This War of Mine

This War of Mine
83
Metacritic
94
Steam
90.509
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$3.99
Release date
14 November 2014
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
94 (61 392 votes)

In This War Of Mine you do not play as an elite soldier, rather a group of civilians trying to survive in a besieged city; struggling with lack of food, medicine and constant danger from snipers and hostile scavengers. The game provides an experience of war seen from an entirely new angle.

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This War of Mine system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows 7/8/10
  • Processor: 2.4 GHz Dual Core
  • Memory: 2 GB RAM
  • Graphics: GeForce GTX 260, Radeon HD 5770, 1024 MB, Shader Model 3.0
  • Sound Card: DirectX compatible
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zara.izara93
zara.izara93

Iskra and Christo situation is so damn hard. Children cannot guard, barter, or scavenge. So almost everything is done by her father alone.

Scheming Cat
Scheming Cat

Good mechanics, good theme, good character design. Nice to see a game like this one out there: war through the eyes of civilians.

Fun an inspiring when you get the gist of it, but it has a steep learning curve. Using guides to understand the basics makes the experience much easier.

LoisLong
LoisLong

Brilliant in the way it makes you get an understanding for how your own comfortable life would change during war. The game also features some dark humor, which I as a Scandinavian like and appreciate.

Toney
Toney

Had trouble even opening the game, first it was a black screen for 5 minutes then I could play. After the first time it crashed I couldn't open it without it immediately crashing. I restarted me computer, 5 minute black screen then I could play. I open the settings then exit them, freezes then crash. I try changing the resolution, crash. I changed it to windowed mode, tried making it full screen and it crashes. I tab out, it crashes.

This has to be the worst state of a game I've ever played. I'm running a 3080 on the latest driver. For a game 8 years old now you'd think they would have ironed these issues out. I guess not. Time to pirate the game then maybe it will work. Refunding this trash.

Zera of Palestein
Zera of Palestein

This game is an emotional and sometimes depressing ride.
It has a Simple but satisfying survival gameplay.
It makes you feel for the characters and their struggles and needs

If you are interested in survival games that isn't about zombie apocalypse, you need to play this game.

schm2616
schm2616

This game is brutal, not overly complex but difficult enough that you wont make it your first few attempts. Picked it up for $20 and it was worth every dollar.

Finally finished my first game, pretty sure I have PTSD. 10/10 would abandon kids in the park again

Articguard11
Articguard11

Highly recommend on so many levels. A very unconventional game that gives you the option to have a very unique plot line each time you play (aside from the actual designated story episodes). Graphics are gorgeous and the UI is super smooth.

DK
DK

Great game. Packs an impressive amount of planning and strategy. It's a smart game, can be very complex if you really get into it. You can really do a lot of thinking if you want to maximise efficiency. But it's also easy to play, you don't necessarily have to be maximally efficient. It just feels nice when you figure it out, when you become good at it.

Luccy D. Lima
Luccy D. Lima

Stole from an elderly couple while they cried in their knees begging me to leave a little bit of food for them cause that's all they have left.

3 days later I killed a young guy taking care of his ill father, I couldn't bring myself to kill the father but he starved to death since I stole all the food and medicine he had, plus he didn't have his son to take care of him.

10/10

groomer
groomer

I played this game without guides at first, but I don't have a lifetime to devote to restarting the same campaign over and over due to a scavenge gone wrong ending in a death. I enjoyed the choice of what I wanted to prioritize/craft/sacrifice to set myself up for the best outcome. I'm on day 31 have plenty of materials/food/guns/ammo everything crafted...and during a scavenge to Ruined Villa, Marko was spotted, so I run to the edge, and-I kid you not-he won't hop down in the time it takes an NPC to fire 3 times. I was right on the edge of the platform and clicking the ground rapidly.

So, I quickly hit ALT+F4, but NOTHING is happening, so I hit it again and again (this had worked for me before?). Goes into loading, I CTRL/ALT/DEL and long story short nothing I can do, but play the rest of the game without Marko. I can't seem to want to play it anymore though just to have another glitch happen and restarting this game yet again.

I like a challenge, but if they'd just allow you to restart the previous day without having to save a copy of your Steam Dir it would be worth the time.

