This War Of Mine is about civilians trying to survive in an unnamed besieged city, supply lines cut off by the military outside. You need to scavenge for food, medicine, and other supplies, try to build a cosy-ish home, survive bandits and soldiers alike, and face difficult decisions about how many people you can save and how far you’ll go. It’s a bit grim. “Whether This War of Mine truly succeeds in saying anything more than ‘war is hell’ I don’t know. Equally, I’m not at all sure it needs to,” our former Alec said in his 2014 This War Of Mine review. “We play a lot of wars, and it is surely only fair to sometimes be reminded that war is not really about a muscle-bound American man saving the day. It makes its point very well, in that it is harrowing, it is careful, and its increasingly deadly Groundhog Day approach supports rather than disrupts the atmosphere of extreme strife. It’s without doubt effective and impressive at what it does. Whether, though, you wish to subject yourself to despair in the name of empathy can only be your own decision.” While This War Of Mine wasn’t 11 Bit’s first game, it made their name. Over the years they’ve released a fair few expansions, and last year polished it up with a Final Cut. Giving its age rating, This War Of Mine will only be for students who are at least 18. Sounds like it’s on the approved ‘reading’ list of things that’ll be available to students, rather than specifically part of the curriculum. That’s still nice to see. 11-bit CEO Grzegorz Miechowski said in today’s announcement: It’s not like edutainment was in my day:
