So I bought This War of Mine in the last Steam sale, due in part to the sizable GAF hype train. I can't tell whether the survivors or I suffered more. I can't tell if I've ever been quite so simultaneously bored and tormented by a game. I can't decide if I feel more horrified by its treatment of the civilian effects of war as a crafting/god game, or by the fact that I seemed to be stuck in some kind of existentialist nightmare where everyone but Katia keeps dying, but living she stays, lumbering around half-dead, depressed, and surviving, until finally after 42 days the war was over and I could finally delete the damn thing from my drive.
Maybe I was so unhappy with the game because the premise had such promise. I bought it because I wanted to reward a developer for taking on a challenging, serious topic. But I think the developers failed when they decided to turn this emotional topic into what is essentially an ant farm god game. Frankly, ordering these characters around (with a rather clunky UI) gave me no sense of intimacy with them, and yet the civilian, human cost of war is an intensely personal, intimate story. Their game mechanics did not tell this story adequately.
The problem is that the player isn't role-playing as one of the characters. The player's "character" is some kind of narrator that decides actions for the group. But being the "unseen hand" does not invest me emotionally or does it give a proper sense of immersion. I'll give you an example.
The group had been badly wounded by a raid the night before. They were low on food and most were starving. Well, I get a knock on the door and have Katia answer. It's a woman asking to help protect their house. I have Katia tell her no, because frankly the group is having enough trouble protecting their house already and I can't spare anyone. Well, I see in Katia's diary update that she's none too pleased with this. So suddenly I have narrative dissonance. I just told Katia to do something that she wouldn't actually do if given the choice. So who am I, the player, in this game then? Apparently I'm some unseen god-being who can make people do things they don't want to.
This threw any semblance of immersion I had out the drafty window. I'm not one of the group, I'm just a puppeteer pulling strings. How is this supposed to make me feel like I'm surviving along with Katia and Pavle? The game views events more like a war reporter, but one who can direct civilian actions. You can observe and perhaps empathize with the characters, but your role is to observe, not to be a survivor, not to form bonds (or break them) with other survivors. Sure, I felt depressed seeing survivors half-dead, bleeding to death, hopeless. But it was not my own feelings after taking on the role of a survivor; it was merely emotional voyeurism. You can get these kind of feelings already just by reading reports from war correspondents and watching videos from civilians in conflict zones. What a game can provide is the ability to take on a role directly; to see through the eyes of someone else. A missed opportunity here.
The crafting element in the game and constant need to interact with UI menus (for both crafting and scavenging) was also a big detriment to immersion and emotional investment for me. Turning the pathos of civilians caught in a war into a crafting game, and a game of clicking through menus, felt really wrong. It made the survival story mechanical, too gamified.
So how could this game have actually delivered on the premise?
The biggest improvement would probably come from the player taking on the role of one of the survivors. Your survival now becomes personal. And the group dynamics now become personal to that survival. Katia doesn't like that you told an old lady to piss off? Maybe she'd leave. Maybe the group would kick you out of the house and you'd have to find somewhere else to hole up. In parallel with this role-taking, I'd honestly say the ant-farm 2d view should be scrapped and make it 3d first-person. The player needs to really feel like they inhabit the survivor's role. While the art they use does a good job of conveying the physical environment and the animation does a good job of conveying their physical state, the 2d perspective enforces the feeling that you're an observer of these characters, not one of them.
The other big improvement would be to get rid of the crafting element. It's a distraction from the heart of the story. Focus the game on the social/ethical struggles and improve interactions between survivors. The scavenging and trading elements can be kept.
I would also say that the devs played it a bit safe. The story they are telling is definitely about survival, but in war far worse happens than starving or being shot by looters. Rape and torture are common elements of the civilian cost of war, and if a game is going to tackle this subject it can't shy away from atrocities like this.