3403775824
3403775824

为什么律师音乐女小孩的档不能吃自己做的饭啊,只能吃罐头和生食。
why the lawyer, musician and the little girl cannot eat the food which made by themselves?
They can only eat the can, raw food and vegetable!

markjasoncapili
markjasoncapili

Note: If you guys are having lag issues and very low fps, you guys should try going to your File Manager and going directly to your Steam apps and launching the game as administrator. You would not need to lower the resolution anymore and it will still run perfectly fine. I used to be able to run it smoothly before the Final Cut release but afterward, it got laggy even when pausing. I tried lowering the resolution and set the gfx to low but still nothing. I am using a really shitty laptop so I thought maybe that's the problem but even people who is using gaming laptops are getting lags. If you run it directly from the File Manager and in admin mode, you would be able to run the game smoothly even with the resolution in max.

Wow... this came out like a paragraph from a diary

DINGPOCALYPSE
DINGPOCALYPSE

the hungry, the scrape, the anxiety, the stress, the depression, the killing choice, the decision

damn

Sapphire
Sapphire

In my eyes, this game is a must play for anyone whom craves the passionate storytelling that comes with the setting of being in a war torn city. The mechanics are a little difficult to grasp at first, however, it makes up for it through the absolute brutal realism that is has in terms of the stress and hardships of such a life.

This is definitely a game worth taking the time to read all the fluff and immersing yourself in.

Jacob_Horst
Jacob_Horst

This game is so deep in its content that I cannot play too long. In short it is a sad game, the joy is surviving. The difficult challenges all characters face and the hope for surviving is enough to keep you going. The game will challenge your thoughts on humanity as you struggle to make it through the day.

I think I said too much. You just have to play this.

BannZay
BannZay

Good side - it is really Interesting to discover the rules of the game by your own. Buuuut that it is it. After you played the game for like 20 hours and discovered how it works, the game becomes just boring. I loved the game when I been playing it, but I doubt that I will launch again.

Bombshell
Bombshell

Grim, stark, and sad, but still enjoyable to play. Similar in tone to Frostpunk and other post-apocalyptic survival games, but with an interesting and unique art and play style.

granolacrunch
granolacrunch

This is basically every System of a Down song distilled into one dreary, slightly preachy (war is bad) politically driven Sims-like game. Point and click and watch your little puppets suffer and die in a war-torn wreckage of-a-city.

Miller
Miller

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☑ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second live for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

Grab this review template here! 👉 https://vojtastruhar.github.io/steam-review-template/

Hellhounfd3223
Hellhounfd3223

controls aren't explained at all, so goodluck figuring them out. u just have icons to go by...and some r crytpic as to what they mean. Basically its closed instances...u have a home instance. then every night u raid some other instanced area with 1 person. and u gather supplies. that's it at its core. Other than that u have to micromanage sickness and eating and all this other stupid stuuff u probably dont want to do. making a bed is a highlight of ur day apparently....finding materials is a chore and the system ui isn't very gratifying. Just bored playing it.

XiaoHu
XiaoHu

Alternative vibes by this game... Leaves me with an interesting mix of excitement and melancholy after each session... :)

GTG | Anoreth
GTG | Anoreth

The most accurate depiction of war as a civilian living in a warzone. A few bugs here & there but its BRUTAL and requires a substantial amount of patience. This game is worth the pick up, worth the cause and worth experiencing the hell of hardship and scarce resources and what you can do to survive.

doremina 🎼
doremina 🎼

The game has its mechanics but unlike most other games, it pushes the player to think of the game more like a real war with a realistic view rather than a game where you keep looting and try to build the best shelter. As a gamer who leaves all their empathy skills behind the monitor and who can sell her wife for internet connection while playing, I was unsuccessful countless times. If you want to play, consider this before doing so.
With it's atmosphere itself and Stories DLC's, This War of Mine allows players to play chill and see war as a painful process than a historical event. Recommended

Crovax Urborg
Crovax Urborg

Its not often a game focuses on this part of war and the horrors it can provide. Engaging and fun systems fill the entire world and makes you really decide what kind of person you want all of your survivors to be/act like.

sintti
sintti

I was glad. Things were going quite well for my four survivors. It was around Day 27. They had just fixed a broken guitar and a little bit before the nightfall Katia was playing the guitar and Kalina was listening to her play and sang(?). I thought it was heartwarming.

