13 ms·

Poland puts computer game “This War of Mine” on school reading list

269 points by Reedx 6y ago

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
To be honest, when I first played This War of Mine, I wanted to throw the controller. The thing is, as your characters' health decreases, becaue they get wounded or the are hungry or sick, etc, they start dragging their feet- literally. They take ages just to go from one room to the next. So play suddendly morphs into long stretches of just pushing a stick (or a button, I guess) to advance at a snail's pace. I fully appreciate that this is meant to get you into the spirit of the game, but in the end it just ends up breaking immersion completely and makes you wonder what the hell you're doing in your life, pushing virtual people around a virtual house for hours on end. I gave up on playing the game after a few tries, when I realised this was going on. I picked it up again a few months later and I enjoyed it much more, precisely because for some reason I didn't experience the same slowdown. I don't know if the game changed, possibly I was more aware of the things that could make my characters slow and managed to avoid them- but I'm not 100% sure. I've had similar experiences with other games. Sunless Sea, forced me to push a virtual boat around a virtual sea in what felt like real time, because it was the game creator's vision that travel should be slow and you should go over the same empty tracts of sea again and again and again and again, always at a teribly slow pace, even with the most expensive engine upgrades. I didn't pick that one up again, after I found out that this was actually a design feature (I think I read an interview with the creator, or some thread in the game's forums on steam?) (edit: I think this was the thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/304650/discussions/0/1483232961041375775/? https://steamcommunity.com/app/304650/discussions/0/14832329...). Merchant of the Skies, that I've been playing a lot recently can also be tedious though, honestly, not that much. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, well I guess that was a walking simulator and it's my fault for playing it for as much as I play it. The list goes on for a bit. Just, don't take away from my time to live and give me nothing back in return, mkay?
machiaweliczny 6y ago
I think they could also try movies analysis, there's ton of great content and it's more approachable.
dubcanada 6y ago
I fail to see why this is news. I had games we played 20 years ago in school which taught me tons of stuff, math blasters for example. Putting a game on a school reading list when there is already 100's of games on there, is not really news. Kind of just seems like a ad than anything else.
- nix23 6y ago
  Thats something else, i never saw a Game on a READING-list. And my teacher never told, so now you go to that Apple Lc2 and play some FlightSimulator, 2 good landings or you have to-do it as homework.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    That's just semantics, but it certainly happened. It may have been more informal when I was growing up, but you still had to play games like "Midnight Rescue" as part of class work. I do think it is silly to put it on a 'Reading List'. I prefer to create a new category.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - nix23 6y ago
      >That's just semantics No its not, its about learning howto think about war/extremism/politics and how it influences a society, its NOT a math game like Midnight Rescue. That is why it is on a READING list and not on a Math-Learning plan.
    - RangerScience 6y ago
      > I prefer to create a new category. What else would you put in this category?
  - yonaguska 6y ago
    One of the most formative classes I took was in middle school- it was a general "engineering" class- we built balsa wood and wax paper airplanes, balsa-wood bridges, learned VB and made tic-tac-toe and backgammon, our teacher got every student copies of Neverwinter Nights and we used NWScript to make mods and learn simple stuff like for-loops. And he had a lab with Stronghold and Microsoft Flight Sim(with controllers) where we could hang out after school and play games together. I was coming from a background where I wasn't eating every day, the only sport I could afford to do was track- and that was only because the track coach was gracious enough to take me to a running store and buy me shoes, I was spending my nights cleaning office buildings, spending my early mornings getting to school early to shower and cram in my homework for the day before class. I was at a private school, so there was no reduced or free lunch program, and I had a very hard time staying awake in class, except for his class. Partially due to un-diagnosed ADHD and a really terrible home situation. That class gave me an attainable goal to work towards, and now I'm a programmer today. I had previously relegated my ambitions to simply surviving.
ceceron 6y ago
Interesting move. Sadly kids nowadays (at least in Poland, where I live) don't like reading books and tend to skip even very important titles. This may be a good way to bring some interest in the history via a genuinely entertaining medium.
- simon1573 6y ago
  What do you consider very important titles?
  - mamon 6y ago
