This War of Mine

I've made it pretty clear that I'm a big fan of games that make me feel like absolute trash, but in a "It's my fault this sort of thing happened." Recommending games like A Dark Room, Walking Dead Season 1, and Spec Ops: The Line, sadness simulators have been right up my go to for emotional trauma at my fingertips. I think one of things that made all these so successful as that the terror and sadness creep up on you. I mean, even in The Walking Dead, in an environment where you're in a constant position of fear and worry with the persistent threat of zombies and death and sadness, the big hitting moments are paced in such a way that right when you feel like things are getting better, the game pulls you back into the brutal world that you're playing in.

This War Of Mine takes somewhat of a different spin on it. The game takes place during a war in fictional Not-Russia. You control a few survivors struggling to stick together and survive by making do with the shit at your disposal. And by at your disposal, I mean shit you've scavenged for or stolen. The game functions mostly in two parts: building shit while you can in the day and scavenging for materials and equipment in the night. You slowly build up your means of survival by building water collectors, low-grade stoves, workbenches, weapons and everything in between.

The day-building segment functions like a depressing version of Fallout Shelter. Though obviously more in depth and detailed, you spend the day creating things, waiting for things to be done, or waiting to send people out into the city to scavenge. Occasionally, visitors will stop to trade, or to ask for help, or something else. The rest of the day will be when you make sure all your survivors are all healthy enough to fend off in the night. You'll apply medications, bandages, and make your people eat and sleep in the day. You'll also spend this time building tools, traps, and other miscellaneous stuff to make bigger and better things.

The night-scavenging follows a Gunpoint-esque 2d stealth platformer. Sometimes stealth isn't required if the area is abandoned or without hostiles, but since your character moves the same and you're given locational sound cues regardless of the necessity of stealth, you're never sure how stealthy you have to be. Before you'll begin your nightly excursion, it's important to equip your scavenger with things that will help them on their trip. Shovels to remove rubble, crowbars or lockpicks for opening doors, weapons for defense, etc, but you don't want to take too or else you won't be able to bring much back.

Overall, the game presents itself beautifully. It's aesthetic is dark, grey, and all has a penciled over look. The frame of view being dependent on what your character could actually see creates a worry of what may be making noise on the other sides of walls or on different floors, even if it is just a mouse. The sound-design is also wonderful. While it has some light minor music somewhat reminiscent to the Last of Us, the sound effects for removing rubble, crafting, cooking, and moving is all well articulated. It all comes together to create this sad and somewhat realistic feeling environment.

Unfortunately, there are two major factors that make it difficult for me to enjoy the game. The first one comes from the structure of the day-building segments. I said it's built like Fallout Shelter, and that's to its ironic detriment. After setting up the few things I need to take care of in the day, you either wait until they're done to use, or you fast forward until the night. If you set someone to cook, you'll have to wait however many seconds until they're finished to consume it. Many days would be me setting my people up to build, or rest up, or whatever, and then i'd check my phone while I waited. After I got over the dreary setting, I couldn't stay immersed in the world while I'm sitting, watching someone stand by a stove or a workbench. Shit gets tedious.

The other main thing that struck me is that this is a game that wants me to feel bad but has troubles allowing me to create my own emotions. See, it's best when I go through the ruins of a school and find notes amongst the scrap I'm looting. Or when I hear a positive weather report on the radio while looking at the grey, depressed world I'm in. You get the feeling that there's not much you can do, but you're making the best with what you can and who you have. The big people in power don't care or think about the people you're controlling, and it gives an oppressive feeling of helplessness. Which is all great!

What is NOT great however is when you go and you steal resources from an elderly couple and your character returns to the house with a "sad" status. That's cheap. The characters of such little personality anyways so that they're practically interchangeable. Yeah, one may move a little faster, or one may have a bit of extra space in their inventory, but that doesn't create a character. Just because one's a "good cook" doesn't mean his food is better or more filling, he just does it a bit faster. Not like I care much given all the time in the day I have. They all complain about hunger and sleepiness in the same way and they all control virtually identically. Sure, they may have backstories, but their current stories are all the same, and telling me they're sad is of little interest to me. Maybe if it they somehow acted sad but still do what you make them while others are visually or even vocally reluctant. Just because a character has a frowny face doesn't mean i'll have sympathy for them.

The thing that really killed it for me was a game changing bug I found. One of your characters can be "good a bargaining," which essentially means people will sell you things for cheaper than they're actually worth. This led me to just getting stuff for free. Oh, you have bandages and some wood? I'll gladly offer you some bandages for that! Rinse and repeat until you have just about everything they had to offer. Oh, not feeling sad about stealing from that guy, huh? I mean, he's trying to survive too, it's not his fault he's just incredibly stupid.

Like I said, I'd prefer it if they left it up to me to form thoughts. I don't need this character thinking "Those people probably won't have enough food to survive," that's for me to acknowledge. By pushing it in my face, the game wants me to feel bad and relate to these characters, but there's just nothing there. It pulls me out of the game. I want to feel bad because I stole and killed innocent people, not because the character did it.

Sadly, I didn't end up playing this game too too much, or even to completion. Maybe I will at some point, but it just wasn't engaging enough to me. When I sit down to play a game, I don't want to prepare myself to do something else while I wait, especially when this is the type of game that gains the most from immersion. With games like Spec Ops, or Telltale's Walking Dead, there's something keeping me going. With this, it's a constant struggle to succeed and when you do, it doesn't feel particularly rewarding. Maybe I didn't play it right. I didn't steal or murder anyone. Part cause I didn't have to, but part cause I didn't want to. I didn't want to, not my character didn't want to. Big difference.

But maybe that's the game winning, right? War isn't supposed to be fun, you're not going to be a winner, and people aren't going to be happy. But at the very least, I have to care about the people to succeed. Because if I don't, why am I even playing?