A game about war which uses a different perspective

Dec 25, 2014 08:41 GMT  ·  By

Next up in our Softpedia Game of the Year 2014 awards is the second best story created in the past 12 months.

In the second week of my effort to survive in This War of Mine, my three survivors were down to their least three cans of food, carefully preserved over the previous 10 days or so, and two of them had not eaten anything for a 24-hour period, which made them rather miserable and unwilling to actually help around the house.

The story of this trio was turning grim and I decided to use the last of my water supplies and the plentiful amounts of sugar I had scavenged to create some moonshine, which I planned to then use as a barter resource in order to prepare a feast.

After hours of work, night comes and my runner heads to the city square in order to haggle a little with anyone who has anything to eat on sale.

As always, the world of This War of Mine fails to cooperate and I get some un-cooked meat but no carrots or other vegetables, which means that my meals are lower in quality and less fulfilling, although topped with some booze they still manage to make my group both satisfied and a little happy.

The next day, my scavenger gets shot in a hospital area, my house is raided, and all the food is gone and one member of the trio becomes depressed because he no longer has cigarettes.

I restarted the game and tried again, although I was pretty sure that the outcome would be similarly bleak.

This War of Mine creates superb stories

Each player who has tried the new title from 11 bit Studios has similar narratives that have affected them and can be shared with the rest of the community.

The developers have been smart enough to create an interesting if vague setting for This War of Mine, set the stakes high, and then give gamers the tools they need to create their own stories, each of them filled with emotion and surprises.

War is often present in video games and is glorified in plenty of ways, but even the negative view created by 11 bit Studios is very engaging because it understands that gamers will care more if they feel they decide the fates of their characters.

This War of Mine is very bleak at times and I often had to take breaks from my sessions in order to avoid immersing myself in the sadness of the title, but it also offers a masterclass in how stories can emerge from games even if they are not directly written by the development team.

This is the full Softpedia review for This War of Mine.

This War of Mine Images (10 Images)

War and narrative
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