Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today
"Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today" is the first part of the "Dead Synchronicity" series: help Michael face a dying reality, a universe that’s fading away. Face a merciless world that gets sick and vanishes. Face no past, no present, no future. Face the impending moment of “dead synchronicity”. And you’d better hurry. Because, otherwise... what will you do when Time dissolves itself? A terrible pandemic is turning all of humanity into “the dissolved” - the sick whose deliria provide them with supernatural cognitive powers... but also steer them towards a gruesome death. The root of this illness seems to be “the Great Wave”, an inexplicable chain of natural disasters that destroyed all energy sources and communications and plunged the world into a chaos ruthlessly controlled by both the authorities and the army alike. Michael, a man with no past, will have to recover his identity and decode the events that brought the world to the edge of collapse. Because, if he doesn’t hurry, he won’t be able to avoid the impending moment of “dead synchronicity”, when Time itself dissolves…
Released on
Genres
Reviews View More
The setting includes some supernatural elements which could make this particular story stand out, however in stories about the end times I'm always more interested in how people manage to 'stay human' in such adverse conditions rather than the causes for the situation. For my liking the game focuses too much on the latter, and the information we're given about the Great Wave isn't too captivating either.
The game is extremely dark with several scenes that I thought were unnecessary - whenever you create a piece of entertainment with things like refugee camps, contagious deadly diseases or state brutality, so issues that are still causing unrest in many places, you need to be very careful in the depiction of those and I felt like 'Dead Synchronicity' lacked the sensitivity required to include them successfully.
The gameplay is pretty standard - it's a point and click adventure and most time is spent solving puzzles to get to the next area. There were a few head-scratchers that I finally solved by using every object in my inventory on every interactable piece in the background - a tactic often used in this type of game, although some solutions were so absurd they felt out of place in a game so serious in tone. I was also surprised at how underused the 'flashback' mechanic was. Throughout the game the protagonist regularly experiences flashbacks that seemingly transport him in time, but it is used only once as part of a puzzle - this could've been expanded on significantly to make the gameplay more varied.
Voice acting is highly inconsistent, with a few characters particularly strong in that regard (e.g. the protagonist Michael), while other almost comically bad (e.g. Rod and some of the children). It doesn't help that a lot of the dialogue is written in an expository manner that potentially makes it more difficult to sound natural.
One last thing - on a number of occasions the choice of music was simply horrible. I'm convinced it's a bug, because I refuse to believe that someone would purposefully deflate several tense scenes by placing some generic rock in the background.
It stands at the moment as one of Daedalic's darkest games and while I don't mind some darkness/grim plots within gaming, there's a line and this game crosses it and then some.
While there's some interesting mechanics, puzzles and plotlines, its all knocked aside by the feeling of absolute dread and inevitability and sure enough, as the last act rolls around, several incredibly horrifying things happen.... Only for the game to suddenly come to a crashing halt on a cliffhanger that'll never be resolved. Its incredibly frustrating and disappointing and makes the entire adventure feel like a waste of time.
It's not even necessarily a cliffhanger, it just stops. The developers announced a sequel but it has had no updates in several years, I would consider it a dead project. It's sad, this looked to have a lot of potential to be a solid story if it was ever finished. My other main issue is the very hit or miss voice acting, the main character using a dialect that would suit an English (i.e. British) person but not an American, whom the voice actor is; I just turned the voices off at some point.
I really wish it turned out better than it did, but it's overall a bit messy despite the high points.
This review contains spoilers
- La interacción con personajes se basa en lo típico de q haces preguntas y ellos sueltan información. No son maniquíes y funcionan, pero aburre esa forma de narrar
- Tu inspección de objetos se suele basar en el personaje usando una retórica de narrador en primera persona de novela, lo cual no está mal, pero se puede volver cheesy
- No entiendo el rol de la trama misteriosa más allá de crear un setting y unas bases porque su conclusión no tiene sentido ni peso real; es ridículamente anticlimático.
- Me gusta el diseño narrativo; jugablemente es capaz de implicarte en la vida de sus distintos personajes, conocerlos y entender las dinámicas que giran entorno a ellos y el mundo que los rodea.
- Es capaz de dejar claro aquello que es interactuable y delimita perfectamente tu radio de acción. Su dificultad recae en la cantidad de elementos interactuables que encuentras por el camino y como todos ellos van a tener una importante tarde o temprano. No cierras una zona para pasar a la otra, se abren más zonas pero sigues debiendo explorar las anteriores para ver si puedes encontrar una manera de progresar.
Background and music I like - story, pacing, weird decisions for directing (music placement), world building and overexplaning story not so much. The world just doesn't make any sense, the explanations sound made up and actually you're helping a conspiracy paper...
The art style is unique in a good way and it definitely has some production value (voice acting), but it's just so flawed.