The city of Pogoren, the capital of the Eastern European state of Vysen, is engulfed in the fire of civil war. Three civilians, by the will of fate, found themselves under the roof of one building – dilapidated, with broken windows, but still capable of serving as shelter from bad weather and an accidental ricochet. They have only one task – to survive the war without suffering visible physical and mental wounds.

While the war is going on

At night, one of your team goes to one of a dozen locations, rummages through trash or steals from others, tries not to get involved in fights (healing wounds here is time-consuming and expensive), and with the third crow of a still-living rooster, returns home with swag.

During the day, while he is sleeping, civilians find use for the found boards, light bulbs, iron and fertilizers: they filter rainwater and whittle matches, knock together beds and workbenches from pieces of wood, board up windows and assemble a radio, set traps for rats and grow carrots in a mini-greenhouse, cook food for the body and read food for the mind.

Home improvement is a whole science. Soon you go on a search no longer with the goal of bagging everything that is bad, but with a clear plan in mind. A table of materials and spare parts is scrolling through my head that needs to fit into a small knapsack of a night hunter, otherwise it is simply impossible to set up a tobacco factory or a decent farm in a small residential building.

► When entering an unexplored area for the first time, the miner sarcastically recommends it. Even if he’s not local. ► The tank in the background will burn every night, but is it really that important??

But even our own production, for which so many boards and sawdust have been stolen, will not save. Firstly, materials still need to be mined or bartered, and secondly, the product is usually consumed locally. This is precise mathematics, a harsh “manager for survivors” – and how pleasant it is to do it!

Survivors are worth something too. Due to a lack of food, citizens can go hungry, because of a draft they can get sick, as a result of an attack they can get injured, from immoral actions or the inability to smoke a cigarette they can get upset and even depressed. They constantly comment on their feelings – mostly with complaints like “I want to eat.”!" and "oh, why didn’t I leave earlier". If it weren’t for the sensitive topic This War of Mine, would definitely appear on the list of games that are close in spirit The Sims.

In parallel with the house-building project, dramas. The breadwinner broke into the house of an elderly couple and carried out two kilos of boneless meat – that’s it, now half of the cohabitants are different, that life is no longer the same, we have violated the moral law within us, and it is not clear how the earth carries us now. And what a circus will begin with sobs when the earner first fights with another seeker over a broken guitar.

The hero is not my novel

Many note that this demonstration of conscience https://ezwin-casino.co.uk/withdrawal/ in real time is the central theme This War of Mine. And the developers themselves seem to be of this opinion. But it soon becomes clear that the characters’ lines go in circles, they react to everything in a predictable way, and all the breadwinner’s crimes are easily leveled out and forgiven. They have no soul, in short.

► Having stumbled upon someone else’s cache, you bite your lips, primarily because you can’t take away all the loot at once. You have to choose only what corresponds to the shelter development plan. ► The scout has to memorize barricaded doors, iron bars, locked cabinets. Or fill a valuable cell with a set of tools “for all occasions”.

For example: last night Pavle broke into someone else’s house, stole three cans of canned food from the refrigerator while their owner went out to smoke, and returned home in the morning joyfully: “Look, I got some food.”!"And what do our poor fellows think?? " How come we had to steal to survive? " or " Poor Pavle, he had to steal because he had no other choice ", at best – reasonable " There is nothing to do: it’s either us or them ».

My brothers, it was not Pavle who decided to steal a can of canned food, but I am your owner and benefactor, and in his place I would generally remain silent about how exactly these unfortunate canned goods were obtained. What you think there (more precisely, what logic the game designers put in) is your business, and my concern is to feed you at any cost so that you don’t throw away your skates from hunger.

But the screen puppets don’t know about this, they whine and get upset at every case of illegal taking of resources from the population. It’s okay, I’ll bring them more books and fix their guitar – and soon their wrinkles will smooth out, and the edges of their lips will rise where they should.

► Pavle spent the whole night unloading other people’s boxes and cabinets, he was terribly tired, but still happy – he brought good to people who actually became his family!

► The war will last long enough to furnish the whole house. We recommend starting with beds and boarding up windows. ► At the workbench, at first you can make only primitive weapons, but with improvements you will be able to figure out a rifle, and even patch a damaged body armor.

In particularly advanced cases, serious problems can arise: the last straw can easily be the murder of a homeless person who stood up to protect his best friend – a bottle of moonshine. The fact that it was I, sitting in a comfortable chair, who gave a cruel order, from the point of view of game morality, does not mean that I laughed maniacally and immediately demanded more homeless people for the god of homeless people.

It’s just that if I have such a tool and I am well aware of the consequences of an action, I will use it. It doesn’t cost me anything because I’ll be minimally punished by having to waste one of my subordinates’ time playing guitar two days in a row. Penance for me too.

And you can’t even say that “the developers built a subtle connection between the player and the characters, and then broke it,” because the connection is not felt from the very beginning. All empathy in This War of Mine is built on a forced compromise between completely getting used to the skin of a civilian and the need to simulate social relationships. The latter, by the way, is well implemented: a timely conversation sometimes pulls even the strong and brave out of the deepest depression, and the accumulating irritation of a heavy smoker can result in an unexpected night fight.

► Traveling merchants appear on orders from a random number generator. Having calculated the game logic, you will quickly identify a product that you do not need, but is valuable to the merchant – so change it. ► Until the house is secured, it is worth leaving at least one soldier on guard while the rest sleep (the sentry will rest during the day). But someone must definitely go for exploration or for prey, there is a road here every night.

But without the social network, TWoM would have been only slightly different, and with a single mute hero it would have won significantly. If, after killing the elderly couple, he had said nothing, but grabbed his head and silently rolled on the floor, instead of as if nothing had happened, making a water filter, this behavior would have been enough to slow down my heart rate. After all, he is me. And “they” are definitely not me, and there’s nothing to it.

In addition, all the way there was some kind of discrepancy felt. The conflict, which serves as one big decoration, never comes to the fore and does not allow the player to take sides. This is understandable: the developers do not want to involve politics here, so it is believed that the heroes are apolitical. Nevertheless, the fictitious rebels are fighting with all their might against the fictitious regular troops, but you won’t meet either one or the other (unless you try to look at the Military Outpost, but even there, at best, they will offer to trade, and at worst, they will put a bullet in your forehead).

“Whites” or “Reds” will not drop by your door and demand that you hand over your shag stocks to the unit; you will not be drawn into a Difficult Moral Choice that dooms yesterday’s student or a gray-haired train driver to death. With the same success behind the broken windows of the house in This War of Mine could be an oil crisis, the day of the triffids or a zombie apocalypse.

Let’s live together

If you do not take into account the Procrustean bed of game morality, into which game designers shove the player, what remains is a good simulator with resource management and some kind of stealth action. Every day they open (and sometimes close!) new locations where you can take away a lot of useful things, but in the end, to survive you will have to either actively trade or actively steal and kill.

Apparently, morally concerned designers again intervened in the development of the “night” interface: a two-dimensional platformer controlled by the mouse is a strange solution (but understandable: the developers used to make games for tablets). Shooting with a pistol or hitting with a tire iron, poking the cursor at a running enemy – it all looks as if the developers are trying to prove that murder is not only dirty, but also difficult. Don’t even try.

► Equipment and tools take up gold slots, so it makes sense to go light for reconnaissance. No one guarantees you a bar or a locked door, and in any case you won’t leave empty-handed.