This War of Mine

[dvang]

Just thought I'd give a heads up of a great new game on Steam: This War of Mine

 

I like it a lot, and it can be a challenge, especially as time goes on and resources become more and more scarce.  If you like a Survival game, or a resource management game, I think you'll really like this one.

[generalripphook]

Wow that looks pretty good. 

[Duckman]

I saw that and wondered about it.  My big concern was really that it would lack polish because it was a small indie effort.  Hows the interface and gameplay?

[dvang]

I have absolutely no issues with the interface.  The graphics are dark and gritty, yet clean.  Very nice.  I read that they used motion-capture to translate all the characters in the game (using friends and family etc) and it really shows, as despite being essentially black-and-white there is a lot of detail to the characters.

 

Using your characters is pretty simple and intutive. Point and click to move them, double-click to make them run.  Interaction is with circular areas on the screen that have icons in them. With a character selected (they have a slight but noticeable highlight around their body) then click on the icon you want them to use.  There is also an area in the lower right with character portraits, which you can also use to select a character, as well as bring up a small display for them that gives you some bio/information about them.

 

Honestly, it seems like a very well polished game to me, and I highly recommend it to everyone.

 

The only "frustrating" thing to me is the 'saves'.  The game splits into a "Day" portion, in which you handle in-house construction, eating, fortifying, etc.  Then there is a "Night" portion, where one of your survivors is sent to scavenge various areas of the city.  There is no manual save in the game, and the game itself only saves at the start of each "Day" cycle.  Thus, if you have a bad Night, you can either get stuck with it b/c it quickly goes to Day and saves... or if you can exit quick enough, you revert to the start of the next day and need to do/repeat the entire day portion's events/building before you can get back to the night scavenging.

 

Then again, since it is a survival game, technically you should probably not be reloading anyway and just take the bad with the good, so I understand the design of it.  It isn't really a flaw of the game, simply a matter of me hating when one of my survivors dies, so I "cheat" to avoid it.  :P