Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today (PC)
A man wakes up after the end of the world, only flashes of his past held in his fractured memory as he looks up at a sky just as broken. An unusual glowing fissure hangs over the remains of human society like a foreboding rainbow, the inverse of God’s promise to Noah as this fracture instead promises that another end will soon come. As the last vestiges of the human race do their best to survive in this bleak future, this man soon begins to learn the truth of who he is, what happened, and what dangers still await… only for the adventure to end before it has truly finished.
Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today is a point and click adventure title with a strong narrative focus, but because of this, it feels like the biggest caveat to a player’s potential enjoyment must be put forth first to avoid disappointment. This game was meant to be the first installment in a series that would explore the nature of The Great Wave that wiped out most of mankind’s technologies, caused multiple natural disasters around the world, and lead to a horrific pandemic where people become known as The Dissolved for how their grisly deaths manifest. However, since Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today underperformed, publisher Daedelic Entertainment was unwilling to provide funding for a follow-up and developer Fictiorama Studios instead moving onto a different project in the form of the seemingly more successful dystopian game Don’t Feed the Monkeys. A cliffhanger finale can often leave a bitter taste in a player’s mouth, especially when the game seeks to delay certain plot thread resolutions to a possible sequel, but Dead Synchronicity does skirt the problem that Dracula: Resurrection had. Dracula: Resurrection was a game building up to its confrontation with Dracula only to deny the player that moment, but Dead Synchronicity does tidy up most of its character arcs and addresses many of its mysteries before it reaches its cliffhanger finale. In fact, the titular Dead Synchronicity only begins to be explored close to the end and is the main topic of what the potential sequel would have covered, so rather than ending with something that feels unfinished, this adventure title wraps up elements like the protagonist’s search for his identity and his interactions with those around him before it goes for a paradigm shift where much of what was present here likely wouldn’t be carried over into the next game.
It’s not a perfect severance point of course, but there is still much to enjoy to Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today’s story before it comes to its unexpected end. The world after The Great Wave has many secrets to be found as you start to puzzle out what happened to the world, the nature of the Dissolved, and begin to find out the personal history of the playable character Michael. While starting off with amnesia is certainly a story-telling cliche, Michael’s memory full of holes at least plays into one aspect of this particular apocalypse, one of the major sources of the world’s state being the dissolution of time. Certain individuals seem to be coming unstuck in time, able to perceive the dead and view areas of the world at different points in history and the future. Michael experiences these brief flickers at seemingly random points as well as key moments in the story, and while the game takes its time in exploring the uses of these in the game’s puzzle solving gameplay, it still helps with rooting his particular affliction in a world that has many other problems with it you’ll encounter.
Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today is a dark, often bleak story that is not afraid to present some heartbreaking scenarios for its post-apocalyptic world. The game starts you off in an old junkyard people have been forced into as refugees by a government who seems to use their military might without much worry about retaliation, their gunmen often callous and engaging in violence if it suits their mood. Having technology ripped out of their lives has reversed the fortune of even the richest citizens, and we see people withering away with nothing but rags to their name and some of the most innocent people exploited for profit by those who know how to navigate this terrible future. Luckily, despite the story definitely addressing these sometimes uncomfortable topics and showing how depraved people can get when circumstance strips away a lot of social mores, Dead Synchronicity avoids being gratuitous in its gruesome and dreary displays. While violence is a coming part of the adventure, the game treats it as the shocking and awful thing it is, the player kept from desensitization by the game picking its important moments to show something grisly. Unsettling actions are balanced well too, with Michael having to get his hands dirty at points but never crossing over into a character the player would struggle to sympathize with. He actually stands as one of the few people in this future with a strong moral code and hope for improvement in this bleak scenario.
Michael’s outlook and the game carrying its heavy topics without dipping into anything gratuitous or pointlessly shocking allows Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today to avoid being a depressing experience, and it makes sure some of its darker aspects have a catharsis somewhere down the line where karma catches up with people both in rewarding the good and punishing the bad. Voice acting is present throughout the entire adventure and does a lot to give the characters more personality and appeal, and while humor is only rarely dotted throughout the adventure, you can find many sympathetic plights in the post Wave world to latch onto even as you meet some deplorable people. Not everyone has the best vocal performance sadly, Michael being cast well for his prominent role but other important characters sometimes a mixed bag. The Hunter, despite being one of the people who uses the apocalypse to his advantage, has some excellent line delivery that helps him be charismatic but with the expected edge of danger to him if you cross him, and he is written as a surprisingly reasonable man who doesn’t just flip off at the smallest slight and understands Michael’s unusual situation. Rod, the man who helps Michael out when things kick off though, seems to have a stilted delivery at times, partially as a result of his accent, but many accented characters like a pair of kids encountered later also have the strange line delivery so it might be a result of how certain voice actors received performance direction. It’s not too distracting despite its occasional flaws, and it succeeds when it counts most like in the handling of Rose, perhaps the most tragic character whose awful situation and mental handicap certainly meant the writer and voice actress really had to tread lightly to avoid shattering their sympathetic and believable portrayal of the character.