    Not the GP, but I think that there are many such titles, that's why schools in Poland have mandatory reading lists :) You cannot understand culture and tradition without reading some classics,starting with Bible, Homer's Illiad, or Shakespeare. And of course in Poland we mostly focus on Polish writers. You know, before journalism was invented novels served pretty much the same purpose as newspaper reports - there are the goldmine of information about how Poland looked like back in the day. Unfortunately, contemporary students prefer to just watch movie based on a book than reading the source material.
    - Imlus 6y ago
      I mean, reading / playing witcher you'd get better morale / class diversification understanding than reading Bible or Illiad, Shakespeare is definetely not for school readings, if you're not interested in the actual literature that book has no value in your life. I, personally, love reading books. But forcing that material to 12-18 and saying read these classic ones just pushes back youth from reading at all. You either move forward and adapt with the current generation or you try to force old generation habits and slowly curse on the result.
      - billfruit 6y ago
        Poland has a good literary heritage, which was partly responsible for the coalescing of Poland as a nation. So I suppose many of books and authors from that tradition could be essential reading for Polish young people.. I am not from Poland myself. Perhaps Henrik Sienkiewicz is one of those authors.. Perhaps they should prescribe the Witcher novels too.
LandR 6y ago
I've had this game sitting in my backlog for months. I've got a few days off work this week so need to give it a shot. I was never sure looking at videos and screenshots what sort of game it actually is.
- augusto-moura 6y ago
  Nothing that new in terms of gameplay, but the art style and the background story (inspired in real conflicts) are something else
indy 6y ago
Jonathan Blow gave an interesting talk yesterday about videogames and the future of education: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/678729516 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/678729516
- Stevvo 6y ago
  Starts 24:30
seemslegit 6y ago
The German translation would need an alternate title.
- elcapitan 6y ago
  Why?
  - Thelordofalamut 6y ago
    Mein Kampf.
    - swift532 6y ago
      Couldn't they use Krieg or am I wrong / is this is just joke?
      - occamrazor 6y ago
        “Kampf” means “battle” and can also have, like in “Mein Kampf”, the metaphorical meaning of “struggle”. “Krieg” means “war”. E.g. WW2 is Weltkrieg 2, not Weltkampf 2. Having not played TWOM I don’t know which translates would be more appropriate. The GP is however most likely a joke (and not a bad one IMHO).
        jccalhoun 6y ago
        It about trying to survive in a city in a fictional country during a war (similar to the Yugoslav Wars). So I think that krieg is appropriate but I haven't taken German in nearly 30 years so I'm rusty!
        elcapitan 6y ago
        It would be "Mein Krieg", not "Mein Kampf". Source: I'm German. Also, "Kampf" would be active fighting, and this game is about people who are in the opposite situation and become subjects of violence.
Minor49er 6y ago
They should put Deus Ex on the list
- mbel 6y ago
  The first one obviously.
- cryoshon 6y ago
  unfortunately, i think you'll find that DX is far too edgy for any school curriculum because it's far too true to life. school curriculums are not intended to capture the nuance of how a "terrorist" group like the NSF might gain popular support and even the moral high ground as a result of their efforts to reduce the inequality of vaccine distribution. an inequality of distribution that our society is all but destined to replicate, as soon as we have a vaccine for COVID-19. nor are school curriculums interested in provoking critical thought by posing questions like "what if powerful groups of people are conspiring for their own gain, even when it results in mass misery?" this too we have already covered in the pandemic, when trump's political allies recieved preferential access to the right to sell protective equipment that was in short supply even when their need for it was minimal and the consequences of their greed was mass death. put differently: school curriculums exist to prevent enlightened dissenters from existing, not to make more of them. i'd be all for having it be part of a course, but it's just too real.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  I remember I gained a ton of interest in medieval Japan from Shogun Total War. No clue how historically accurate it was, but there are a lot of ‘period piece’ games that could really set the tone for a history course (Rome Total War, there’s a bunch for WW2, etc). Very underutilized.
- RangerScience 6y ago
  DX is one of the few games I've played through more than once. DX is a lot longer, and is fundamentally a FPS. It's a work of art of gaming, and were this a school on game design, I would absolutely agree with you. TWOM is a work of literary art. If you haven't played it, do so, but be warned: it hits hard, emotionally.
christiansakai 6y ago
It reminds me I have to finish this beautiful game
indymike 6y ago
It's about time that games get their due as great literature/media. Love it. So many great stories.
beyondcompute 6y ago
I am surprised why it took school system so long. And despite the apparent collapse of traditional education, it is surprisingly resistant to change. I would also include some works from Demoscene, some newer electronic music (at least from the 80s :)).
