The Tomorrow Children is a bad video game.

The game takes place in a “void.” “Islands” rise out of the void. They have resources you need, but you can’t get to them on foot as you’ll sink into the void, so you have to wait for the bus to arrive, then you board the bus and wait while it drives you to the island. There you mine and carry resources four or so at a time back to the pick up area. The bus returns and picks up the resources. You’ll eventually have to return because your pickaxe broke or the island has started to disappear, so you board the bus as well, returning to town. There you’ll need to move these resources into the storage areas so they can be used by everyone in town. Then you go wait in line at the ministry of labor where your work is judged. Then you are given ration coupons so you can buy more tools among other things. Then you do that all over again.

I did have a sense of community with the other players in my town (known as comrades) as they phased in and out of my view, though I never felt a sense of companionship. There’s no voice chat and you can’t group up easily because they phase in and out of your existence. It’s like they’re always there but invisible until they become relevant to you. I never felt a sense of progression either. When the town hit the population goal, I felt a sense of pride as the void became a lush, grassy terrain.

Until I realized I could no longer go to that town, I saw the fruits of my labor but never tasted it. All of my labor was worthless to me, as my land was taken by the government for a purpose I didn’t know. Hey, just like real Communism. I get the point,but that doesn’t make it an enjoyable experience.

The motif this game is going for is very clear and realized–a surreal Soviet nightmare, corruption and all. In order to drive a personal vehicle, you must purchase a license for 500 Freeman dollars, the premium currency. You can find this currency scattered throughout the world, but in my 15 hours of playtime, I only found 88 Freeman dollars. The licenses aren’t the only thing either.

I never crafted anything for the town. I left that to other players because every time you wish to craft something, the town needs the resources to do it and you need to complete a sliding block puzzle, literally one of the worst puzzles ever created. You must complete this within a time limit, as other players are waiting to use the station, but for 20 Freeman dollars you can just skip the puzzle entirely. Does a quest you’ve been given seem too tedious? Bribe the quest giver. Want a pickaxe that doesn’t take 15 seconds to break a single block of terrain? Buy one through the black market with Freeman dollars. The entire game is mundane. And while the game is trying showing you how terrible and boring communism is, that doesn’t excuse it from its sins of being boring and arduous. Sometimes I wonder if all the mundanity in this game is just a way to encourage the player to spend money.

The most exciting moment was when one of the giant monsters wandered through town. They’re always visible on the outskirts of town, but they never seem to target the town. The town is just in the wrong place at the wrong time, much like a natural disaster. When they wander through town, everyone gets on the cannons and starts firing away, but just like everything else in the game, the process of killing the monster is a long and arduous one.

The Tomorrow Children is a bad video game. It’s better as a social experiment than anything else. Maybe they’ll fix a lot of the problems in future updates, but as of now I can’t recommend it unless you’re interested in weird games.