"This War of Mine" is Tough...Like the Scavenged Meat I Just Found in a Pile of Debris

Over the holidays I had the sudden inspiration to re-play my way through The Witcher series.  This didn't stop me from making multiple purchases in the Winter Steam Sale.  I felt bad that I had bought several new games and that they were sitting unplayed in my library so I decided to take a vacation from Geralt and his monster-slaying hijinx (It's really weird how the second game in the series feels really short/small compared to the third).  One of the games that I purchased is This War of Mine, an indie game that is all about civilians struggling to survive in the middle of a conflict.  I have been pleasantly surprised at how engrossed I have been in the few short hours that I have played.

The basic gameplay concept behind This War of Mine is that you control a small group of survivors in the middle of a war zone.  You must scavenge to find items and build new items to help keep your group healthy....and alive.  The game opens with your three survivors in the bombed out house that they have chosen as their shelter.  There really isn't any tutorial, but the controls are simple and intuitive enough that you can figure out what to do.  A brief journal-entry style page informs you about what your survivors are feeling and things that they would like to see improved.  One of the first notes told me that building beds was a good idea so that people don't have to sleep on the floor.  Your base has a small workshop where you can use scavenged materials to build items that are essential for survival, comfort, and eventually prosperity in the war economy.

Your home.  Survival not included.

My three survivors--Marko, Pavle, and Bruno each have their strengths.  Marko is a skilled scavenger which means he has a larger capacity for carrying items; Pavle is a fast runner which gives him an advantage when it comes to fleeing from danger; and Bruno is a good cook which seems to mean that the food that he prepares is more filling.  Beside these strengths I noticed that one of my survivors had a description stating that he was slightly sick.  I started off by having my group explore the house and scavenging enough materials to build some beds.  Gameplay is split between a day/night cycle.  During the day cycle you control the characters in your house--generally you have them building items, resting, or collecting materials from items that you have built.  The night cycle requires you to choose what happens to your group and is the key time for scavenging.  A menu pops up and you can assign characters to sleep, guard, or scavenge.  If you choose to scavenge you have to choose a location from a map with several different locations.  Each location has a brief description about materials that can be found there as well as information about any possibly dangers in the area.

Well, this seems easy!  I assigned Marko, my good scavenger, to travel out to a nearby gas station that wasn't described as being dangerous.  I commanded him to stealthily creep across the map and explore small areas to find any materials lying about.  Marko's inventory can hold 15 items and it fills up very fast.  I hadn't managed to loot every pile of rubble before his backpack was completely full.  There is some inventory management involved as you really have to prioritize your needs.  Being a total noob I didn't even pay attention to the fact that Marko had looted tons of parts and wood and no food.  Each night cycle is on a timer so you only get a limited time to scavenge.  It is important to get your scavenging character to the exit before the timer ends or else they have to return to your base in daylight which is much more dangerous.

Back at base during the day cycle I set my survivors to building new items from the parts that Marko had brought back.  Survival basics seemed very important so I built some rainwater collectors and a stove....to cook all the food that I didn't have.  My survivors all showed that they were hungry and they were starting to grumble about not having eaten.  The limited supplies that Marko brought back only allowed for a few items to be built before they were exhausted.  I sent Marko to bed to rest--your characters need to rest for at least a few hours every day or else they started to get really sluggish.

I decided to send Marko back out to scavenge and picked a different location with the hope that I could find some food.  Again, this location didn't appear to have any food.  I looted more parts including some electronic components and hustled Marko to the exit before the timer ran out.  Upon my return to base I found out that my survivors had been attacked during the night.  Bruno was severely wounded and needed some bandages.  Pavle managed to avoid any injuries but I definitely needed to plug up the holes in the wall in my shelter to prevent further attacks.  Besides getting attacked, my survivors were starting to move very slowly from lack of food--I absolutely needed to find some food!  I attempted to use the materials I had found to fix up the holes but found out that I only had enough to fix one.

The food situation was getting desperate so I specifically picked a location that had food listed.  The downside was that the location I picked was occupied and I would need to steal.  I was amazed at how bad I felt about this.  I really didn't want to steal but it was becoming obvious that if my survivors didn't get any food that they would probably starve.  Marko slunk across the map towards the fridge (yeah, another noob move was not thinking logically about where to find items like food) and proceeded to steal all the food.  It was very easy to avoid the occupants of the building so there were no physical conflicts.

I thought that returning to base with food, no matter how I actually acquired that food, would feel great.  Instead, my characters all lamented the fact that I had to steal to acquire the food and about the consequences for the people who I had stolen from.  I just fed you and you're complaining?  It felt bad....so bad.