Alternate Aesop Interpretation: With the actions you can take in this game, one can consider that while actions of an individual won't change or stop a war, everyone still has the potential to make things a little better or worse on a small scale during one. You could easily kill and loot your way to survival indiscriminately, or you could choose to become a more mundane hero by stopping bad guys and helping innocent people.
Alternative Character Interpretation: Is the sniper in Sniper Junction a trigger-happy lunatic who views everyone they see as a living target and nothing else, a troubled Grazni/Vyseni soldier who went off the deep-end, or an aggressively territorial thug who doesn't care who they kill? It's practically stated that other snipers are equally indiscriminate in their target selection, implying that all snipers are under orders to kill everyone they see, jiving with the seemingly deliberate attacks on civilians the military launches periodically.
Base-Breaking Character: Roman. Some players find him one of the most useful characters in the game, being able to defend the shelter the most effectively and being the best candidate for killing bandits and soldiers. Others are turned off by his destructive attitude when he's depressed, resulting in unnecessary injuries among his peers.
Breather Level: There are some locations that appear late in the game (ie one has to visit a set amount of locations to unlock them), yet pose little threat, or are more or less docile and sympathetic. Such examples include the trader version of the Semi Detached House (despite the "Danger" label, the place is open for trade and houses the usual junk piles full of materials, as well as an abandoned refrigerator that's up for grabs), the Central Square (one can go here to trade with the merchants if Franko is running late), City Hospital (another place full of free junk piles, plus the possibility of getting free healing from the nurses), and Port (the sole occupant offers an easy way out of the city provided you can pay him eight gems later on, the place itself is once again full of free junk piles with few obstacles).
Marko, Roman, Katia and Boris are at the top (since their abilities are so handy and universal), Marin and Arica are high tier (Marin's good for shelter development and Arica's good for stealthy operations), Bruno, Zlata, Pavle and Christo are mid tier (the last three have decent backpacks and fair stats and talents while Bruno's cooking can save up on fuel and water), Emilia, Henrik and Irina are low tier (Emilia is simply emotionless, but yielding an average backpack, Henrik being better at making cigarettes, which may not be your desired commodity, and Irina grows vegetables faster, which is pretty much an end-game skill), Anton and Livia are very low tier (Anton can only make animal traps work faster and Livia's a poor man's version of Bruno, not even being able to run at full speed or help neighbors), and down at the very bottom is Cveta (with the fantastic ability of being friendly to children).
For the neighbors who visit the shelter, Zyhu and his wife are top tier as they always reward you upon every visit (assuming you help them on their second visit), as well as Valter (whose mission involves grabbing loot from an aid container). More "rewards" can be collected when the rebels investigate and you snitch him out. In the middle is Zora, whose long quest line ultimately rewards you with some bullets and a broken shotgun, and Voyt, who tends to loot places (helping him upon his second and third visits is considered the "bad" option though). Lower on the tier is Agatha and the Nenand brothers, whose rewards pale in comparison to their requests. Down at the very bottom is Blago, who doesn't reward you whatsoever when you agree to help his wounded brother.
Despite the game's anti-war motif, it didn't completely succeed at being an anti-war game as gameplay mechanics encouraged violence against evil targets as it would reward you well with a large stash of supplies for clearing out the place as well as the morale boost. However, killing bandits and soldiers does give a small amount of negative karma, potentially resulting in a bad ending for the survivor who kills too much.
Not to mention, resource management and base-building mechanic. Sure, it's counterbalanced by frequent lack of these resources, but it's still fun.
Marko is incredibly popular, likely for being the best scavenger in the game. The fact that he's a pretty good defender when he's not scavenging is a plus as well. Boris has his fans for similar reasons.
Katia's also popular for her better trading deals, some of which can fundamentally break the game's balance.
Franko has garnered quite the following for arriving at times where the player needs him for trade.
Cveta, who has a small backpack and a nigh-useless ability. Even Anton is more useful than her (as Anton can at least use animal traps better). Cveta even lampshades it in her diary entries.
Blago is by far the most loathed neighbor in the game, because he never rewards you when you help him. He doesn't even return to your shelter to thank you. Quite a few people tell him to buzz off on instinct.
