Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow comes Today

BottomLine at the Top: A dark but well written p&c with high production quality. It's a story that will draw you in and keep playing. Good quality of life features and a well-designed art style make this a polished p&c that I highly recommend!
Pros
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-Post apocalyptic P&C adventure game. Always a plus!
-There has been some debate about this in the game's community hub, but I consider this game to have high quality voice acting. The performances were professional, and I felt the characters were well casted.
-Well written dialogue and story. This is one of Daedalic Entertainments strong suits and this game is no exception. It's an engrossing adventure that keeps you interested in the powerfully written characters and well-formed world setting.
-The story is dark af, but not so much as to be overwhelmingly depressing.
-Detailed character sprites that often have specific animations for various actions instead of generic "use/give" type animations.
-Double click to entrances/exits and double click fast walk for certain larger scenes.
-Spacebar highlight scene interactions function
-Good game flow, not too many parts where you get frustrating stuck.
-Ability to replay cutscenes you may have missed/forgotten via in game journal which also keeps track of important info about things you've done/need to do.
-This was a really cool one for me: Unique responses to using items on a variety of objects. It is usually the case that a game has a few generic responses to item interactions that do not do anything ("I can't do that.", "That makes no sense.", "That doesn't work.", etc.). This especially gets frustrating when you get stuck on some moon logic type puzzle where you have no idea what to do and you end up hearing these responses over and over again as you desperately try and figure out what the game designer had in mind. However, this game has unique responses for many, many different interactions. This is not usually done in most p&c's as there will inevitably be a huge number of combinations. That’s what makes it a level of detail I have rarely seen in a P&C game. It really gives the game a good sense of immersion. The acknowledgement of interactions that seem to make sense too also is a welcome feeling, like it’s justifying your line of thinking. The fact that they went to the trouble of writing and recording voice responses for all these interactions did not go unnoticed by this P&C veteran!
Meh.
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-Minor setup issues (quickly resolved by restarting game after selecting Fullscreen mode in the in-game settings)
-In game the character sprites have moving mouths while talking however this is not always the case during cutscenes. I'm not sure if there are technical or artistic reasons for doing this but I find it to be a little distracting.
-I feel as though some of the music doesn't always match up to the tone of the scene it is played during. I think they did it to not make the game feel too dark and to maybe lighten the mood.
-lots of steam achievements. I'm not a big achievement guy so I do necessarily consider it a pro but there are other gamers who will appreciate this.
-Only 10 save slots. Not bad, not great.
-At times the amount of dialogue borders on a visual novel.
Cons
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-Even with the spacebar highlight function, I found myself still missing some items as it can be easy in certain scenes to overlook an interaction or think that it’s an interaction you already went over.
-Some available areas to travel to are not intuitive to find. This is what predominately caused some of the few times I got stuck to occur.
Overall, I really enjoyed this title. At $10 for approx. 4 hours game play is a little pricey for a p&c game, however had I not picked it up on sale I would feel that at least it was a well-made p&c game to spend my money on. The ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel which I would def pick up if it ever gets made. Strongly recommended for the p&c aficionado interested in having a high-quality modern p&c gaming experience!

Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today is a dark, post-apocalyptic, dystopian adventure. You play as Michael, who wakes up with no memory of who he is, how he got there, or what has happened to the world. I decided to play this during my stay-at-home quarantine time which may not have been the best choice since it has some striking parallels to things from the Covid-19 Coronavirus Pandemic but, apparently I unknowingly like to play my games as close to the reality I'm living as possible.
I would not recommend this game for younger players. It seems like a 13+ game to me. Aside from the dark nature of the story content itself it has child prostitution, gang rape, abuse, suicide by hanging, body mutilation (you literally {possible spoiler} melt a dead priest's face with acid and then peel off the flesh with a shard of glass), the list could go on. It also has mild profanity. So if you have a weak stomach or a hard time processing any of those kinds of things this game might not be a good fit for you.
I can' remember for sure when I picked this up but I'm guessing it was in a pack with other Daedalic games. So I really didn't know much of anything about it when I started playing other than friends have played and liked it and it has positive reviews. I'm not a huge fan of dystopian type games (sometimes they seem to hit a little to close to reality for my comfort) but, I do enjoy them when they have a rich story. This game's story is pretty rich and I felt it was interesting and engaging. It held my attention and kept me coming back for more. Sometimes parts of the conversations feel oddly written or drag on longer than I think they needed to but most of it was pretty good. The most disappointing part of the story is that it ends abruptly. Apparently it's on;y meant to be part 1 of (at least) a 2 part series. That left me feeling a little dissatisfied at the end as if I hadn't actually completed anything or really finished the game. The big lead up seems to be that you can change things but, just when you've finally got an understanding on everything that's happened, regained, your memories, and are ready to do something about it... the game ends. I know very much want part 2 so I can feel like I finished it but instead am left with a cliffhanger, the likes of which I haven't experienced since before you could stream TV in an instant.
The graphics are kind of odd to to me. The faces and most people's bodies are appropriately detailed but when i comes you your own legs they have no real outlines or shading, or details of any sort. They are just flat grey and look slightly out of place. The art style seems to work in general for the game (besides the weird pants you wear) but it is an unusual mix of detail (backgrounds mostly) and minimalism (most of the characters). The walk that you have is also very unusual looking and weirdly animated. As odd as the walk looks to me the animation is smooth and the walk paths are good.
Game play is pretty straightforward consisting of mostly look at (right click) and interact with (left click). Inventory is accessed by clicking on the briefcase in the top left corner. You can drop an object on another to try and combine. All pretty standard for a Point & Click interface. You'll know how and if you can interact with something because the mouse will change to show an ion for how you can interact. You can also use the space bar to highlight all interactive areas on a screen. I like that it includes the ability to double click on an exit to jump past the walking scene and just go right to the next screen. You can also fast click through conversations. You can use esc to skip cutscenes but I did experience some issues with that where sometimes it would freeze the image but you could still here the sound playing. During this time all interaction was frozen but as soon as the audio for the cutscene finished everything returned to normal.
The audio is all well recorded, sound is good. The background music/sounds are well made for the tone of the game. The voice acting was all well done and well recorded. I didn't hear any breath pops or other oddities in sound. Most of the voices seem well matched to the character. However I did feel like Michael's voice was not what I would expect for the character. I got used to it over the course of the game but initially it struck me as the wrong voice for the character. The only other one I thought was oddly cast was The Hunter. He's got a proper British accent but says "dude" as much as a California surfer, and also throws in an "adios" at least once. It just didn't feel right for the character. It was still a good quality recording though.
For achievement collectors there's a fair amount of achievements, 24 to be exact. Only 4 of them unlock naturally through gameplay. The other 20 are fairly evenly distributed through out the 4 chapters of the game. You can get all of them in a single playthrough if you do it right. My first playthrough I got 22 out of the 24. I did look through an achievement guide before playing to get an idea of what I would need to do. Usually the achievements involve using an inventory item in a way it's not intended to be used or in a specific sequence. They aren't hard to get and I think an average user would probably stumble across maybe 1/4 of them on their own without really trying or looking at a guide. The descriptions attached to the achievements don't give a lot of great clues about how to get them.
Most of the puzzles are logical and fairly easy to figure out. I think I was a little stumped by two that were a little more subtle in how to complete them but, most are pretty easy it's just a matter of finding a way to get the needed item by completing something else first.I think if you aren't trying to fully explore and get every achievement this game can probably be done in about 5 hours. I took about 9 hours to complete the first playthrough but, I was trying to meticulously look at everything and get every achievement... and also answer a million questions from 3 kids It could have gone a lot quicker if you're not interested in playing that way.
Overall, I'd recommend this game to people who enjoy dark dystopian themes and those who love point & click adventures. If you play through in 5 hours it makes it about $2-$2.50/hr of gameplay. If you take a little longer with it like I did it comes out to a little over $1. I think it's a pretty reasonable price for the amount of game play but you can usually lower the price point by buying it as part of a bundle and/or watching for sales

A great adventure game that sadly ends abruptly an cliffhanger. Part 2 been in development for 4+ years.
Hope to see part 2 soon!

pros
+ gorgeous looking hand-drawn cartoony background artwork
+ well made dramatic cut scenes
+ unique art style
+ dark and mature story
+ post apocalyptic dark plot and chilling atmosphere
+ believable characters
+ main character's voice acting convincing
+ puzzles are enjoyable and not hard to solve
+ when you click to space, hotspots is highlighted.
cons
- voice acting eneven
- The games does end on a bit of a cliffhanger and there is still no sequel
- the game contains some gory scenes, disturbing images. i think this perfectly fits game's dark dystopian world but it s not definitely for children and faint hearts
- game is also filled with lengthy character expositions. you have to long talk with everybody about their life story after you meet them for the first time
- puzzles not complicating but generally you don't know what to do next. a hint system would be useful.
- Visions get repetitive and annoying after awhile

An interesting adventure game with an interesting story. I've had some issues with access to some places not being obvious (for e.g. I couldn't get to the roof top, read the walk through and noticed that I've just missed the location where the icon changes to a door...) and towards the end there are some situations where you get the feeling that puzzles don't make sense and are built in a way for you to randomly try until you click the right thing... But overall I really enjoyed the story, the graphics and the overall experience so I highly recommend this game to everyone who likes dystopian stories and enjoys playing games for the sake of the story.

Requires a bit of out-of-the-box thinking to solve some of the later puzzles. Anybody saying they are too easy are more than likely lying to save face, lol. A unique and often bazaar story that keeps you interested enough to keep playing to the end. Sadly, it lacks in length, replay value, and plays out like a very short prelude than an actual game. My 6hrs of play should be more like 4 but I did some lengthy AFKing during that time. Still, I do recommend this for anybody into apocalyptic mystery puzzle story games. Plus, the second one may improve on its "shortcomings".

Playing this game during a global pandemic makes everything more ...disturbing