"This War Of Mine" has been installed on my PC since April 2016 when I first got it in a bundle. For various reasons, I've only today gotten around to playing through the base game. Since the time of release a few DLC pieces have been made available.

Unlike Sheltered, which left me feeling sick, This War of Mine did not. Even though I'd consider it even more depressing and with a feeling of hopelessness.

War has broken out and caused great destruction amongst the town/region/country. You take on a group of survivors and try to outlast the war by salvaging, trading, and if required, fighting your way through it.

For me the starting party was Marko, Bruno, and Pavel. Two long time friends and one recruit. They start in a large abandoned and run down mansion of a house with little in the way of supplies.

Most of the first day was spent salvaging items in the building, and trying to craft a few things to let them survive the coming days. While cabinets can be looted easily, there are piles of rubble that they can dig through to access other areas. Or you can use a shovel, if you can find or make one.

There are locked doors and storage units too. You'll need some way to force your way through (fists do not work), or craft/find a lockpick. A lockpick worse than a TES game as it will only be usable once.

The few tutorial pointers the game has are mostly through little speech bubbles of the survivors. I was told to make a water filter, several in fact. But I was only able to make one. And oddly, water was something I was never lacking in. Food was another matter entirely.

There are fertiliser items that suggest you can grow vegetables. My team was unable to find any seeds, so these just stayed in the hammerspace of the house. This is thankfully a shared inventory that anyone can use when required. Having to share items and swap between the various people would of been an unnecessary burden.

Food is problem. These three guys were constantly hungry, and salvaging food was hard. Trading for it was even harder. They did not die from starvation, but it came close.

The best way to get something to eat is when you salvage various buildings at night. Away from the fear of snipers and gangs as most others are also hiding away. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you have to fight. And here is where the decisions are meant to get harder.

You can rationalise that this is just a game. Nameless pixels on a screen. But do you really want to beat up an old couple for their supplies of food. Even to the point of killing them? And if you tried to sneak into their house at night, and stole their supplies. How would you deal with knowing you are now condemning them to die from starvation. Is this worse than what happened in When the Wind Blows?

Well. The player may not. But the people you are playing as do.

Depression and Sadness take their toll. Spurned on by the lack of food and sleep. Getting raided at night. Having to punch someone out and ending up killing them. At the time they may claim "it's just a dead body". But when they get back to the shelter they now have time to think. One of mine basically gave up and sat rocking on the floor just inside the house entrance. Another tried to play a refurbished guitar (badly!) and threw it down in his state of hopelessness. And the third just lay in bed suffering from untreated wounds as his friends could not find medication.

The Charcoal/Pencil appearance and moody sound design do wonders to give you just enough hope that you will make it, but the knowledge that you are unlikely to do so. The game is so devoid of colour that just getting a little stove pumping out some orange light is a feeling of warmth to the harsh outside world.

I've always been skeptical on how games can show the 'true cost of war'. This War of Mine does a good job on how it affects peoples state of mind and well-being.

This is not the horrors of combat, or the glorification of violence.

This is just trying to stay alive and knowing that you are unlikely to make it.

This is knowing that if you do help your neighbour to survive, it takes away time and resources of your own. Or purring yourself even more at risk.

This is a game where the adult survivors did not complain that their dead children were becoming meat they would soon not be able to eat. And all the other 'why would you make this' insanity that other games have tried.

It is slow. Somewhat depressing. And very, very good.

If you like survival games, I can really recommend this one.

As stated, I've only played the base game, and there's enough replayability in that just for someone wanting a short casual run in this genre. The added story missions are a bonus to look at the situation from a different perspective, such as that as children.

Pick it up. It's far superior to others in the genre I've played.

Game Acquisition: Humble Monthly (April 2016)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 24 November 2018
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP SP3 (32 bit) / Vista
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo 2.4, AMD Athlon(TM) X2 2.8
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: Geforce 9600 GS, Radeon HD4000, Shader Model 3.0, 512 MB
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Sound Card: DirectX compatible