This War of Mine – Casual Gamer Column

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]trategy is one of the classic video game genres. There’s not much room for improvement – turn based or real time; building or resource management; invention or growth, most things have already been explored. However, there’s still room to put storytelling first and build mechanics contextually, and this is where This War of Mine, innovative in both its subject matter and its unforgiving ability to make the player squirm, succeeds.
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Squirm at what, you might ask. Well, the key topic is war and its effect on people. So, be prepared to stand witness to theft, murder and breakdowns because you constantly lack resources. Be ready to turn down neighbours needing your help and selfishly accept their gifts, hoping they will never come back to ask for something in return. You’ll be healed at the local hospital but can choose to rob it for medicine you may need or want to trade for food in the future. Debate with yourself what few items you can sacrifice to have one of the members pull through the night, only to have them die two days down the line, dooming the survivors.

This game is frustrating. You have only one auto save slot, which you cannot modify, unless you count as a modification the crashing of the game mid-through a scavenger hunt to get to a time before its start. Your characters get killed permanently and unless you restart the whole scenario, you cannot do anything about minor mistakes which eventually lead to a catastrophe. You also can play only one game at a time, which forces you to experience the drudgery of trying to fix a scenario where out of five survivors there is only one left, currently bleeding to death.

Thanks to all these qualities, I love the game to bits. With over 45 hours under my belt, the learning curve is really steep but once you figure out what is what, the game gets really interesting and not just overbearingly complicated. You witness bonds between people, how hard you have to try not to end entirely broken by the fighting and struggle of just pulling through. In only one scenario so far I managed to keep my characters sane enough that after the war, they did not end as recluses or completely mentally broken.

The game constitutes a very profound voice against war, as it portrays the far-less glorious, civilian, side of an armed conflict to that gamers are used to seeing in games like Battlefield or Call of Duty. It reminds me of the fighting in Chechenia under Russian invasion or the Balkans in the 90s, but the tale is universal. Apart from one playable character, nobody is trained in combat. Most people arrive at your makeshift headquarters wounded, hungry or ill, and you have to tend to them before they can be of any use.

The game constitutes a very profound voice against war, as it portrays the far-less glorious, civilian, side of an armed conflict to that gamers are used to seeing.

11 bit studios’ game is a breakthrough, one which people have only been able to compare to Spec Ops: The Line and its portrayal of PTSD in soldiers and brutality of war, with the key white phosphorus sequence. This War of Mine does not offer judgement however, letting you decide yourself what’s permissible or not – your characters get affected by your choices but ultimately, you can win their favour again by cigarettes or alcohol – anything to forget the atrocities they will have to commit for you to see the text “The war is over”. Whether it will ever really be over for them, however, is another matter altogether.
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