Note: I completed the entire campaign in about 4-5 hours on a second play through. Your experience may vary depending on difficulty. Additional time was spent achievement hunting through subsequent playthroughs.

Help Will Come Tomorrow is a base-survival-story game in the same vein as the acclaimed This War Of Mine - except focused on the intertwining narrative of individuals during the Russian Revolution. While some support the Bolsheviks, others are loyalists who lament the falling of the Tsar and are fleeing. Others still have no allegiance and must contend with the changing world around them. This is the best aspect of HWCT - the narrative. With a random (if you so choose) ensemble of characters, the developers manage to weave a story of discord and survival that is both compelling and historically accurate. As a historian, I always do appreciate when other medium provide historical content whilst still crafting an enjoyable game. Despite a short playtime and only minor replayability if you enjoy learning about the characters, Help Will Come Tomorrow is a great game to obtain if you can get it at a suitable discount.


Pros:
* The characters are incredibly well-written - meshing and conflicting depending on the conversations you direct them to have. They all have historical archetypes and will bring up historical events that were happening during the period. You will get to know and understand the characters if you read all their dialogue, and become invested in their stories. I love how well their stories were written, and it is the clear best aspect of HWCT.
* The art style is just great, I love the fidelity with which they created their little world. Its pleasant to play and I never was put-off by lazy/poor graphics. The character models also very great, I love how they captured their identities in each of them.
* The intro is voice acted nicely and meshes well, however nothing else is voice acted.
* The music adequately fit the gameplay but was not very noteworthy. Similarly, the background noises were great at selling the atmosphere of the game.
* The gameplay is very intuitive and is not hard to pick up. However, there is still strategy in your decision making and you can always improve, adding another layer of depth despite its accessibility. On the whole, the entire gameplay loop is well-refined to make it weighty and important but never tedious or overly long.
* I really like how each individual upgrade to your camp has a visual impact - many games take the lazy route and just tell you that there's been an upgrade, however in HWCT there is always a visual change with each upgrade which is a very nice touch.

Cons:
* The historical aspects are fundamental to the story. If you're not interested in vicariously understanding the lives of those during the Russian Revolution and are only interested in gameplay, sorry the game does not give you that option. This is not an issue for me, but may be an issue for others.
* A complete playthrough is fairly short at 4-5 hours (depending on difficulty). You will probably need to make second run in order to be successful, but it does not change the actual length. There is some replayability, three different scenarios and of course playing with different characters, however if this does not entice you then you'll be left with an overall shorter gameplay time.
* Map exploration should have been a bit bigger. Granted, given that each gameplay loop is short, you can't really go too far. However, on the first playthrough you'll already know the entire map thus there's no need to explore further at greater risk to yourself.
* I managed to softlock myself in my first playthrough by not completing the end objectives in time. You can avoid this by being more diligent, however there was no indication from the game that I had screwed up and had no way to win afterwards (I survived several more days). This seems like an obvious issues that should have been addressed during development.


Help Will Come Tomorrow fulfills its role as a short but impactful and story driven historical game, with every aspect of the game feeling finished and refined. It's not a perfect game, there's only minor replayability which is only good if you enjoy the historical story - however this can be chalked up to this being the first game from a very small indie studio with a small budget. On the whole however, HWCT is definitely a game to pick up if the story premise interests you.

Score: 8.5/10 -> Fantastic, historically accurate, and engaging survival game!