The dark and dreary world of Dead Synchronicity isn’t one with many colors but it is one with plenty of detail. While its characters have a distinct style to them that makes for a few rather effective and memorable images, they do look a little unusual in regular play. Michael and other adult men look unusually gangly, face construction on many characters can lead to harsh angled features and odd head shapes that don’t always look the best when it is time for them to emote or stand near other more reasonable proportioned characters, and the environments stand out for their completely different choice in color shading and the degree of detail they feature outside of special scenes. The game can apply details well when it wants to emphasize a situation or scene at least, but the level of attention to the background art can lead to interactive objects sometimes not standing out until you wave your mouse cursor around to search the entirety of the screen.
The point and click puzzles featured throughout are a good match for the gameplay pace, and the fact that many of them factor into bartering in the post-apocalyptic economy, exploiting the damaged state of the world, and getting around problems caused by the removal of technology as a reliable tool all make them both reasonable puzzles and ones that continue to build off the game’s setting. Some of the problems you must solve actually lead to Michael’s lowest points in doing what he must to survive and help others, made all the more impactful because you’re the one opening the inventory and realizing what you must use that shard of glass for. The amount of options you have at your disposal for problem solving can be a bit too numerous at times though, since once you open up the ability to travel to the city and start opening up areas in it like the sewers and corpse-filled park you’ll find yourself with many locations, interaction points, and a growing inventory that can sometimes have unexpected uses. Your goal for the moment is often somewhat clear even if its solution requires a few steps to reach the clear answer to the problem, and the game does often try to have a new big step in the story come with a new area you explore where you can start to fit together many of the lingering puzzle pieces.
However, navigation is always a little bit awkward. Backgrounds can sometime prioritize look over navigation such as the city hub where going to the rightmost part of the screen involves taking a specific route to avoid a dead end and that route can lead to you clicking an object by mistake rather than clicking where you want to move your character. You can double click to speed up traveling between screens, but as your options for traversal grow the game does risk slowing down as you need to go all over to solve the otherwise well-designed inventory and exploration puzzles.
THE VERDICT: Despite the cliffhanger ending, Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today structures itself well so its unanswered questions don’t destroy the experience. The bleak future you navigate plays its hand well, touching on many dark subjects while directly showing such awfulness only when it would have a meaningful story impact. Michael’s journey to learn who he is and what happened to the world adds a strong mystery at the center of the plot as your efforts to help others continue to combat the dour tone of the adventure, so while it can be brutal with its depiction of humanity, it does so with purpose and narrative weight rather than as a gratuitous indulgence. It does have a few other issues beyond the unfinished story like a breadth that weakens late game puzzle solving, some shaky vocal performances, and other small flaws in presentation and play, but the point and click puzzle element often has a good degree of thematic synchronicity with the plot and makes the gameplay portion a vital part of this intriguing apocalyptic tale.
And so, I give Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today for PC…
A GOOD rating. Had Dead Synchronicity left off at a cliffhanger sooner in the plot or even begun to dabble in its new topic of exploration presented by the abrupt finale, it likely would have hampered itself to the point this positive rating might not be as easy to give. The character arcs of people like Rose, the important details on who Michael is, and other aspects of the game’s setting and situation are all tied up relatively well before we’re presented with the sequel hook. While having the game titled after something that only really begins to be explored right before the curtain comes down feels like a bad approach in selling your game, this post-apocalyptic point and click has a good amount to give during its exploration of its desolate and dark future. It is not really a hopeful or optimistic game, but it handles its bleak elements well and counters them with Michael’s ability to make improvements to certain people’s lives and take away some of the power from those who do not deserve it. The puzzle solving’s ability to weave into this does a good job making up for its sometimes flawed execution when it comes to conveying how some objects should be used and where.
Despite the hasty wrap-up, Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today still has plenty to sink your teeth into in its four acts. While a follow-up to actually pursue the implied sequel’s subject matter would definitely still be appreciated, it at least left off without too many things that need hard answers, allowing for some satisfying conclusions in the game we did get. Even in such a sequel many of the important plot threads of this first title would likely not come up either because their mysteries were solved or a character’s involvement has reached its natural conclusion, and while it is certainly understandable if some players want to avoid starting a game that doesn’t look like some important elements will ever be resolved, there is still plenty of interesting plot points and puzzle concepts explored during the time we do get to spend in the world of Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today.