Looking at: This War of Mine

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Right Shift.

In a world post-Dead Island, I rarely trust video game trailers anymore. So many times have the games failed to deliver even the slightest bit of what the trailer promises that I've just become jaded to the whole thing. This War of Mine is a bit different through. No, the game doesn't involve a protracted gunfight in a ruined city street, but rather the cinematography of the trailer is what really sells TWoM, the entire game is a subtle shift off-screen.

I've always wondered what goes on just out of frame, be it in film or picture. With video games you rarely have to wonder, since most games give you free reign of the camera. But do they really? Think about the Call of Duty franchise for example. Sure, you have free reign over what you're looking at, but you don't decide what you see. Following their inclusion into the series in COD: MW2, civilians appear in almost every COD, but they're only there as moving distraction, part of the scenery. Other shooters are the same, with the game only showing what you and your team mates are up to. TWoM is a shift right, the camera has been knocked over, and now we're looking at what's usually off screen.

Black, White, Red.

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Nights are spent scavenging, and hoping no one else is. =

Everything about TWoM is a tonal shift, from it's subject matter down to it's graphical representation. The plot, as much as there is one, is you are in control of three survivors in an unnamed middle European country in the midst of a civil war. Your city is under siege and there's no escape. Indeed, there is no escape from anything in TWoM, and you'll send your small group through hell and back to see them to the other side. It's a game about survival, but it's more about what your willing to do to survive.

You'll have to worry about food, warmth, and everyone's health on a daily basis. The game starts a little easy, with at least a few days of relative heat, so you'll only worry about food. There's two phases, day and night. During the day you're confined to your shelter, and will spend time prepping food, making furniture, and crafting tools and weapons. During the night, one person will run out and scavenge while the others either stand guard or sleep. What happens back home is randomized, some nights it'll be quite, some nights you'll be attacked, and it all falls on your guards to sort the situation out.

Scavenging is one of the more interesting parts of the game, since it's the part where you'll have the most direct control over what's happening. You take command of the scavenger and direct them to loot locations. Sometimes you'll need to overcome obstacles, and sometimes you'll meet other survivors. These encounters are some of the more interesting parts of the game, as you can choose how to go about them in a variety of ways. The obvious answer is to run away, but this means you don't get any supplies, and food and medicine is almost always guarded. If you have goods to trade you can occasionally set up trades, offering useless items or items you have in excess in exchange for goods.

Both Sides.

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Other people are often your biggest obstacle.

When stealth or peaceful discord fails there's always option three. This is where TWoM really goes for the emotional gutpunch. See, you can just kill anyone in your way, and occasionally violence is the only answer. But a lot of survivors you meet are just like you, trying to get through with meager belongings and barely a roof over their heads. Worse is that robbing and killing people will affect your characters. Doing deplorable actions can make people depressed, and eventually break them mentally. having one of your survivors killed can be ruinous to moral sending everyone into a deep depression.

It creates an interesting balance of "how deep am I willing to go to survive?" that we don't often see portrayed in games. TWoM is easily one of the darkest games I've played in some time, approaching The Walking Dead or Spec Ops: The Line levels of human reflection. There are no monsters in TWoM, only people trying to survive.

The Line Blurs.

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Your home base, which can be upgraded over time.

To reinforce this is TWoM's striking visual style. The game looks like pencil sketches, with wavering lines and shades of black and grey. It's a great look and helps to sell the dark tone of the subject matter. At night the game looks great, with the darkness being an ever present entity, both friend and foe. Despite this look, things are easy to distinguish, and this is all helped by great UI tool tips that highlight items you can interact with.

What's perhaps most divisive about TWoM is how enjoyable it is. One the one hand it's an easy to play game, with plenty to keep busy with, and great moments of tension creating a rollercoaster of emotion. On the other hand, it's quite boring and repatative, with only a handful of items to make and no real direction or goal. The real question is whether a game with a message like this should be considered fun.

Spec Ops: The Line has often been praised for it's story and characters, but it's never received praise for being fun. Gone Home, for whatever reason, has received praise for it's presentation and story telling, but it's not been called fun. This creates the debate of should games with a message to them be fun? Does a game need to be enjoyable to play when it's trying to tell you something? It's like dressing a minister in a clown costume and asking him to do a sermon on the book of Job. Can he deliver his message? Probably, but we might not take him seriously while he's doing it.

For what it's worth, I think TWoM is enjoyable to play. It's really simple and easy to get into, and don't be surprised if there's an android/IOS port in the very near future. It's all mouse based, and the UI is just useful enough to make this not a hassle.

Gimme Shelter.

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Coming back to a looted shelter can be a nail in the coffin for your group.

TWoM obviously comes from a very personal place. It's examination of war is so in depth that most games simply don't compare. It's inspired by true events from the Siege of Sarenjevo, and the stories from that have really shaped the game's experience. There are some issues with TWoM however. It's lack of tutorials means that the barrier to entry can be high, and this is made harsher by the random nature of the game. My first game I started with no food at all, and it took some time for me to figure out how to get some. The pacing is often painfully slow, and while you can skip straight to the night sections, this is rarely encouraged since you risk wasting a the entire day. The game is also brutally tough, although I hesitate to complain about this since it's supposed to be difficult.

This War of Mine is an interesting game, and for once it's an indie game with a message that isn't horrible or un-enjoyable. There's a legitimately good game here, and it's foundation is strong enough to make playing it fun. It's a game with a message that remembers that it's a game, and it's refreshing to see. It might not change anyone like Spec Ops: The Line did, but it's a great game with some great stories to tell.