A cult-classic Korean oddity from the early 2000s, TOMAK: Save the Earth ~ Love Story ~ , has come back in remastered form after 25 years as TOMAK: Save the Earth Regeneration. Originally released in 2001 by indie studio Seed9 (now Netmarble Monster), TOMAK combines elements of a raising simulation and romance games in surreal narrative experiment. In a recent interview with Game*Spark, the game’s original developers discussed TOMAK’s bizarre premise, explaining that it reflects a bygone era when “things were much more immature,” both in terms of technical limitations and creative approach.
Kim Gun, CEO of Netmarble Monster and a member of the original dev staff, describes how the team’s resources were limited back then, which led them decide on developing a raising simulator where they could “cut corners with resources”. Initially launched as a free title, TOMAK reached its definitive form when the developers decided to add romance elements into the game, in order to expand it for a formal release.
That said, being a resource-constrained character-raising simulation didn’t have an effect on the original vision of the game. “This idea came to me naturally as I was thinking about how to create a story that would allow players to empathize as deeply as possible.” Kim said. Since it was the team’s first game, they didn’t hope for much except for TOMAK to be recognized as a “normal game”.
However, what defines “normal” back then is much different from now, and according to Kim, TOMAK was definitely a product of its time. He notes that Korea’s entertainment scene was experiencing a wave of interest in “eccentric” concepts in the early 2000s, and TOMAK was initially seen as “a minor work riding that trend,” but its reception in Japan exceeded expectations despite its shortcomings. “Even if we tried to make it now, we couldn’t come up with the same thing,” he says, adding that it was “born precisely because we were inexperienced.”
“The branching design leading to the endings was very underdeveloped,” Kim admits, attributing it to the team’s inexperience and limited time. While he confesses that the dev’s approach to the romantic scenario was slightly immature and chaotic, he was pleasantly surprised by the writing upon revisiting the project recently. “I was prepared for there to be a lot of quite immature lines, but it turned out to be a more coherent story than expected.”
Now revived as TOMAK: Save the Earth Regeneration, the updated version remains largely faithful to the original. As Kim explains, the changes were limited to upscaling visuals and “adjusting the balance slightly” due to the game’s high difficulty. Rather than modernizing the graphics, the team chose to preserve TOMAK’s visual identity for the remake, prioritizing “not losing the charm of the original.”
TOMAK: Save the Earth Regeneration is available to play on PC (Epic Games).
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