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  The Demoscene definitely needs some artistic recognition, but maybe not in the form of being put on the reading list ;)
RangerScience 6y ago
This is amazing. There are other games of this quality and artistry, but IMO no other games with the kind of impact TWOM has. There's something special that happens when you play TWOM that isn't possible in other mediums. It manages to actually create circumstances where you feel like you're making hard choices. IMO, only two other games accomplish something comparable. Portal (as a masterpiece of gaming in every respect) and Stanley Parable (as being another masterpiece that has a "message" inexpressible in any other medium). If you'd add to that list, I could do with more maximum quality games to have played ;)
- lubujackson 6y ago
  Papers, Please is my favorite example of how games can teach and inform by putting you in someone else's shoes. Especially because it is so simple and direct.
- sombremesa 6y ago
  Try playing Torment: Tides of Numenera.
  - artificial 6y ago
    It's like playing an epic. Wonderful world.
- lacker 6y ago
  I found Detroit: Become Human to be quite thought-provoking.
  - ramblerman 6y ago
    I found it too black and white as it went on. A good story has shades of gray, and Detroit fell short there for me. There were clear "good" guys and "bad" guys (or gals).
  - some_random 6y ago
    I'm glad to hear, but that's not a common opinion from what I've seen. Personally I thought it was clumsy and it felt like it wanted to be a movie more than a game.
juskrey 6y ago
The education system, as always, sends the signal that should be received with great suspicion and scrutiny. Here the case is slightly more complex: any game, however rich, is a closed system with predictable outcomes, while real life is all about choosing opaque options, rarely obvious. Academia likes and itself all about first type: actually it is just another computer game, especially with recent remote/online movement. Surviving in real life situation like that, is nowhere near the computer game, but quite the opposite.
- dreen 6y ago
  I think you're missing the point. That game doesn't teach you anything about survival nor does it aim to, I think. It's more like a book about the people who go through some hardship, you read about how they cope and maybe learn a lesson applicable in everyday life. That is the point with some narrative literature in the first place.
neiman 6y ago
Respecting video games is great, but like you don't respect a movie as "the best meal I ever had", you also don't respect a game by putting it in a "recommended reading list".
- ajhurliman 6y ago
  Agreed. They probably maintained the term "recommended reading list" since people are used to it instead of inventing a new term like "recommended media" that wouldn't make for an exciting headline.
- TheNorthman 6y ago
  It's certainly a valid position to interpret games as text to be interpreted. In fact, if structuralism and semiotics have taught us anything it is precisely this. In danish education we have the concept of an "udvidet tekstbegreb" that means any references to texts can also refer to any other kind of cultural medium. If we look outside Denmark, the European institutions also have this view. If we, for example, look at the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), they give us this exact definition of text [0]: > Text is any sequence or discourse (spoken and/or written) related to a specific domain and which in the course of carrying out a task becomes the occasion of a language activity, whether as a support or as a goal, as product or process. [0]: https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97 https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97, pp. 10.
humaniania 6y ago
Playing "This War of Mine" was one of the most powerful and emotionally stirring experiences that I have ever had with a video game. It really is a beautiful work of art. Highly recommend playing it.
- goda90 6y ago
  It's a different gameplay experience, but I highly recommend Valiant Hearts for another emotionally stirring experience about people going through war.
  - zanmat0 6y ago
    Seconded, an absolute masterpiece of a game that was. I would really love to have a save feature in TWoM, I feel like its sorely missing.
    - atq2119 6y ago
      Not being able to save is kind of the point though, isn't it? You don't get to save when you're stuck in a bombed out city under siege...
- diffrinse 6y ago
  Whatever Happened to Edith Finch?
alasdair_ 6y ago
The thing that I found very important in this game is that there is no clearly defined end-goal like “survive for 100 days” - this really helps the game capture the feeling of “will this never end?” Having a defined end date would make things easier psychologically. There is also a board game (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188920/war-mine-board-game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188920/war-mine-board-ga...) that I’ve heard good things about.
wobbly_bush 6y ago
This was a very difficult game to play. The difficulty was not in the gameplay, but in the emotional content of the game. If the other games help in escapism, this is the opposite where you can feel what the characters are going through in a war zone.

