14 DAY TRIAL // This War of Mine is already a very different proposition from what the gaming industry usually offers when it comes to the portrayal of conflict, but the development team at 11 Bit Studios says that it has plans to introduce a series of very tough decisions for gamers to explore and deal with.
Pawel Miechowski, the senior writer working on the title, tells Edge that, “Imagine yourself in a besieged city. What would you do without electricity or water or food? What would you do to survive? Do the warring factions matter when the city is under siege? The biggest enemy, surprisingly, is not the military but other people robbing and killing each other for food.”
The team has worked with survivors of war situations from the Balkans, the Middle East and Syria in order to make sure that they are creating choices that are as close as possible to the real world and make the player feel tense.
This War of Mine will make survival the main priority for all those who engage with it and that means that often moral and ethical concerns need to be abandoned.
Pawel Miechowski adds, “This is real world and this is what you stumble upon in This War of Mine. When you have to survive it’s good to have your family with you, but you also have to protect weaker ones, like kids. What do you do with people you hate? You’re going to face in This War Of Mine.”
The game is designed to educate gamers about the realities of modern war and the effects that it has on the populations that are caught between two armies.
Players will always be less powerful than the enemies around them and that means that they will have to come up with innovative ways to find the resources that they need to survive and keep their loved ones safe.
11 Bit Studios does not want to appeal to the same group of gamers that plays traditional shooters like Call of Duty or Battlefield and hopes that such a mature endeavor will find an audience and will show what video games can deliver in terms of storytelling.
This War of Mine is currently set to be launched on the PC at some point before the end of the year and the studio might deliver versions for home consoles if it proves successful and they get support from Microsoft and Sony.