This War of Mine

This War of Mine is a survival-themed strategy game where the player controls a group of civilian survivors hiding inside a damaged house in the besieged fictional city of Pogoren, Graznavia. The main goal of the game is to stay alive during the war with the tools and materials that the player can gather. Most of the characters under the player's control have no military background nor any kind of survival experience and will require constant intervention by the player in order to stay alive. The player must maintain their characters' health, hunger, and mood levels until the declaration of a ceasefire, which occurs after a randomized duration.

In the daytime, the survivors will have to stay inside because there are hostile snipers outside, thereby offering the player time to craft tools from gathered materials, trade, upgrade the shelter, cook food and heal the survivors. At night, the player is given the opportunity to go out and search nearby areas for valuable resources to survive day by day. During their excursions, the survivors, controlled by players, can encounter other NPC survivors of the war, who they can choose to assist by offering food or medicine, or rob and kill. The player can also build a radio inside their shelter, which will provide useful information such as weather warnings, updates on the city's economy, and news of the ongoing war effort to help the player plan appropriate shelter upgrades and scavenging missions.[4]

The player starts off with one to four survivors whose actions the player can affect. The actions the player makes will change the type of endings each survivor has. Each character has one or two traits that helps/hinders the player, besides hidden, varying stats that affect combat, movement speed, and so on. Some traits are useful during certain days while others are useful all the time. For example, one character named Bruno has a trait called "Good Cook", which helps the player use less fuel and water when cooking meals or brewing moonshine; and Roman, a former rebel who is trained in combat. There are a total of 12 playable characters.[5] The Little Ones DLC includes the possibility of adding an extra character, a child survivor, that cannot defend itself or perform any of the tasks needed to maintain the shelter at first. In addition, the child survivor must be given constant attention to prevent it from becoming depressed but can be taught by the other survivors to perform small chores like cooking, filtering water, or growing crops, and once bonded with an adult, it can sleep with them in the same bed at night, removing the need for a separate bed for both.

The game was inspired by the extremely poor living conditions and wartime atrocities that Bosnian civilians endured during the 1992–96 Siege of Sarajevo, the longest city siege since World War II,[6] among other conflicts.[7] Developers researched hundreds of years' worth of civilian accounts of wartime. Charlie Hall in Polygon, describing the developers' efforts, writes:[7]

This War of Mine is not about Ukraine. It's not about any single conflict. It is about every conflict, and every innocent person imprisoned inside them. This War of Mine is about Ypres in 1914. It's about Warsaw in 1944 and Sarajevo in '92. It's about Mogadishu in '93, Kabul in '03 [sic] and Fallujah in '04. It's about Syria in 2013. It's about Gaza right now.

This War of Mine was released for Microsoft Windows, MacOS, and Linux in November 2014.[8][9] The Android port was released on July 14, 2015, followed by the iOS port on the following day (July 15).[10] In November 2014, unlicensed copies of the game were made available online. The developer's response was to post a number of working Steam keys, encouraging downloaders to share them with friends, and buy the game if their financial situation allowed.[11]

In 2020, the Polish Chancellery of the Prime Minister announced that This War of Mine would be added to the recommended reading list in Polish high schools during the academic year of 2020–2021. This was the first initiative in the world to add a video game to recommended readings in school.[51][48] The Microsoft Windows version of the game is free to download from the Polish government's website, alongside lesson topics for teachers.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 11 Bit Studios announced that all profits earned from This War of Mine for seven days starting 24 February 2022 would be donated to the Ukrainian Red Cross to directly support victims.[52][53] Within the week the company had raised over £500,000.[16] In total, $850,000 was raised.[15]

A cooperative board game version was released in 2017 by Galakta in cooperation with 11-bit studios.[54]

• Official website