Then it was time to send Katia to scavenge. I chose St. Mary's Church and wasn't too worried, because I thought it would be relatively safe. There wasn't much to find though and then I saw a man and made Katia sneak a little bit closer, so that I could hear what the man was mumbling. I hid Katia and waited. I figured the man wasn't interesting and thought it would be better to leave, and just when Katia stepped out of her hiding spot the man found what he had been looking for, turned around and spotted Katia.

He had a gun. Katia didn't have any weapons. I think he shot Katia or then I just decided it was best to flee, as he approached Katia threateningly, and after that he started shooting. I wish I had guided Katia to a different route, but I didn't. She started to climb the ladders and was shot to death. I was shocked.

In the morning, seeing my other survivors sad, especially little Kalina, was heartbreaking. Everything had seemed to go well and now it was just a distant memory. I had lost my bargainer and it was harder to play with only two adults. I knew I had made mistakes and I cursed my timing, maybe Katia would have survived if I had waited longer, maybe I could have hidden her somewhere if I had guided her to a different route. Pavle or Bruno said something like "she was just here and now she isn't" and that's exactly how I felt. It was sad and it gives me shivers.

I didn't dare to return to St. Mary's Church, but I want to explore it when I start a new game. The other three survived.

sk1nny_
sk1nny_

first attempt, civilian die I cry. now civilian die, I alt+f4 . beautiful game muaahhh :-*

xojazzyrose13
xojazzyrose13

I've played this game for a number of years on PS4 and PC. I love the atmosphere of the game and game play overall. The idea of the game is to make all the survivors outlast the Winter and the War. You will have to scavenge, trade and maybe steal to get what you need to survive.

You can play the story lines already created for you, or customize your own with select characters. All characters have a skill to benefit survival. The survivors all live in a home you must upgrade with furnishings to have a place to sleep and eat. There are lots of piles of mess to go through to find building materials off the bat.

Your people have to sleep/guard/scavenge at night. You carefully pick what would work best according to what you need to go find and the survivor's moods. Some are too tired or sick to go out or guard so be wary.
Scavenging can be dangerous so eventually, you'll need to make or find weapons and upgrade your workshops to make the necessary equipment.

If you can make it to the end of the game with all your original survivors, you know you were successful. This game is so fun, not too repetitive and the random events keep it interesting. This game can be difficult if you're too strategic with your plan to survive.

ОТВЕЧАЮ НАЖЫМАЛ!!
ОТВЕЧАЮ НАЖЫМАЛ!!

What a fucking dumb fucking game, I am starving, right? I have food to cook, and as soon as I come back to the house I am fucking dead and if I start again from the day before. I get the raw food becuase there are no other options anymore and I would go back to my house and I am fucking dead again. Like wtf, explain this mf bs?????? and i cant go back to day 13 to fix the issues now i gotta start over. Waste of fucking money, it takes Fucking ADAM to Travel 14 hours to his brother house when its acrrsos the mf street!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

christianoliff
christianoliff

One of my favourite games. Lots of locations to explore and a lot of experience and luck is needed to survive. A superb game and highly recommended.

No-Voice-Chan
No-Voice-Chan

easy to learn the whole game, but hard to beat the whole game, i always love those type of games like (this war of mine), i highly recommend on buying it.

s.p.kret.zdechl
s.p.kret.zdechl

I really enjoyed the game until the combat part came:
- I like the idea for the game
- I like the moral choices you are given
- I like the graphics - the sketchy effects are really nice
- The game has its atmosphere

But the game has lots of bugs which ruin the whole experience. The bugs work both ways: they can help you too much, rendering the game not challenging, or they can make your life miserable.

**The combat system is the worst aspect of this game.**
The character will often not react to your commands, just standing there, getting themselves killed. And you cannot save/load game at any time. So your character dies because the game decided not to listen to you, and then it saves the progress for you.

The game will also not teach/tell you when it's getting autosaved. If you think you've finished day in the game and decide to turn it off - oops, all day is lost, because it only saves at dawn. Try again.

Selecting characters works randomly. Sometimes, you click on a character and it gets selected. Sometimes you click on a character, and currently selected character goes to the location where you clicked. This hitbox problem seems to affect every interactive object.

You can basically win the game by going to 1 single location - the Garage. Trader's inventory gets replenished all the time, and once you traded with him, you can go to his basement to steal whatever you just traded in. And then repeat. Almost infinite items - you're limited only by your backpack capacity.
This "exploit" I noticed myself, but I read on a wiki about many more "exploits" like this.
It ruins the challenge.

There is no keyboard support in this game. You can't even look around with arrow keys.

The game does not remember my fullscreen setting - it always starts in windowed mode.

The game was made in Poland, yet the Polish localization is so bad (unnatural, mechanical), that I - being native Polish speaker - decided to play the game in English. Weird.
The English localization is perfect though.

The game begs for other improvements:
- Why can only 1 character go scavenging?
- Why does the character get tired if I finish scavenging in 1 hour?

No wonder the game is being sold so cheap - I suspect people would get frustrated if they paid more.
Well, I got frustrated enough to leave a comment.

With all the above there's no incentive for me to start another game.

If there was an option to save the game at any time (or at least if it'd autosave at dusk), I'd just use it to neutralize these combat issues. But there isn't.

DeadDancers
DeadDancers

This is the kind of game I feel like I should love but just can't get into. The pacing is maddeningly slow. The forced inefficiency and waste of manpower and resources is frustrating beyond belief. I'm baffled by how many positive reviews it has.

Bear!
Bear!

One of the best games I've ever played. There's a lot to praise, but I'll just say that thinking about the review is as the content, left me speechless. If you've not played it, you definitely should .

NaCl
NaCl

Not fun. Might be a great commentary, a novel idea, whatever. As a game, looking at gameplay, it is just a very boring and resource management game.

PetrikCZ
PetrikCZ

I don't get this game. It gives you no helping hand, no guidance, no explanation, no space to learn the ropes. You are left to trial and error, which leaves no time to find where attributes like fun, satisfaction, sense of achievement are hiding....... nothing, only frustration. Should kneeling figure shoving rubbish with their bare hands make me want to go and make a shovel?? Well it doesn't.
Restarted few times, on most occasions got burgled the very first night and got 1 of my 2 food stolen. Joyous. Motivating? Not to me. I am clearly not masochistic enough to enjoy this. Uninstalled.

timothos
timothos

Not a First Person Shooter, not a survival tycoon, but an experience . The distinction is essential to the purpose of the game since without it, it is merely another FPS/survival game. I personally refunded a few crappy games to purchase this and I did not regret my decision one bit. If the game induces empathy and melancholy then congratulations, you played this correctly.

The story of the game is based on the 1994 Balkans Conflict, particularly during the Siege of Sarajevo which lasted at least a year before broken and relief was sent to the people although in the game, the war would last around 30-60 days depending on the character set you start with.

Regarding the characters, barring one (Roman) they are civilians with different qualities, emotions, stories and strengths and you unlock more of their background story as the game progresses. You build your shelter in the day, you scavenge for supplies in the night.

The key to enjoying this game is not winning. Its surviving and as I've mentioned above, empathizing with the soldiers, civilians, even the thieves.

Fropps
Fropps

I don't know how I feel about this game. On one hand, it offers moments ranging from the heartfelt to the horrific. It reaffirms my desire to be a part of humanity while also presenting me with some of its worst elements.

HOWEVER, this part of the game is tacked onto a set of mechanics that just do *not* respect the player's time.
As I get older, and responsibilities nudge my free time into a smaller and smaller corner of my life, I have to make the most of the time I have. In a well structured experience, the game works with the player to determine satisfying exit points. For example, I might feel the need to stop after playing an hour or two of an intense horror game, or after feeling the satisfaction of finishing a curated six hour experience. In contrast, This War of Mine leaves me feeling like time has hardly passed after sessions where morning turns to night. It sucks hours out of my life like an unpleasantly bureaucratic vampire.

