The goal here is simply survival at any cost
By Daniel Tack | Game Informer Magazine
“This War of Mine”
Platform: PC
Style: 1-Player Simulation
Publisher: 11 Bit Studios
Developer: 11 Bit Studios
ESRB: NA
“This War of Mine” places the player in an unfamiliar role in the war game, controlling a small team of survivors in a war-ravaged cityscape. You don’t assume the role of a fearless commando in first-person, or manage troops in a real-time strategy setting; the goal here is simply survival at any cost in a broken down house. The experience is surreal, sitting at your comfortable PC and watching as your team struggles to eat, rest, stay healthy, and stave off crippling depression in a world without morals.
The core gameplay loop is simple, a rough cut that feels a lot like other survival games such as “Don’t Starve” or “Minecraft.” You build essential tools to help you out around the house (like stoves, raincatchers, and beds), and advance your crafting tables to facilitate your goals. You also have to make functional tools — weapons, crowbars, lockpicks — to help with your scavenging. During the day, you’re managing the status of your three survivors, a sort of dark Tamagotchi system where you juggle sickness, wounds, exhaustion, and depression. The loop is fun at first, but quickly becomes a repetitive, monotonous chore as you discover how to play, the day functioning as filler content while you wait for evening to approach.
These scavenging missions make up the meat of the game outside the sim-warehouse, as you encounter snipers, gangs, and other desperate people trying to survive. Using stealth, you can avoid some of these encounters, but not all of them, so you want to have a weapon on hand. These interactions often include decisions that will make you feel bad about yourself, delivering the constant message that when survival is on the line, humanity is at its worst.
If you can take all the messages and empathy out of “This War of Mine,” then it boils down to a rather simplistic survival experience that takes around 40 to 50 in-game days to complete. I wasn’t expecting to embrace the empathy aspects or some profound message on war, but after a few games, I was drained of any desire to switch to another title and rack up a kill count. It’s a fairly depressing experience, but I absolutely respect the title’s ability to impact me in ways that games generally don’t. I’d recommend this game to anyone looking for an experience that’s far outside the norm of what we expect when we pick up and play a new title. You may not enjoy playing “This War of Mine” in the traditional sense, but I think that’s kind of the point.