269 points by Reedx 6y ago

To be honest, when I first played This War of Mine, I wanted to throw the controller. The thing is, as your characters' health decreases, becaue they get wounded or the are hungry or sick, etc, they start dragging their feet- literally. They take ages just to go from one room to the next. So play suddendly morphs into long stretches of just pushing a stick (or a button, I guess) to advance at a snail's pace. I fully appreciate that this is meant to get you into the spirit of the game, but in the end it just ends up breaking immersion completely and makes you wonder what the hell you're doing in your life, pushing virtual people around a virtual house for hours on end. I gave up on playing the game after a few tries, when I realised this was going on. I picked it up again a few months later and I enjoyed it much more, precisely because for some reason I didn't experience the same slowdown. I don't know if the game changed, possibly I was more aware of the things that could make my characters slow and managed to avoid them- but I'm not 100% sure. I've had similar experiences with other games. Sunless Sea, forced me to push a virtual boat around a virtual sea in what felt like real time, because it was the game creator's vision that travel should be slow and you should go over the same empty tracts of sea again and again and again and again, always at a teribly slow pace, even with the most expensive engine upgrades. I didn't pick that one up again, after I found out that this was actually a design feature (I think I read an interview with the creator, or some thread in the game's forums on steam?) (edit: I think this was the thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/304650/discussions/0/1483232961041375775/? https://steamcommunity.com/app/304650/discussions/0/14832329...). Merchant of the Skies, that I've been playing a lot recently can also be tedious though, honestly, not that much. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, well I guess that was a walking simulator and it's my fault for playing it for as much as I play it. The list goes on for a bit. Just, don't take away from my time to live and give me nothing back in return, mkay?

machiaweliczny 6y ago

I think they could also try movies analysis, there's ton of great content and it's more approachable.

dubcanada 6y ago

I fail to see why this is news. I had games we played 20 years ago in school which taught me tons of stuff, math blasters for example. Putting a game on a school reading list when there is already 100's of games on there, is not really news. Kind of just seems like a ad than anything else.

nix23 6y ago
Thats something else, i never saw a Game on a READING-list. And my teacher never told, so now you go to that Apple Lc2 and play some FlightSimulator, 2 good landings or you have to-do it as homework.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  That's just semantics, but it certainly happened. It may have been more informal when I was growing up, but you still had to play games like "Midnight Rescue" as part of class work. I do think it is silly to put it on a 'Reading List'. I prefer to create a new category.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nix23 6y ago
    >That's just semantics No its not, its about learning howto think about war/extremism/politics and how it influences a society, its NOT a math game like Midnight Rescue. That is why it is on a READING list and not on a Math-Learning plan.
  - RangerScience 6y ago
    > I prefer to create a new category. What else would you put in this category?
- yonaguska 6y ago
  One of the most formative classes I took was in middle school- it was a general "engineering" class- we built balsa wood and wax paper airplanes, balsa-wood bridges, learned VB and made tic-tac-toe and backgammon, our teacher got every student copies of Neverwinter Nights and we used NWScript to make mods and learn simple stuff like for-loops. And he had a lab with Stronghold and Microsoft Flight Sim(with controllers) where we could hang out after school and play games together. I was coming from a background where I wasn't eating every day, the only sport I could afford to do was track- and that was only because the track coach was gracious enough to take me to a running store and buy me shoes, I was spending my nights cleaning office buildings, spending my early mornings getting to school early to shower and cram in my homework for the day before class. I was at a private school, so there was no reduced or free lunch program, and I had a very hard time staying awake in class, except for his class. Partially due to un-diagnosed ADHD and a really terrible home situation. That class gave me an attainable goal to work towards, and now I'm a programmer today. I had previously relegated my ambitions to simply surviving.

ceceron 6y ago

Interesting move. Sadly kids nowadays (at least in Poland, where I live) don't like reading books and tend to skip even very important titles. This may be a good way to bring some interest in the history via a genuinely entertaining medium.

