This War Of Mine

I always had idea about game like this...I mean, I always see problem of the whole War Is Hell message being diluted because you're playing soldiers...well this game FINALLY make you play as a civilian instead! Seriously, why don't more companies did this?

I am interested as you. Let's hope Action Survivor doesn't get put on too strongly and make the divide between soldier and civilian seem irrelevant.

It would be interesting if this traipse the line between 'taking matters into own hands' and 'action survivor'

From this review: http://kotaku.com/a-bleak-look-at-trying-to-survive-in-the-middle-of-a-wa-1654996772?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Facebook&utm_source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow

This is gonna be a one hell of a depressing game.

They don't mention if it's coming to consoles or P Cs, let alone which digital distributors will have it upon release. Any ideas?

I know for sure that it's on Steam, and it's going to come out on the 11th of this month.

^^ Here

But yeah, I didn't know that the game was already on Steam (but not released yet) until much later from the initial announcement...

Doesn't look like the price was announced either.

Should we make a trope of this game?

In my view, it might be a PC-based one.

It is out today on Steam for twenty bucks.

Enjoying it so far. This is going to sound odd, but it reminds me of both Minecraft and The Sims, if you slapped a really depressing theme over them. Like in Minecraft, you need to go out into the world during certain "safe" times of the day to gather materials, you can only carry so-many of them back at once, and you have to craft more tools to get at more stuff. But there is also potential danger when you go out, and you can exhaust everything a particular location has to offer. Like The Sims, you control a "family" of a sort who live in a particular building, and you need to furnish the place to thrive. Survivors need beds to sleep in to get rest (especially if they are wounded or sick), they need improvised stoves for cooking, mortar and pestle for grinding up herbs for do-it-yourself medicine and cigarettes. They all have different personalities and wants and things they need to make the Crapsack World seem just a little less crapsack. For example, one is a smoker, one is a coffee drinker, they all like having books to keep from getting bored, if you find a broken guitar you can fix it to play music, etc. You can also get enough resources to create some resources of your own, like a planter for growing some vegetables or a rainwater collector for fresh water, then craft those resources into finished goods. Sometimes other survivors will come visiting and ask for favors or want to barter items. You will also want to craft weapons, barricade the holes in the walls, and schedule someone to stand guard, or looters might come by and nick what you have been able to accumulate.

Kind of challenging so far, because while there is food out there, much of that food is claimed by other people already, and how desperate are you to get it? There is a bit of What You Are in the Dark going on, and at what point do you become just another looter looking out for your and your's at the expense of others? After you have exhausted what little food you can scavenge from those who have fled or died, how long do you have before the growing scarcity forces you into conflict with other survivors? How long until they bring the conflict to you?

And yes, there is some combat in the game, but you are at best Action Survivors, acting with Improvised Weapons (even your bullets are mostly recycled from spent shells you have repacked) and most of the time you are better off avoiding other survivor's attention unless you know they are at least friendly enough to deal.

edited 14th Nov '14 7:58:50 PM by FearlessSon

I'd like to mention that it's also on GOG for the same price as on Steam.

^ Except here in Thailand, we get 50% cheaper price on Steam...

But yeah, wondering: is the map randomized and such? Or it's same map over?

edited 15th Nov '14 12:14:18 AM by onyhow

A mini-documentary of sorts with the devs, as conducted by GOG:

Player impressions indicate that it seems to be randomly generated.

edited 15th Nov '14 12:40:58 AM by Nettacki

This sounds really fascinating.

Man, I really wish I had money to buy this.

Keeping an eye on this title (just pre-ordered Dragon Age: Inquisition, so I'm not going to order anything "involved" for a while), but who's going to start the Trope page for this one?

It seems to be "semi-random", if that helps. You start out with a group of three survivors, at least one of whom will be random (based on my two new games so far.) Areas you can visit seem to have deterministic geometry and some fixed encounters, but others seem to have more than one encounter randomly chosen from some pre-defined sets. Likewise, which areas are open to you varies depending on the playthrough, again opening up at different times from some randomly selected pre-sets.

So it is definitely not Randomly Generated Levels, but it might be fair to say they were Randomly Remixed Levels. As a result, some patterns will be evident by no playthrough will play out exactly the same way.

While I am commenting, I should add that this is, at least in part, a Stealth-Based Game of the two-dimensional kind. Given that you are a group of non-action characters (bordering on Action Survivors at the most) it is almost always better to try and avoid confrontation when possible. You have to be aware of how much noise you are making and how much you can see into the Fog of War, some enemies carry guns while you might have a kitchen knife, and even poorly armed enemies can injure you, forcing you to dip into your medical supplies, take a character out of the action for a while, or risk losing them due to bleeding and infection. Fortunately, there is more than one way through an area, and sometimes you need to have the right tools to exploit alternative routes. Say there was someone overlooking a courtyard with a rifle, shooting anyone on sight, and you wanted to get to the building across from it. You could try to find a way behind the guy and take him by surprise, or if you had a saw to get through metal bars you might be able to use an underground access way to get past without him ever knowing you were there.

edited 15th Nov '14 5:34:37 PM by FearlessSon

I went ahead and got a page started for this, populated it with a few tropes I could bang out quickly with context, and set it in an index. I would be much obliged if anyone who has anything to add does so.

Incidentally, this was mentioned on the James Recommends section of Extra Credits (where he recommended it without any reservation, which is something he rarely does) so expect it to get some views in the near future.

Spent a lot of hours playing this. Haven't survived past day 29 so far but I am learning that if you're stealing from non-thugs you will get a morale hit. Roman, the dude who has had combat training, isn't affected badly if he kills during a scavenger run.

Also, I have a weird love-hate relationship with the trader who comes at my house, because he always freakin' comes at the wrong time, when I don't have anything good to trade with, though other players tell me he's kind of a ripoff.

So far my favorite moment is when Cvetka, the overweight schoolteacher, sneaked up behind a bandit and killed him with a shovel then took his shotgun to kill another bandit who was climbing up a ladder. Their weapons got us a lot of canned food.

A tip: You absolutely need bandages for anything bigger than a slight wound. Resting in bed just slows down the trip to death.

Great game, but is there a win condition at all? When does the war end?

I've only got to day 38 so far. Ended with a suicide after Boris left the shelter.

I can't ever seem to get my people to be anything better than sad. I give them chairs, books, cigs, etc. but they are perpetually sad.

edited 17th Nov '14 3:02:20 PM by Ringsea

Well, robbing an elderly defenceless couple probably doesn't help.

It doesn't help that, on this playthough, I've accidentally made enemies of the Hospital. Lost one guy to them, got another perpetually wounded. I think this is the kind of game where you aren't allowed to make any mistake at all.

Here's a video on the game made by Total Biscuit:

After 20 hours full of countless deaths, I made it to the ceasefire with EVERYONE ALIVE AND DOING WELL (click to see the epilogue)◊

Feels really, really good!

50+ hours in and I'm still playing this game after getting 'happy endings' for every character, because I want to clear out that stupid Military Outpost.

I love how this game yields a LOT of rewards for those who are capable of pulling off difficult feats. After you spend a lot of time to understand how the stealth and combat works, as well as how the levels are laid out and how they are remixed, it's very cathartic to finally have a safehouse that's full of meds, food and weapons. Some might say that it ruins the War Is Hell message, but I don't think so considering the number of deaths and mistakes you have to go through before you can finally figure out how to make things more comfortable.

Way I see it, the game's saying that the only way you can ever be comfy in a warzone is if you somehow had multiple lives, a time machine and the ability to know exactly what's going to happen next.

Here's some interesting analysis from Errant Signal.