This is the third and final article on
This War of Mine. After completing three playthroughs in
three weeks, recording my initial thoughts, and scripting a
dramatized account of my second playthrough, this article will
discuss two aspects of the game: difficulty, along with a number of
silly and serious oddities.
Oddities:
My survivors live in a bombed out city,
with no running water (we have to purify rain water), no stove (until
they construct one, which requires wood to burn), and no lights, but
we store raw meat in the fridge and it never goes bad?
Food seems to be impervious to time in
This War of Mine. It's more likely to be stolen than to
decay. I once kept a pot of cooked food on the stove for a week in
sixty degree weather, and it was as edible and filling as the day it
was made.
On the topic of food, I've wondered
about the animal traps. What sort of animals are crawling around
down there, and how long would trapped meat stay fresh? I've always
needed the food too desperately to let it sit, so I've never
discovered the answer.
Injuries and death are common, and it's
better if it happens to the other guy. But characters react to death
in wildly divergent ways. Pavle, the football player, killed one
person with a knife and he descended through all three levels of
depression: sad, depressed, broken. Roman, the professional soldier,
attacked an army outpost. He knifed the guard, took his weapon and
then shot five. He was smiling the next day.
Being raided is an unpleasant
experience. It's made even worse when the raiders wound the
survivors who stayed overnight. A survivor could receive near fatal
wounds, but never fatal ones. Never did a survivor die in a raid.
The raiders are too kind.
An interesting bug/feature. The game
saves at the conclusion of the nightly scavenging. Upon returning
home the game informs the player if the house was raided. If it was,
the player can quit, and reload. I tried it a number of times and I
found the effects of the raid would change. But there only seemed to
be two possible outcomes each night. They varied in what was taken,
and any injuries upon survivors, but the raid always happened.
Considering the vast amounts of
weapons, appliances, medicines, tools, and cigarettes one can craft,
it seems a little odd there is no craftable clothes. Winter arrives
half way through the game, and a nice jacket would be excellent for
the chill.
These four people are living in a giant
building. It would be easier to heat and defend a smaller one. They
certainly don't need the space. More than half the rooms are empty.
There are a number of scavenging
locations where the character can exit on the opposite side they
entered from. Why can't they chose which side to enter from?
And finally, whenever a character finds
a locked door, a speech bubble appears above their head which says,
“I have a tool to open this,” even though they don't!
Difficulty:
This War of Mine so challenging,
a player needs to be willing to commit to loses quite a few scenarios
before having any chance of success.
The first reason: limited resources.
The game is difficult because every night the scavenger has a limited
inventory. They can only bring back so much stuff, and it's never
enough. Especially wood. Inventory slots allow for stacks, eight of
water, four of raw food, twenty bullets, or two wood. The amount a
character can carry is very small for game-play purposes, yet
unrealistically massive compared to reality. A recommendation I read
online said, aside from necessary items (food), always take valuable
objects, instead of crafting pieces such as wood and components.
Trade the valuables for whatever you need.
It's a good idea, except I felt I was
always in need.
This leads into the second problem:
What to craft? The game doesn't offer any helpful hints, and since
resources are scarce, building the wrong appliance the first turn can
be the cause of death five or twenty turns in. Built a radio the
first playthrough. Never again. You need resources to build beds,
animal traps, tool station, crowbar, knife, stove.... etc. Even
building the right item or appliance at the wrong time is incredibly
punishing. A heater is essential, but not till winter arrives twenty
to thirty turns in. Appliances and workstations need to be built in
the right order to allow characters to survive the current
challenges, while progressing towards further improvement.
As I said, the game punishes mistakes
brutally. A small mistake, a character dies, and when one character
dies this chain reaction follows:.
- They didn't bring back anything from their scavenging, so a night is wasted. Maybe the house was already short on food or really needed some medicine.
- The character was probably carrying a valuable tool like an axe, knife, crowbar, or gun. It needs to be recovered, but the area's dangerous!
- The characters at the house become sad, because their friend died. If something isn't done they could slip into depression. They're probably also hungry, sick, tired, or don't have a weapon to defend with.
- If there was three characters, now there's two. And two is impossible to work with. One person needs to scavenge every night, otherwise they'll starve, and one person needs to guard against raiders, otherwise they'll suffer injury and theft. But if there's two people, no one ever sleeps. Until one night they both sleep need to sleep. Then there's no one scavenging and they're both seriously wounded in a raid!
- Everyone dies.
Raids are uncommon early, but by day
five it felt like raiders were attacking every other night. By day
ten it was every night. Thankfully, around day twenty the military
came through and cleaned out the streets, reducing the raiding.
Waking up wounded is a serious setback, but defending every night,
spending precious bullets, and praying for the raiders to not return
is terrifying.
The scavenging phase is not without
danger as well. The best stocked locations are controlled by armed
thugs, rebels, or the army. They have guns, armor, and excellent
defenses. Even less combative locations can end in death. It only
takes one guy with a knife surprising your guy with a knife. Winning
a knife fight isn't much better, as the will character need expensive
medical treatment.
This War of Mine is deadliest
though at a distance.
Combat is lethal in a melee, but guns
are instant death. One shot will kill the weaker survivors, and the
controls can be confusing for returning fire. I lost a character
because I clicked in the direction of the target. But you have to
click on the target. One survivor dead, the whole house dead.
Though walking stealthily around
locations is supposed to allow the player to avoid combat it seemed
as if sometimes a person in the building would sense me anyways.
They'd yell and run to my location. Running away doesn't help when
someone has a shotgun.
While these could be viewed as
complaints, their purpose is to explain, this game is gloriously,
nail bitingly arduous. The difficulty is a combination of
intentional factors which need to be learned by multiple playthroughs
(which items to build), punishing resource and health systems, and
unintentional injuries due to a lack of tutorial or explanation about
how to play the game.
It's a tough game, but in spite of
that, I would recommend it. It's tough to survive in a war zone, but
viewed as a story of life and death in the chaos it truly becomes a
war you can own.
This War of Mine
Series:
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