The Tomorrow Children is a strange little game, and infinitely unsuited to being experienced in a 15 minute demo. An open world sandbox adventure game from PixelJunk developer Q-Games, The Tomorrow Children is hoping to be a heavily Soviet/Communist themed game of everything for everyone, but I have the feeling that only upon its release will we know if it will live up to its promise.

Before I was allowed to play the demo, I had to watch a video explaining the basic mechanics of the game. The video was well done, with incredibly accurate-feeling Soviet Russia propaganda going on, which was carried on in the game itself (my Russian is...non-existant, but it sounded like the NPCs were either speaking in Russian or in some made-up language that the developers want you to think is Russian). The point of the game is to play with other players online to build up your Communist little town, either by working in the mines collecting materials (you have to ride a bus to the mine, complete with on-board video of propaganda), taking care of your town and making it beautiful/providing it with electricity by running on a treadmill (while watching MORE propaganda!), or by creating/buying weapons and fighting strange giant alien monsters that have come to destroy your Communist paradise.

I was only able to experience the worker life in my 15 minutes, so I dutifully took the bus to the mine for Mother Russia and picked up random materials and hit rocks for a while before accidentally falling to my death and losing all my items I had meticulously gathered. Upon respawning, I only had a few minutes left to play, so I went back and gathered up some of the things I had lost again, managing to successfully place them in the designated pick-up area before my time was up. The game controlled well enough, and it was interesting seeing other players going about their lives in the game (they show up as see-through versions of you, basically, because apparently everyone is the same in Communist Russia, although later in the game you can have outfits). What I played reminded me of a more restrictive version of Minecraft, but it's obvious the true strength of this game will come from playing with other people to level up your community, while you level up as well.

The Tomorrow Childen was a bit strange, and I couldn't even form an opinion on whether or not I liked it in the short amount of time I got with it, but it seems to be well-made, well thought out, and SUPER communist. We'll see if these pieces will add up to a successful game or not, but there's no denying that The Tomorrow Children is different and unique, which is definitely a good thing.

The Tomorrow Children is currently awaiting a release date.