Tomorrow Corporation is a studio and team that's familiar to plenty of indie game fans. Back in the days of '2D Boy' key members produced the brilliant World of Goo, an early part of the download revolution on the Wii Shop. Since Tomorrow Corporation later formed (comprised of Allan Blomquist, Kyle Gabler and Kyle Gray) there have been three titles, all of which have graced Nintendo hardware – Little Inferno, Human Resource Machine and 7 Billion Humans. Their games have a distinctive style and clever design, so it makes sense that the studio's first move into publishing is for an equally eye-catching title.
Tomorrow Corporation is stepping into game publishing with The Captain, a title developed by Sweden-based team Sysiac Games – a two man studio of Peter Hedin and Benny Eriksson. It's a point-and-click adventure that promises a number of 'mini-adventures and multiple endings'; for fans of Star Trek its story format may look familiar, though it evidently has a heavy dose of parody and humour.
You play as Thomas Welmu, a 35 year old Spacefleet Captain. In the year 3300, war breaks out with ‘The Union’ and in an attempt to mount a new type of defense, you get flung halfway across the galaxy.
You now have to get back to your family before the dreaded ‘Sunblaster’ reaches Earth and destroys the sun.
The only problem is that space around you is filled with mindless people, aliens, droids, and other weird stuff that seem to want nothing else than for you to fail.
It'll be a welcome addition when it ventures onto Switch, and we fired a few questions off to Tomorrow Corporation's Kyle Gray to learn a little about how the company ended up in publishing, and to learn more about the developer Sysiac Games…
What was the main motivation for the Tomorrow Corporation team to move into publishing?
Sysiac Games has built such a gorgeous, funny, sci-fi point-and-click adventure game in The Captain, that when Kyle saw it as part of Indie Fund he gave me two alternatives: either we go back in time and take out the developers like the Terminator and then make the game ourselves, or we publish it.
When Kyle saw it as part of Indie Fund he gave me two alternatives: either we go back in time and take out the developers like the Terminator and then make the game ourselves, or we publish it.
Since time travel is not yet entirely reliable, we chose to help out and publish it.
Your own developed games have such a distinctive style, do you hope to have an equally strong identity as a publisher as well?
We would consider publishing only projects that look like something we would have wanted to create ourselves. We’re notoriously fussy, so The Captain is currently the only title we’re publishing on the horizon. It's entirely possible we'll never find another perfect match, and we're ok with that. If you know of any developers building a wonderful game that looks like something Tomorrow Corporation would make, with great art and a sense of humor, let us know?
What specific qualities drew you to The Captain and its development team?
We were seduced by The Captain’s dry Swedish sense of humor and amazing art style. And then we were even more seduced by the cool two man duo, Benny and Peter. The two guys live in a small town outside of Stockholm and have been making games together since they were kids, 30+ years ago.
Peter lives on a farm, so we often hear the sounds of horses and other animals while talking on the phone.
As your 30 second elevator pitch for The Captain, what should Switch owners expect from this game?
You are the captain of a little space ship lost in space, and you have to find your way home across the galaxy. Along the way, you will encounter dozens of adventures, each with multiple endings. You will collect friends to join you on your journey. You will make enemies. You can't save everyone. Who will you leave behind? Will you destroy a civilization for a chance to get home faster? Dozens of multiple endings support all of these tough decisions. It's all up to you – you're the Captain!
We're looking forward to seeing more of The Captain in the coming weeks and months, and want to thank Kyle Gray for his time. Let us know what you think of it in the comments!
