There are two types of indie games that really grind my
gears. The first being those games that
rely entirely on good art or music for their appeal but have poor gameplay, and
the second are those games that just want to be smart and mature and
intellectual but fail entirely at being remotely fun. This War of Mine: The Little Ones falls into the latter category
and I kind of hate it no matter how fascinating the concept of seeing a different
side of war – the civilians trying to survive – may be. See our full review for details.
Game Details
- Publisher: Deep Silver
- Developer: 11 Bit Studios
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: Simulation
- Pros: Fantastic concept; thought provoking
- Cons: Clunky controls; teeny tiny text, not fun whatsoever
- MSRP: $30
This War of Mine is a game about civilians trying to survive
in the aftermath of a war. The
frontlines of the battle have moved on, but acquiring food and other supplies
is still dangerous because you have to fight off other survivors to get
it. It is an absolutely fantastic
concept that shows a side of war no other games, or other media for that
matter, really bother with. Too bad it
is so poorly executed.
In order to “win” the game as many as possible in your group
have to survive until fresh supplies are brought into your city. To survive until then you have to scavenge
supplies first from the house you start in, and then later by venturing out
into neighboring houses and buildings to find more. There are other people doing the same thing, though, and your
encounters with other survivors lead to tough decisions. Some people you meet are nice and willing to
share, but more often than not you have to fight tooth and nail over every
scrap.
The game plays like a 2D version of The Sims. You have control of your group of survivors,
and every person has unique skills and strengths and weaknesses. The idea is that you assign the right people
to do the right jobs so vital work gets done and everyone survives. During the day everyone works. At night you can send one person out to the
surrounding village to scavenge. Your scavenger
can only carry so much, though, so you have to consider what you really need
when you decide what to bring back.
Everyone in your group is starving.
Everyone is bored and restless.
Someone is always sick or injured.
What do you do? And what are you
willing to do to other people in order to get what you need?
The encounters with other survivors while out scavenging are
really the driving force behind the story of your group during each playthrough
(and things can and will go differently on multiple playthroughs). Stealing from other people, killing people,
or letting a weak member of your group die has a major impact on the overall
morale of the group, sometimes even driving people to commit suicide when they
can’t handle what you’ve done. The
subtitle for this version of the game, “The Little Ones”, refers to the
addition of children into the mix as members of your group, which brings about
a whole new set of moral dilemmas.
The problems with all of this are two fold. First, the gameplay is actually quite clunky
and just plain bad. It is all 2D and
slowly paced and plodding and just plain generally awful. You build new items and tools and stuff
through menus that aren’t intuitive at all, and all of the onscreen text in the
game is absolutely teeny tiny and hard to read. So, it kinda fails as a game right off.
The other problem is that it is all so heavy handed with any
emotional moments and decisions you have to make. Basically, no decision you make is every actually a “good”
decision. Someone always suffers. Someone is always upset with how you handle
things. No one is ever happy or
satisfied. It all feels like work
instead of fun. I get it, war sucks and
isn’t fun, but I don’t play games to get punched in the gut over and over and
over. Another huge flaw in the
experience is that you don’t ever actually give a crap about the other
characters because the game does nothing to make you want to care. They all have pictures and profiles and
backstories, but your only interaction with them is having them bitching at you
every other second. In real life if I
had a bunch of strangers complaining at me while I was trying to help them, I’d
probably leave them to survive on my own, but that isn’t an option here.
I have felt for a long time that the videogame industry has
a problem with mature storytelling, but not in the way you’re probably
thinking. The problem comes from
critics and gamers alike being afraid to criticize things that are seen as
“mature” and “intelligent” and “emotional” for fear they themselves don’t come
across as sensitive or learn-ed enough.
The result of this is that we have absolute trash games like Beyond: Two
Souls or Heavy Rain getting a free pass because they focus on “mature
storytelling” when, in fact, they actually have terrible writing and bad
stories (plus atrocious gameplay) and don’t deserve the praise. I’m all for games with mature themes and
good storytelling, but the game around it needs to be decent and the story
itself had better damn well actually be decent (Telltale games come to mind).
That isn’t the case more often than not, however, yet those games still get
put on a pedestal. Not anymore. Not on this site.
This War of Mine: The Little Ones desperately,
desperately wants to elicit an emotional response, but ultimately fails. You don’t care what happens to the other
survivors, and there is no subtlety in any of the events or decisions you
make. It is a game that goes out of its
way to make you feel like crap no matter what you do, and that just isn’t
fun. The gameplay itself is a clunky
chore, too, which doesn’t help things.
This War of Mine is simply pretentious and overbearing. Buy it if all you care about is showing
people how artsy and smart you are. If
you play games for fun, skip it.
Disclosure: Review code was provided by publisher.
