This War of Mine: another side of tragedy
Noirit Mustapha
Immediately when starting a campaign, you gain control of some tired, hungry and dejected survivors in a rundown home filled with rubble and few supplies. There are no extra instructions, except to use your own instincts to help them survive. Things can be crafted, more supplies can be found, and other looters can be fended off. However, the real difficulty comes in some of the other choices one has to make. Specifically, this happens when you have to order your survivors to do something dubious to the other innocent NPCs (A non-player character) of the game. So begins another typical game of This War of Mine.
Known more famously for their unique tower offense Anomaly games, 11 bit studios took another type of approach to familiar gameplay aspects with This War of Mine. The game plays like a typical slow 2D platformer, and there are survival elements such as crafting, stealth and lasting as long as possible during adverse conditions. The difference between this and other war games is the perspective. Instead of looking at some action filled battlefield from a first person perspective like most shooters these days, the game takes you to a more familiar setting: back home. This shows the anarchy and hopelessness that can befall even ordinary people far away from the frontlines. In fact, the game is directly inspired by the terrible Siege of Sarajevo, the longest city siege of World War II, which can come off as hard hitting to know that such a bleak setting actually happened in human history.
Perhaps this is where the true difficulty of the game lies. It can be obtuse at times for beginners trying to figure out the best strategy to use to survive. However, both new and experienced players will always feel the pit in their stomach when they are forced to make some of the decisions in the game. If there ever had to be one single game that truly showed how hellish war can be, its This War of Mine.