simon1573 6y ago
What do you consider very important titles?
- mamon 6y ago
  Not the GP, but I think that there are many such titles, that's why schools in Poland have mandatory reading lists :) You cannot understand culture and tradition without reading some classics,starting with Bible, Homer's Illiad, or Shakespeare. And of course in Poland we mostly focus on Polish writers. You know, before journalism was invented novels served pretty much the same purpose as newspaper reports - there are the goldmine of information about how Poland looked like back in the day. Unfortunately, contemporary students prefer to just watch movie based on a book than reading the source material.
  - Imlus 6y ago
    I mean, reading / playing witcher you'd get better morale / class diversification understanding than reading Bible or Illiad, Shakespeare is definetely not for school readings, if you're not interested in the actual literature that book has no value in your life. I, personally, love reading books. But forcing that material to 12-18 and saying read these classic ones just pushes back youth from reading at all. You either move forward and adapt with the current generation or you try to force old generation habits and slowly curse on the result.
    - billfruit 6y ago
      Poland has a good literary heritage, which was partly responsible for the coalescing of Poland as a nation. So I suppose many of books and authors from that tradition could be essential reading for Polish young people.. I am not from Poland myself. Perhaps Henrik Sienkiewicz is one of those authors.. Perhaps they should prescribe the Witcher novels too.

LandR 6y ago

I've had this game sitting in my backlog for months. I've got a few days off work this week so need to give it a shot. I was never sure looking at videos and screenshots what sort of game it actually is.

augusto-moura 6y ago
Nothing that new in terms of gameplay, but the art style and the background story (inspired in real conflicts) are something else

indy 6y ago

Jonathan Blow gave an interesting talk yesterday about videogames and the future of education: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/678729516 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/678729516

Stevvo 6y ago
Starts 24:30

seemslegit 6y ago

The German translation would need an alternate title.

elcapitan 6y ago
Why?
- Thelordofalamut 6y ago
  Mein Kampf.
  - swift532 6y ago
    Couldn't they use Krieg or am I wrong / is this is just joke?
    - occamrazor 6y ago
      “Kampf” means “battle” and can also have, like in “Mein Kampf”, the metaphorical meaning of “struggle”. “Krieg” means “war”. E.g. WW2 is Weltkrieg 2, not Weltkampf 2. Having not played TWOM I don’t know which translates would be more appropriate. The GP is however most likely a joke (and not a bad one IMHO).
      - jccalhoun 6y ago
        It about trying to survive in a city in a fictional country during a war (similar to the Yugoslav Wars). So I think that krieg is appropriate but I haven't taken German in nearly 30 years so I'm rusty!
        elcapitan 6y ago
        It would be "Mein Krieg", not "Mein Kampf". Source: I'm German. Also, "Kampf" would be active fighting, and this game is about people who are in the opposite situation and become subjects of violence.

Minor49er 6y ago

They should put Deus Ex on the list

mbel 6y ago
The first one obviously.
cryoshon 6y ago
unfortunately, i think you'll find that DX is far too edgy for any school curriculum because it's far too true to life. school curriculums are not intended to capture the nuance of how a "terrorist" group like the NSF might gain popular support and even the moral high ground as a result of their efforts to reduce the inequality of vaccine distribution. an inequality of distribution that our society is all but destined to replicate, as soon as we have a vaccine for COVID-19. nor are school curriculums interested in provoking critical thought by posing questions like "what if powerful groups of people are conspiring for their own gain, even when it results in mass misery?" this too we have already covered in the pandemic, when trump's political allies recieved preferential access to the right to sell protective equipment that was in short supply even when their need for it was minimal and the consequences of their greed was mass death. put differently: school curriculums exist to prevent enlightened dissenters from existing, not to make more of them. i'd be all for having it be part of a course, but it's just too real.
runawaybottle 6y ago
I remember I gained a ton of interest in medieval Japan from Shogun Total War. No clue how historically accurate it was, but there are a lot of ‘period piece’ games that could really set the tone for a history course (Rome Total War, there’s a bunch for WW2, etc). Very underutilized.
RangerScience 6y ago
DX is one of the few games I've played through more than once. DX is a lot longer, and is fundamentally a FPS. It's a work of art of gaming, and were this a school on game design, I would absolutely agree with you. TWOM is a work of literary art. If you haven't played it, do so, but be warned: it hits hard, emotionally.

christiansakai 6y ago

It reminds me I have to finish this beautiful game

indymike 6y ago

It's about time that games get their due as great literature/media. Love it. So many great stories.

