Video games can be a gateway to many topics of interest, since we are entering this new golden age many of these have even dared to recreate situations, give voice to issues and represent difficult and sensitive topics to the public.
This War Of Mine has been one of my favourites since I played it back in 2015, the idea was powerful in essence, to put us in command of a group of survivors in the middle of a battlefield, they are not soldiers or heroes, just victims of the conflict.
The goal is to survive as long as we can, manage resources such as food, water, medicine and even be always aware of the moods of our survivors, it was a game that impacted me deeply as a teenager living in a relatively comfortable situation.
Looking a bit more into the development of the game I like the idea of making a war game but putting the focus on the human side of it, it is clear the contrast and the intention of this game along with other classic shooters.
Resource management is the real challenge of this game, we start with a group of survivors trapped in a house in the middle of the war, we have some resources to get by for a couple of days but when things take a turn for the worse we have to find a way to survive.
Each new game gives us new survivors with their own story, sometimes inspired by the Bosnian war on which the game is based, by day we have to survive the attacks and the soldiers around us, and by night we have to scavenge for more supplies.
Time is a crucial factor, if we decide not to look for anything at night we risk having some negative mood and suffer later for not having resources for those days, also in the course of the day we can suffer raids as well as the arrival of other survivors.
There is a problem to solve in this game and that is that most of the titles that are based on managing resources have a system that eventually the players decipher to dominate the rest of the experience, This War Of Mine has very well thought out its gameplay making things difficult even when it seems that we are coping with the war in the best way, and man that's war, you never know what will happen.
Navigating through the game we can find ourselves in situations that seem impossible to overcome, and I even lost a good ten survivors several times when I was going through the second or third day, you can't afford to have any untreated wounds or go hours without sleep and let your guard down.
"In modern war you die like a dog for no good reason."
Our base will be one of the places we have to maintain, either with traps or by managing our resources with each of the first survivors the game gives us, this idea in my early games was almost always the main focus,
When things get complicated the game gives you some difficult decisions to make, it is clear from the beginning that there is no right answer and most of these decisions are in a grey tone in terms of morale, but it will depend on that if the survivors live another day. not only that but also the conditions in which they are will influence their moods.
Not only do we have to be careful to find good supplies, food and water but the game also goes further and encourages us to concentrate on HOW we survive, if we let several characters sleep on the floor for several nights it will build up a state of depression in them, which leaves them with no desire to do anything in the shelter.
Not only those actions will trigger those states of mind but also the scenes that we will witness every time we go for food will also be determinant, I remember one where a young girl was being held at gunpoint in an abandoned shopping mall, I was there looking for resources so I decided not to get involved in the matter, then the guy shot her, and I thought that nothing would happen beyond that but once we got to the base several of my survivors went into depression because of what they had seen.
Although This War Of Mine is just a video game it is a very well made one to represent the conflict of a war, it is unfair to its inhabitants, unpredictable in many ways, you don't know if today you will have any food or if in a few days you will be alive, this is one of the works that I have discussed the most with my social circle.
Not only for its playable value but for being a necessary point of view in balancing the public image of what war really is, many see it as something fun where men go for target practice but I think this game gives a more realistic view of the trauma and horrors of war.
All yours, @slashint - Gamer, Video Game Analyst.