I love games that take us into places other than fun. I love that this war of mine takes us into places of loss, of grief, of suffering. However, ideally this pain should be chained to the experience. Losing a survivor after 6 hours of gameplay today had me feel real existential pain. It didn't make me think about war and loss, it made me think of the two thirds of the previous 6 hours that were spent micromanaging agonisingly slow timers and waiting. I will never get that time back.

Wound
Wound

Even though the game has been out for some bit, I bought it because I used to play it way back when it came out and it happened to be on sale. The game touches a topic many war-related games don't, it's not a game about the front lines, or about soldiers, it's about every day people in the time of war. The game is a lot of resource management, scavenging, making right decisions. In my opinion the game gives a great example of different people in the same situation, some characters are more sad and more affected in different situations than others, others have useful skills that can make surviving way easier, while others might even slow you down. All in all I would like to see more games like this.

DNDA
DNDA

my first indie game i ever play back in 2014.

NeoDelta
NeoDelta

3/10

The atmosphere is great and there is a constant tension present.
But the steep learning curve, horrible combat mechanics and sloppy controls make this game below average in my opinion.

Buy it when it's on sale.

TheButtCrumplr
TheButtCrumplr

The game is designed to show the struggle and horrors of a civil war from a civilian perspective, and while it succeeds in showcasing it's anti-war message, it's also a game I don't think is much fun as a result.

One of the biggest issues is just that the game refuses to teach you anything about how to play it, other than the movement and action system. There's no explanation for any of the mechanics or conditions other than your survivors constant whining for food, sleep, smokes, or medicine. You get flavor hints and prompts; no numbers. You can guess at what the game wants you to do, but often enough your best guess might just kill a run because that's not how the game wants you to play it.

The wounding system in particular is very catty. In most games, giving the character a rest and a bandage will see them healed up. In This War of Mine, you need daily bandages (almost impossible to keep up), keep them fed to the brim, let them rest in bed for days and nights, and sometimes they'll still get worse.

Sickness in cold weather is similar. The game offers you a heater, which one might assume would protect against the cold if you give it wood. Nope. You need multiple heaters. You also need to fill them to the brim, because that makes them hotter. No, it doesn't matter where they're placed. None of this is explained, and you'll be wondering why your survivors are freezing despite having a heater right next to them.

It's easy to have a survivor freeze to death overnight when healthy, while you struggle to upgrade and construct multiple heaters, because you hadn't planned to need all these heaters, AND, every location is mysteriously out of parts.

It's very hard to recover from a downward spiral if you don't go on the wiki and KNOW where to go and what to do before it starts, because the game just doesn't convey anything.

I think my biggest gripe is the inventory system. You're given a grid with some locked squares, implying you can upgrade your inventory somehow, so surely you just need a high enough crafting bench right? Maybe make a backpack? Once you get that, everything will go smoothly in your scavenging, right? You'll be abl eto make up for all the spent parts on upgraded workstations, right? Wrong. It's a trap. Most survivors will have 10 slots for life. Deal with it. And items just don't stack past a small handful or 1 per slot. The entire system will have you leaving more goodies than not, which feels disappointing, rather than fun or rewarding. This is what most often causes the downward spiral. You need too many different things all the time and can't bring them home. You'll often have to burn trips by sending in a scav with armor/guns/tools/bullets which leaves no room for taking things back.

I think a lot of players might feel inclined to defend TWoM simply because it's stated goal is to simulate the miserable and desperate struggle of a group of civilians in a warzone. Sure. It succeeds at that. The game does simulate a desperate struggle, but it does this by obfuscating its mechanics and simultaneously punishing you for not knowing them. My best recommendation would be to get an inventory mod or a noob mod and be prepared to read a lot of wiki pages anyhow so you know what you're doing. Even with all of that though, I can't say the game is much fun. Once you learn all the mechanics and map the game out in your head, you'll feel like there isn't much left to see or do.

PUPPER
PUPPER

kinda depressing. very fun. i've still yet to get through a season or whatever; even more depressing. still fun tho. but sometimes quite draining on the soul. 10/10

WaterSpider
WaterSpider

not a bad game just not really my speed