izigame.me

My feeling about this game are very mixed. But I will start with this. It is good and I (mostly-kinda) enjoyed playing it. In fact, I even found myself coming back to it just so I could get a victory.

I've had (mainly) three runs with it. Two were on the normal difficulty (whose name I don't remember), and one where I won was on the hard difficulty - resident of siberia.

Help will come tomorrow has many interesting mechanics. Its action based survival gameplay is quite intriguing. It does really represent a struggle. Both physical and metaphorical.

During the days you will go on expedition(s) to the taiga to look for food and supplies while avoiding the renegades and dangerous animals. The map is static between playthroughs, and the only varying part is what part of each hex's specific loot table you will be able to get as you exhaust more and more of its loot.

You will then return to the camp and use the food and supplies you gathered to improve the camp (somewhat like darkest dungeon, but with actual supplies), craft tools and medicine (do you like this war of mine?) and care for your survivors body and mind.

Now, at night, begins a different struggle. Your surivors will sit around the campfire and you will be able to pick various topics for them to talk about. Those come in three flavours: The survivors sharing and questioning each other about their personal stories, discussions of personal events and ideas - where you can be assigned "quests" to complete on the map, and the most intersting part - discussion of WWI era internal russian politics. This is honestly the best part of the game. As much as the survival part is interesting, the writing itself shines much brighter. Especially since you have some choice in how the survivors respond to each other (usually a choice between sticking to their ideals or being more progressive and open with each other).

During each and every part of the game (whether while exploring or in the camp), you can also get "events", where you will be presented with a small sunless sea type choose your own adventure storyline. This is also where the game's writing shines. The things that can happen range from more generic things you can encounter in the taiga to difficult choices and the nerrative writing . The "quests" you can do also follow this style, although in there your choices are mostly between figuring out what you need to (which is usually gathering information which leads you nowhere and coming across supplies) and giving up on it/running away.
The games final "quest" will also be presnted in this way. You can have one of three options (signal the train, kill all the rebals or fight the bear ). That one, is a serious of smaller stories and quests that each require you to go somewhere or get something. Then when you finish it all you win the game.

Where my conflicted feelings start is with the way the game handles this difficulty curve. Like I said I had three main runs, in all of which I got to the part where you get the final quest.

The first one (signal) ended due to my camp being discovered (which never happend again. I can't even figure out if it's a number you can reach or a rng check) even though I had low visibility.
The second one (rebals) was extremely close to a victory and then I accidentally chose the wrong option in an event and gave up after that.
Both of those runs were easy. At no point did I feel like I'm struggling and it wasn't difficult to figure out which actions I needed to take to secure the best outcome for my survivors, I always had enough food, fuel, supplies and everything. Everyone had high morale, I completed every camp structure but barely needed anything they provided, etc. I was just waiting for the game to end.

The third run (bear), was actually a series of runs, but most of them ended very quickly (since I abandoned the run if one survivor died). Since playing on normal was so easy and bored me, I chose to play on resident of siberia. The jump in difficulty is more like jumping off a cliff. It was so easy to lose someone, whether due to injuries or frostbite which were very common, or just low morale causing them to do all kinds of things (but usually deserting the camp or dying from one thing or the other).
In so many cases I felt as if I have no choice forward, as if there's nothing I can do, as if the game just decided I've had enough and it's time to start the next run.

The events themselves can also be unfair sometimes. It's usually easy to figure out what's the right choice (and sometimes it's not even a real choice) but there was cases where things just seemed completely outside of your control. You could take massive risks and come out unscathed, then take the smallest of detour and get shafted. Also, who in their right mind thought that the bear instakilling you if you even encounter it (which is rng based!!!!!!!), but requiring you to go explore and gather info about it made sense?

Then came the won run. I mirculously stared with an easy to heal injury (and in my normal runs, I didn't even bother with the healing stations. In hard it's almost always a must since you usually start with them) and somehow managed to keep morale and food up for the enough time (another side note, the fire mechanic is basically meaningless outside of detection levels which I also payed little attention to after that one loss, there are so many things you can use as fuel that you will never even struggle with fuel) that I could secure myself the neccesary things to survive. And after that? It was easy again. Everything that happened in normal happened here. Then I killed the legendary shatun and won the game. Watched the ending sequence and uninstalled it right after. This review will probably be the last time I'll even be on the game window.

Despite all its flaws, I still recommend it. The survival mechanics are good enough, but the writing really does carry the game, there are some poetic moments which genuinely put a smile on my face.
I'd say wait for a sale then give it a try. You'll have you fun, just don't get too invested in it like I did. It's more about the journey than the destination.