Side Scrolling adventure game. Interesting concept.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/282070?snr=1_41_4__42
out of eight review. the concept reminds me a little of zafehouse diaries.
Reminds of nothing so much as Camus' "The Long Sheet".
I'm very glad games like this are made.
I cannot say I would ever play it...
Best,
Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)
Here's an extended playthrough. It does seem very similar to Zafehouse Diaries but with higher production values. I think I might grab it if it's on sale someday.
I've been playing this and I really like it so far. It starts tough - although it's randomised so maybe I got a bad start. I've got three men living together and they're always tired and sick. We have barely anything in the house, and I used half of what we started with to upgrade the workstation before I knew what I was really doing. Probably should have saved that for later.
Tried to go scavenging at a supermarket but there was a gang in residence so I legged it. The second night was much more productive; I took one of the guys (a former firefighter) into a quiet house that turned out to be occupied by an elderly couple. They ran and hid upstairs, giving my guy free reign to loot them. That finally got us some food but two of the three men got kind of depressed about it. That same day someone came to the door offering food for trade but he wasn't interested in anything we had.
Lovely little game, I'm looking forward to playing some more.
I have it on my wishlist. It looks interesting.
@Huw - as "Steam Friends" we share a lot of the same games, so I'm even more tempted. Friends is quite useful in that sense.
True enough matey. At least 90% of the games that land on my wishlist are due to this forum and my friends feed.
If there's interest I'll post more detailed impressions of This War of Mine later. I might start a new game for it actually because two of my three men are now dead and things look decidedly bleak for the last chap!
Quote from: Huw the Poo on April 26, 2015, 11:36:38 AM
True enough matey. At least 90% of the games that land on my wishlist are due to this forum and my friends feed.
If there's interest I'll post more detailed impressions of This War of Mine later. I might start a new game for it actually because two of my three men are now dead and things look decidedly bleak for the last chap!
If you don't mind, I'd certainly like to see that.
Shameless self-promotion: A review of This War of Mine I wrote for PaxSims:
https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/review-this-war-of-mine/
Don't apologise. It's a good review. It makes you stop and think about those poor bu*gers stuck in a warzone for months on end. Grim. :(
Well since there's been one text review and two video reviews posted in this thread, instead of reviewing the game myself I'll just post some random thoughts.
It is indeed like Zafehouse Diaries, as has been noted earlier. It's very much about managing your group of people, taking care of needs both physical and, to a much lesser extent, emotional. Apparently one of the selling points of the game is the decline in morality that living in a warzone brings, but I have found it to be (so far) a slightly disingenuous claim; as with virtually all games that claim to offer a real moral choice, the actual gameplay favours doing the "right" thing. Hmmph.
I'm not too bothered by that, however, because the game is pretty good anyway. It's exceptionally atmospheric, in fact I think the general presentation is the real star of the show. A sense of foreboding pervades the whole game. You realise just how fragile your group of survivors are, and you have no shortage of enemies - be they other survivors who won't hesitate to rob/kill you or the more traditional enemies known as hunger and sickness. You can see from screenshots how beautifully the game has been drawn, both environments and sprites, but what screenshots don't show is that the environments are actually 3D models, so you get to see around walls and objects as you pan the camera left and right. It's really impressive to see in action. An austere and melancholy soundtrack accompanies the bleak visuals and complements them very well. Random war sounds such as sniper fire and shelling can be heard throughout the gameplay.
Anyway. The game is very much centered around planning and preparation. You have to try to work out which order to build improvements to your shelter, manage risk/reward when scavenging at night (not to mention deciding whether a very tired survivor who stays behind should get much-needed sleep or stand guard to reduce the chance of being looted). You're constantly weighing pros and cons...do you scavenge as much wood and materials as possible in order to patch up that hole in your shelter's wall, or do you make some space in your backpack for jewellery for trading, or weapon parts, or food? Do you build a herb workshop to make medicines or use the materials to improve your cooker in order to make meals more efficiently? This War of Mine is absolutely full of these choices and I find myself agonising over each one.
It's quite enjoyable. The pace is relaxed even while the mood is constantly tense, you find yourself caring somewhat for each survivor and even the NPCs you meet, there are no bugs that I found and it runs extremely smoothly. It kind of has the "one more turn" (one more day?) feeling to it, too. Just as you're telling yourself you ought to quit, you finish a scavenging hunt during which you've finally found that part you've been looking for, or finally crafted a weapon, or finally found a reliable source of wood, etc. I like it, and I'm going to continue playing for a while. My latest game has reached day 5 and we're in relatively good shape; we have a cooker, some food, some medical supplies and even a weapon. Nobody is sick, nobody is wounded. I want to see how long we can last before the inevitable doom descends!
Oh yeah....is it worth the normal £15 asking price? Yep, in my opinion it is. I can see myself getting £15-worth of entertainment out of this easily, and the randomisation aspect really adds to replayability. It's a very worthwhile gaming experience, telling the story of a modern war from a unique perspective. I bought my copy at GOG and got the soundtrack along with some pretty nice wallpapers.
This is the short review I left on Steam. I felt the game had moments of brilliance, but well......:
Well done, innovative, thought provoking, brutal, immersive......those are the good points and they are well earned.
So is soul-crushing, depressing, thin characters, too few options.
The game is brilliant in many ways. It can be heartbreaking, which is genius in it's own right... but not fun. It would be a great social tool for teaching how war is about more than tanks and planes. It is supposed to be depressing and I get that part. It captures what many live through every day in our world. But witnessing the civilians under your care commit suicide or run off despite you doing everything you can to support them....I'm not sure that I see the "game" in that.
Thumbs up as an object lesson for the horrors of war.
Thumbs down as a game.
Is there actually combat in this game? If so, how does it work?
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on April 26, 2015, 10:07:45 PM
Is there actually combat in this game? If so, how does it work?
There is but it's fairly rudimentary. You assign actions to your survivors by clicking hotspots on the screen, just like in The Sims actually. Combat is no exception; you switch from scavenge mode to combat mode, then all viable targets have hotspots appear on them and you just click on them to attack. Your survivor will equip the best weapon available to do so. I've only been in two fights so there may well be stuff I haven't seen yet.