Memetic Mutation: Franko for President! has become a popular joke cry for those playing the game, as many see him as a savior who buys Shop Fodder in exchange for valuable supplies which is of much help early-game.
The animation scavengers perform upon returning to the shelter makes it look like they're fanning away a fart.
Additionally, a possibility when your shelter is attacked. The attackers will take any kind of supplies pretty much at random.... which makes it possible to have your home raided in the dead of winter and your precious supply of snow stolen.
Peaceful survivors may initiate conversation with yours when approached. For some reason, however, they seem really determined to continue following your scavenger everywhere until they complete their conversation like chatty Terminators. This includes when your scavenger's hopping on the roof, or jumping on ledges to search for things.
Players can upload any image for a survivor's profile picture. Anything.
Realism-Induced Horror: The game's entire premise is this, with it's depiction of a war's impact on civilians showing things that can and did happen in real life, from theft and starvation to rape and murder.
Scrappy Mechanic: The inability to send multiple survivors to scavenge, whether in one location or multiple, makes larger groups significantly harder to handle, not to mention having no explanation provided.
While likely not an intentional mechanic, the inability to complete events in scavenging locations over multiple nights can lead to some frustrating situations. Perhaps most egregiously (before this was fixed), if you cleared out the people running the brothel one night, ran back home to avoid the sunrise, and come back the next night, the women would remain sitting in the same room (rather than running out of the brothel like they would normally).
The fact that there are rats everywhere, scurrying slowly around your feet as you scavenge, and yet the only way to catch and eat them is by baiting expensive traps with even more expensive bait.
The lack of a Dialogue Tree to fully converse with non-player characters.
The inability to make multiple saves and the existing save mechanics(you do not get to control when to save, the game will save at the end of a night, or worse, right after a character is killed while scavenging). Sure, the game has a point in that life is finite and you can't get back what has been gone, but sometimes the cause of death is too cheap (ie a bandit that keeps successfully defending then suddenly manages to kill you with three consecutive blows- all just because either the Random Number God was not smiling upon you at that time, or a small mistake in your timing). Alternatively, some players would like to maintain and play several survivor sets at the same time.
Introduced in Update 1.3 was a glitch that treated robbing bandits the same as robbing innocents, whether they be alive or dead (the Warehouse, Brothel, and Military Outpost are all immune). It would take a year for this bug to be fixed. The Hotel location still hasn't been fixed, and is still pretty buggy all around unless all bandits in the area are dead.
Dialogue in Stories doesn't stop time. You can click to scroll through dialogue, but this is not immediately obvious.
Sadly, you can't kill Colonel Markov in Burning Embers. He has Plot Armor.
Traders were nerfed hard in Stories, having far less loot to trade, and never carrying the essential-in-bulk components and wood, and carrying little fuel.
Self-Imposed Challenge: Try playing the entire 45 days without a radio. Although the radio is useful, it is possible to go through the whole length of the game without even having one, by using alternative methods to gauge the environment, prioritizing equipment that allows for self-sustenance, being pre-emptively prepared for raids by patching the holes in the wall, reinforcing the door and getting some weapons as soon as possible, and some good ol' Xanatos Speed Chess. Aside from that, if you fancy something much more challenging, there's the classic Pacifist Run (usually coupled with Stealth Run since bandits and the army both kill indiscriminately), No Casualties Run (or if you want to up the ante, a No-Damage Run), or even a 100% Completion run (which usually means mercilessly slaughtering everyone in your way indiscriminately).
That One Achievement: No More Tears, which involves recovering a child from the "Broken" status back to normal. To clarify, children cannot go out to scavenge or guard, meaning that it'll take more than committing direct atrocities to render a child broken (without getting everybody else broken and potentially commit suicide). Luckily, all it takes is feeding the broken child cooked meals to make it happier.
That One Level: The Military Outpost, Brothel, and army-controlled Ruined Villa are considered the toughest levels to clear and scavenge. The Military Outpost and army Villa are infested with soldiers (and the Villa doesn't have much space to hide, maneuver, and trap enemies) while the Brothel is huge and full of dangerous thugs who have unpredictable walking patterns. The staircase in the Brothel leaves one open to some danger.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Gameplay-wise, the children are literally all identical, and have little to no interaction in the game. They can't guard or scavenge, and they don't deviate from one another in terms of capability.
