11 bit studios took great care to research historic conflicts from our distant past and recent history. This War of Mine’s setting is designed to remain conflict agnostic. Rather than depicting a specific war or time period, This War of Mine removes itself from the geopolitical side of war by just focusing on the human experience. Despite being set in a fictitious conflict, the game takes inspiration from numerous true stories of tragedy and survival from the civilians that lived (and died) when war came to their doorstep.

Jumping into the game is completely straightforward. Players initially control 3 unique characters, each with a short backstory. The first day is spent gathering resources inside of your bombed ravaged home. Starting out, players have very limited resources and amenities available to them. Each day players have a limited amount of time to craft items, cook and eat food, or just sleep after a long night of scavenging.

Gameplay wise, the day and night cycles stand in stark contrast in many ways. Players will largely be focused on base building, crafting, trading, and time management during the day. During the evening though, the entire game switches to include aspects of stealth, item harvesting, and combat. In many ways,  it’s as if This War of Mine is actually 2 different games that seamlessly intersect somewhere in the middle. It’s all quite brilliant.

Initially, gameplay is fairly simple. Players build, eat, sleep, scavenge, and repeat it all the following day. As the days go on though, resources begin to wear thin, and bad situations start to take their toll. Maybe during one of the nights, bandits broke in and wounded your party members. Maybe that character was already hurt, and now they’re sick as well. Too bad you’d just traded the last of your bandages for some vegetables the previous day. Now you’ll need to venture into deeper and more dangerous parts of town in search of first aid. Since your severely injured companion is best served laying in bed and recovering, now you’re a body short on night watch. What if the bandits come back again?

Increasingly difficult situations can lead to players needing to make some very tough decisions. After about 20 hours spent in This War of Mine, I’ve found myself making a number of morally questionable choices. Initially, I wanted to play the game peacefully; scavenging but never stealing, growing foods when I could, trading for whatever else I needed by growing tobacco and crafting cigarettes. After repeatedly failing to keep my characters alive, as they met fates such as freezing to death, starvation, sucumbing to sickness, or being murdered by armed thugs, my morals began to fade.

I started a new game, and I was done being the victim. I crafted a knife for Pavle, my chosen assassin, each night going out in search of trouble. Like a trained hunter, I’d stalk bad guys as they made their rounds in a building. I’d jump out of the shadows, the armed thug caught totally off guard as he smoked a cigarette, quickly stabbing them to death. I was ruthless, meticulous, and my characters were living great. That is, until I slipped up and one of them shot Pavle in the back as he tried to escape. Things went downhill after that. Pavle survived, but nursing him back to health slowly depleted my limited resources.

Another night, as Pavle climbed through the window of a fortified home, he came face to face with an armed female guard. Pavle quickly dispatched of the girl, but what came next chilled me to the bone. As the girl’s lifeless body lay on the floor of the home, I heard footsteps coming from the floor above. Pavle hid in the shadows, waiting for the next victim to show their face. This time though, instead of a heavily armed thug, all Pavle saw was a grieving mother. She ran to her daughter’s body, falling to the floor in tears as she held her murdered child. As Pavle emerged from his hiding place, she screamed at him, just wanting to know why he was doing this. The unfortunate reality of the situation was that Pavle still needed the shotgun that poor girl was carrying, and nobody was going to stop him from getting it.

The profound weight of his actions had begun to take a toll on Pavle. Severe depression and sickness had started to creep in. Still, when Pavle was physically able, I sent him back out into the night. More dangerous encounters led to Pavle suffering another gunshot, this time worse than the first. As he returned home, empty handed and bleeding profusely, I knew what would come next for my once glorious killer.

With Pavle returning with an empty backpack, I only had enough food to feed 2 people. Someone would need to go without. As I looked over my 3 survivors, all hungry, Pavle stuck out as being a particular problem. He was very hungry, bleeding at an unprecedented level, and severely depressed. With the extremely limited resources on hand, I knew there was little that I could do to get poor Pavle back to 100%. So I stopped feeding him, and I stopped bandaging his wounds. I told myself it would be much easier with him gone, scavenging for 2 should be much easier than for 3. He died 2 days later from his injuries, a hero to some, monster to countless others.

These horrible actions weren’t Pavels though, they were mine. I was the monster responsible for murdering a mother and child. I was the executioner of countless men and women that were likely doing the same as I was, whatever was needed to survive another day. In my quest to keep my companions alive during the war, I lost something just as important. My humanity.

Fans of base building, survival strategy, or even stealth combat games should really pay attention to This War of Mine. With its focus on storytelling through experiences, This War of Mine has lived up to the hype that’s surrounded it in 2014. Even a single play through of this intense game will leave you rethinking your feelings on a lot of things, and probably questioning yourself as a person.

THIS WAR OF MINE

The first thing that you must know about This War of Mine is that it isn’t based on any specific real-life war. Instead, the team put in many hours researching various wars in throughout history. Rather than diving into the political debate regarding any specific conflict, 11 bit chose to remain conflict agnostic, and instead tell the human side of war.

Everything began about 2 years ago. Grzegorz Miechowski (founder/managing director of 11 bit) brought an article titled “One Year in Hell” to the office, which was an interview with a man who had survived the siege of a city in Bosnia in the early 90s. That was a thrilling and absolutely moving piece, and a spark that instantly ignited the team to make this game. From then, we’ve done (and are still doing, actually) extensive research on many modern conflicts, looking for memoirs and stories from regular people, civilians. Many of those small stories have been forged into events in the game. Examples are the well-documented siege of Sarajevo during the Yugoslavian war in early 90s; “Robinsons of Warsaw,” which relates to people who survived in the ruins of Warsaw during and after the Uprising of ’44; the great siege of Leningrad; as well as Kosovo and modern Syria.

