This War of Mine is something really unique. In This War Of Mine you do not play as an elite soldier, rather a group of civilians trying to survive in a besieged city; struggling with lack of food, medicine and constant danger from snipers and hostile scavengers. The game provides an experience of war seen from an entirely new angle.
At the beginning of This War of Mine, I felt like playing a very depressing game of Sims, and this depressing game very quickly turned into one of the best games that I played in a long time. I still hold the memories of my survivors dear to me and sometimes think back to the day where we all survived a war together.
This War of Mine puts you in charge of a group of interconnected lives. The difference to the Sims is that you don't try to get your sims a new job or make them have a baby with the awkward neighbor. Here, you're playing God in the middle of a war.
This War of Mine puts you in charge of 3 unfortunate souls that have to survive a civil war in Eastern Europe. Those people are no Survivalist, no battle-trained soldiers, or veterans they're just some poor civilians that were caught up in this mess. They were thrown into a life without running water, heat or food with nothing left but themselves and you. During the daytime, you manage their actions inside a cracked, multilevel structure.
You'll need to make your shelter as livable as possible while managing the time because the daytime is limited. you'll have to have them patch walls, build beds, grow vegetables, filter rainwater, bait and catch small animals for food.
Those things all require resources that you first need to gather. There is so much to do that you never seem to have enough hours in the day to complete everything. While doing all those things you'll need to feed your survivors, make sure that they sleep enough, take care of their mental health and many more things that will make you experience the terror of war.
The Nighttime approaches when the sun is slowly setting on the horizon. You are able to scavenge for materials, food, medicine and many more things during the night. But the Nighttime is even more stressing than the daytime because you'll be confronted with other survivors which are as desperate as you and will steal from your or outright kill you. You are able to choose from a lot of locations in the area, each with their own story and drama.
I was so frustrated with my first playthrough that I deleted it 2 days in and started a new one outright to make everything better(Nothing got better). Raids will make you feel the real frustration of the game. Raids is when other survivors force their way into your shelter by force. The Raiders take anything they want and kill your survivors if they happen to be in the way of the Raiders. Raids happen overnight while you are away raiding yourself. the player can best prepare for them in advance by patching walls, making weapons and setting up someone to guard the shelter. But the thing is that the guards will not get enough sleep that night and might fall out during the daytime which will reduce your productivity greatly.
Sometimes People will knock on your door to ask for help, sure you can send people off during the daytime cycle and make them help other because you are a good Samaritan, but that will make you loose this person during the daytime cycle until he returns. You'll more than once see you refusing an old man trying to rescue his daughter from under some rubble because you can't spare a person right now. This is kinda fucked up, isn't it? But this is what War is doing to you.
This War of Mine does something to you, it changes you. I felt shame when I was stealing from an old couple that tried to survive the war just like I did. There were times when the military dropped by at my shelter. They asked me if I had any kind of information on someone who stole food from a Military Air-drop, they even offered me cigarettes, canned food and fresh water in exchange for any kind of information. Me having 3 Survivors, that were on the brink of dying from hunger, ratted out my neighbors in exchange for some canned food - They were never seen again. Disgusting right? But that is what War does to a Person.
I questioned myself why to I keep playing this depressing game? Normally a game would require me to master the mechanics in order to beat the game, but that was different with this war of mine. This War of Mine let me explore the psychology of people from the safety of my home. This War of Mine makes pulls you in so much that you will become really emotionally invested in the characters and it will break your heart when you see the Game over Screen.
This War of Mine developer was in a real civil war and recreated this experience in this awesome game. It made me understand how war's really are and that I will never ever want to live through something like that. It made me realize how cruel humans could be, how little I cared to throw away alive just to survive myself. It's the kind of game that could potentially change the way you watch the news, treat others or cast a vote in an election.
