This War of Mine Review (Fletchersketche)
This War of Mine is a gripping war survival game, you play as civilians trying to survive another day in their war-torn city. You must manage your resources which include food, water, wood etc, to ensure the survival of your characters. In addition to resource management, you also need to keep an eye on the needs of your characters such as their hunger, energy and happiness levels.
You can keep onto of these by making sure proper beds are made, you have enough food and collecting/making luxury items such as cigarettes and books to keep them happy. How you get these items is either through trading, or getting lucky on your nightly scavenges, but more on that later.
Gameplay is easy to grasp, using your mouse to click on locations to get your selected character to move and do various things, cook, sleep, hide, build etc. Double clicking makes them sprint, however there is a noise penalty for when you do sprint in the forementioned scavenges! Not all the places you visit will be empty, or friendly… A few of them might have some rather nasty pieces of work living there and if they hear noises, be sure they’ll come to investigate and some of them will not hesitate in killing you upon spotting you!
At night, if you choose to send someone on a hunt, starts this high intensity timed (you must be back before sunrise!) stealth mission. There are a few mechanics that can help you sneak your way around a night level. You can peak through doors and have a small line of sight into the next room, enemy noises are indicated by red ‘sonar waves’ that alert you to someone or something being around, and if you are spotted you can hide in a few nooks and crannies. You can fight your way out; I personally find the melee combat a little clunky, but the shooting is robust enough, it does feel a bit like an afterthought in terms of how these encounters were meant to go. Killing someone will have a bad effect on your characters mood, remember these are just civilians and not murderers.
And that is in essence the game, survive, for as long as you can. Build your base up to increase your chances of survival and see how long you can last and honestly, I love it!
The art style is so lovely, this hand drawn sketchy look about the environments and people. There is also very little colour used, which helps emphasis the bleakness of the land and time this game is set in. The music is moody and dramatic and really helps the mood of this game.
The DLCs are also worth it, with each of them having a unique story around set characters, some of them really got to me whilst I played.
I’d highly recommend purchasing this game, even when it isn’t on sale, because not only does it help support people but it is also really worth your time and money.
If you enjoyed this review, I am setting up a Steam Curator page and group and would love for you to join!
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45328416/
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/ajmfreviews