In addition to the historically-inspired stories, 11 bit studios called upon their own team members, friends, and family to populate the game’s world. Check out this video for a look at how they turned a programmer into a priest.

Additionally, the team has tried to faithfully create a very “human” game, and so have scanned themselves, photographed themselves, made 3D models of characters based on their own postures. The fictional characters in the game are based on them, their friends, wives, colleagues. Anton is based on Mirek, the security guard in 11 bit’s office, who happens to also be a very nice man that became a friend as the team worked on This War of Mine.

Diving into the gameplay is pretty straight forward. I gained control of 3 unique characters (Pavle, Katia, and Boris), all taking refuge from the conflict inside of a war-torn building. Time is quickly revealed to be a very important factor that players must manage throughout the game. Surviving, scavenging, and preparing for the unknown is your goal every single day.

Since daylight is the best time for open conflict between factions, civilians are safest within the confines of their home. Players use this precious time to do the various things that they must, in preparation of a night of scavenging. Early on, I decided the best use of my time would be spent harvesting my own surroundings for precious resources such as bandages, wood, and whatever food was left behind. As the daylight grew dim, I had Katia craft a bed so that at least one of them didn’t have to sleep on the floor.

As night turned to day, I selected Pavle to go out scavenging. Before the war, Pavle was a football (read: soccer) player. His speed on the field might translate into something useful in case things get hairy out in the city at night. As Pavle left for a night of uncertainty, I was left with a difficult decision on just the first night, what do with the others do whilst he was gone. After some thought, I chose to give Boris a relaxing night in the freshly built bed. The other, Katia, was tasked with a long night of keeping watch.

I was offered the choice of a few locations to scavenge for the evening. What exactly awaited me at the building you choose was mostly a mystery. Will there be a glorious stock of exactly what I needed? Or instead, could other, less-than-hospitable, scavengers already be there? As the days went on, I exhausted the resources available closest to me. I was clear that I needed to branch out further.

During one of the nights while Pavle was gone, bad guys broke in and beat up my other 2 characters. They were in pretty bad shape. I needed bandages, medicine, and food. Katia hadn’t eaten in 2 days, not by choice. I had to do something. I gave Pavle as much rest as I could during the day. No matter what, I was coming home with food and bandages for Katia, even if it meant doing something crazy.

That evening, I came upon a quiet house. It looked like this might be a place to get what I needed. As Pavle reached the unassuming home, I peaked through the keyhole for a small glimpse at what might be inside. To my surprise, and elderly man sat comfortably in his recliner. I told myself it didn’t matter. I broke into the house. Alarmed, he rushed towards me, though unable to do anything to stop what I was going to do. As I rummaged through his cabinets, the old man begged me to stop. I had grabbed the last of his food. My bags half full, it was time to head upstairs. His cries continued. “Take what you want, just don’t hurt us” he said. As I reached the upstairs bathroom, his concern became more focused on what I was really after. “Please don’t take our medicine, my wife is very ill”. His pleas were beginning to get to me, but I knew what I had to do. One of mine was sick. Katia would die if I didn’t bring back some medicine, his wife’s medicine.

As Pavle handed out the night’s score and explained what he’d done, it was clear things would never be the same. The food, medicine, and bandages had gotten Katia back on her feet, but at what cost? The guilt of what Pavle had done for her was too much. Katia and Boris were no longer sleeping through the night due to severe depression on account of Pavles actions. Without rest, they couldn’t do what was needed during the day. Any entry in Pavle’s journal reveals his guilt as well. In the quest to stay alive, he and his companions had lost their humanity.

Another night, another opportunity to scavenge. I took Pavle out again in hopes of getting ahead, maybe finding something of value to trade. Instead, as I opened that door, I found my fate in the form of armed Bandits. Pavle never returned home that morning. No food would be on the stove for breakfast, no wood to keep the fire burning. Katia and Boris would never find out exactly what happened to Pavle, he was just gone. Now there were just two of them. Maybe it was better that way, it would be easier with one less mouth to feed.

This War of Mine is easily one of the most powerful and thought provoking games I’ve ever played. Despite this only being a limited preview of the game, I stand here today sending out a simple message to you. Get this game.

This War of Mine is currently in development. The game is scheduled for release on November 14th, 2014 on Steam. Learn more about the game at ThisWarofMine.com

For your PC Master Race purchasing pleasure, click to add the game to your glorious Steam shopping cart. 

This War Of Mine is a game that provides an experience of war seen from an entirely new angle. For the very first time you do not play as an elite soldier, rather a group of civilians trying to survive in a besieged city. During the day snipers outside stop you from leaving your refuge, so you need to focus on maintaining your hideout. At night you get a chance to scavenge nearby locations for items that will help you stay alive.

Make life-and-death decisions driven by your conscience. Try to protect everybody from your shelter or sacrifice some of them to endure the hardships. During war, there are no good or bad decisions; there is only survival. The sooner you realize that, the better.

Click on the headline to check out the trailer for This War of Mine.

This War of Mine was inspired by real-life events and delivers a message. “This can happen in your city, in your country,” Michal Drozdowski, lead designer, said. “While designing a new game, we came across an article that described how one man survived in a besieged city. We learned about his hardships and the horror of that experience. We decided to work around this idea and make something real, something that moves people and make them think for a second. It’s about time that games, just like any other art form, start talking about important things.”

Learn more at http://www.thiswarofmine.com/