Help Will Come Tomorrow is a survival game in the same general style as Dead in Bermuda and Dead in Vinland, but with an infinitely more interesting setting that takes place after the October Revolution of 1917. After unknown forces bomb a train traveling along the Trans-Siberian Railway, the survivors who manage to escape attempt to survive in the wilderness without dying from starvation or hypothermia. I’m probably not going to review Help Will Come Tomorrow when it comes out; my key request for the full game was answered with a demo key, and since the system has no way of differentiating between those two things and doesn’t let you re-request things you own, I have no way of requesting the full game (and buying it isn’t an option since the release date clashes with another game I’m planning on covering in late April). That might be for the best, however, because while the mechanics here all work well and I didn’t experience any bugs, the English translation is a confusing mess.

Since this is a demo, my full Help Will Come Tomorrow demo screenshot gallery (170 images at 3840x2160) is available for free even to non-backers.

That’s not to say that it’s impossible to figure out what characters and tutorials are saying, but the circuitous way things are described certainly necessitates reading through text boxes multiple times to try and piece together the intent.

A lot of the tutorials remind me of legalese, actually, and the roundabout, overly formal and intentionally opaque way contracts tend to be written. Conversations between characters tend to be strangely phrased, too, with gendered pronouns for neutral nouns like “government” and other peculiarities. It’s all very weird, and I found myself figuring out many of the mechanics for myself because the tutorial reads like an iTunes user agreement and didn’t stick with me.

You begin Help Will Come Tomorrow with four randomized survivors from the train. Each has their own history and personality that may clash with other passengers, so keeping everyone on the same page to the best of your ability seems pretty important. The demo ends after you survive for just three days, so it’s hard to get a sense for how crucial this is in the grand scheme of things, but given the scarcity of food and centrality of characters working together to improve their little base, I’d wager that it becomes very important. All four of your characters have action points that can be used to build things and go on expeditions to find food/water/building resources. Again, though, the demo ends long before this part of the game becomes clear. There are dangerous areas that I elected to avoid given everyone’s initial fragility, and while that didn’t provide enough resources to build more than a couple of structures, it kept them alive to the end of the demo regardless.

Help Will Come Tomorrow could be a lot of fun, provided its translation is cleaned up a bit. Apparently, the game is on Kickstarter right now (for another ~15 or so hours) despite supposedly releasing in April, so maybe some of that money will be used to tighten up the writing. Honestly, I’m not sure what to think about this one. It’s a fine demo, but there’s not enough here to tell what the full game will be like, and I can’t really recommend something I can’t guarantee will be good. And that whole “demo key on a full-game request” thing kind of gets under my skin, too. Shrug.

Help Will Come Tomorrow demo impressions first appeared on Killa Penguin