beyondcompute 6y ago

I am surprised why it took school system so long. And despite the apparent collapse of traditional education, it is surprisingly resistant to change. I would also include some works from Demoscene, some newer electronic music (at least from the 80s :)).

vanderZwan 6y ago
The Demoscene definitely needs some artistic recognition, but maybe not in the form of being put on the reading list ;)

RangerScience 6y ago

This is amazing. There are other games of this quality and artistry, but IMO no other games with the kind of impact TWOM has. There's something special that happens when you play TWOM that isn't possible in other mediums. It manages to actually create circumstances where you feel like you're making hard choices. IMO, only two other games accomplish something comparable. Portal (as a masterpiece of gaming in every respect) and Stanley Parable (as being another masterpiece that has a "message" inexpressible in any other medium). If you'd add to that list, I could do with more maximum quality games to have played ;)

lubujackson 6y ago
Papers, Please is my favorite example of how games can teach and inform by putting you in someone else's shoes. Especially because it is so simple and direct.
sombremesa 6y ago
Try playing Torment: Tides of Numenera.
- artificial 6y ago
  It's like playing an epic. Wonderful world.
lacker 6y ago
I found Detroit: Become Human to be quite thought-provoking.
- ramblerman 6y ago
  I found it too black and white as it went on. A good story has shades of gray, and Detroit fell short there for me. There were clear "good" guys and "bad" guys (or gals).
- some_random 6y ago
  I'm glad to hear, but that's not a common opinion from what I've seen. Personally I thought it was clumsy and it felt like it wanted to be a movie more than a game.

juskrey 6y ago

The education system, as always, sends the signal that should be received with great suspicion and scrutiny. Here the case is slightly more complex: any game, however rich, is a closed system with predictable outcomes, while real life is all about choosing opaque options, rarely obvious. Academia likes and itself all about first type: actually it is just another computer game, especially with recent remote/online movement. Surviving in real life situation like that, is nowhere near the computer game, but quite the opposite.

dreen 6y ago
I think you're missing the point. That game doesn't teach you anything about survival nor does it aim to, I think. It's more like a book about the people who go through some hardship, you read about how they cope and maybe learn a lesson applicable in everyday life. That is the point with some narrative literature in the first place.

neiman 6y ago

Respecting video games is great, but like you don't respect a movie as "the best meal I ever had", you also don't respect a game by putting it in a "recommended reading list".

ajhurliman 6y ago
Agreed. They probably maintained the term "recommended reading list" since people are used to it instead of inventing a new term like "recommended media" that wouldn't make for an exciting headline.
TheNorthman 6y ago
It's certainly a valid position to interpret games as text to be interpreted. In fact, if structuralism and semiotics have taught us anything it is precisely this. In danish education we have the concept of an "udvidet tekstbegreb" that means any references to texts can also refer to any other kind of cultural medium. If we look outside Denmark, the European institutions also have this view. If we, for example, look at the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), they give us this exact definition of text [0]: > Text is any sequence or discourse (spoken and/or written) related to a specific domain and which in the course of carrying out a task becomes the occasion of a language activity, whether as a support or as a goal, as product or process. [0]: https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97 https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97, pp. 10.

humaniania 6y ago

Playing "This War of Mine" was one of the most powerful and emotionally stirring experiences that I have ever had with a video game. It really is a beautiful work of art. Highly recommend playing it.

goda90 6y ago
It's a different gameplay experience, but I highly recommend Valiant Hearts for another emotionally stirring experience about people going through war.
- zanmat0 6y ago
  Seconded, an absolute masterpiece of a game that was. I would really love to have a save feature in TWoM, I feel like its sorely missing.
  - atq2119 6y ago
    Not being able to save is kind of the point though, isn't it? You don't get to save when you're stuck in a bombed out city under siege...
diffrinse 6y ago
Whatever Happened to Edith Finch?

alasdair_ 6y ago

The thing that I found very important in this game is that there is no clearly defined end-goal like “survive for 100 days” - this really helps the game capture the feeling of “will this never end?” Having a defined end date would make things easier psychologically. There is also a board game (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188920/war-mine-board-game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188920/war-mine-board-ga...) that I’ve heard good things about.

wobbly_bush 6y ago

This was a very difficult game to play. The difficulty was not in the gameplay, but in the emotional content of the game. If the other games help in escapism, this is the opposite where you can feel what the characters are going through in a war zone.