling, building, and a lot of odd jobs — manual labor was kind of the whole point in this Soviet-themed “alternate future.”

Every task felt slow, methodical, and deliberate. But all the tedium ultimately paid off when folks worked together long enough to accomplish bigger goals. The Tomorrow Children was an entirely communal game, leading to memorable player experiences (and some chaotic trolling). It was a niche game, but a neat one, and it was sad yet somewhat understandable when Sony shut down the servers. The game needed time to flourish.

Now it’s back on PS4 this week thanks to passionate developers at Q-Games, who got the IP rights back from a surprisingly cooperative Sony Interactive Entertainment.

The Tomorrow Children: Phoenix Edition (PS4)Developer: Q-GamesPublisher: Q-GamesReleased: September 6, 2022MSRP: $39.99

I’ve been wanting to revisit The Tomorrow Children since Death Stranding. I only dabbled in this once-lost game, but I love the idea of teamwork-oriented shared-goal gaming.

Unlike the earlier online-only free-to-play version, The Tomorrow Children: Phoenix Edition is a $40 game with no “grind lessening” real-money purchases to keep it afloat. And instead of a dedicated-server setup, every player starts with their own peer-to-peer town, including the ability to cooperate online with strangers or play offline