Your group won’t have access to their usual comforts and must use ingenuity, adaptability, effective resource management, and make difficult decisions to ensure that the group survives together.įrom a design perspective, taking the obvious setting aside, This War of Mine is a wargame through and through down to the goals you set for your group and the tactics you utilize to achieve those goals. Instead, you’ll shepherd the lives of average people, civilians, as they try and survive amidst an ongoing horrific conflict. In fact, you barely understand the military situation: who the belligerents are, their reasons for going to war, and the overall political context. In this game, you don’t control troop formations with a well-defined and set military goal. Essentially, military or war-focused games can have a dehumanizing and glorifying effect that can give a skewed picture of the reality of war.Ĭhallenging Game Design Norms This War of Mineġ1 bit studios’ This War of Mine is a rare game that chooses to go against the grain and established norms with a palpable and provocative approach to the very idea of a wargame. In addition, many wargames often directly encourage military action through rewards and incentivize players to engage in violence with little second thought. Well-defined historical themes, such as the Cold War, the Middle Ages, and especially World War Two also lend themselves to an exceptional focus on the military side of things. Strategy games in particular suffer from disincentivizing original takes on the idea of war, as a focus on military action is just such a tempting and easy trope to fall back on. This War of Mine holds a unique position by being one of the few recent voices to bring something new to the table. From a military, political, economic, diplomatic, and even individual character level war fits game design principles almost perfectly and it’s in fact such a common setting that it leaves little incentive and room for other voices to be heard. Wargames, be they simulations, real-time, turn-based, grand strategy, and even action and role-playing games of various kinds, have made the topic of war a ubiquitous part of video game culture. This War of Mine achieves its classic status by taking familiar design tropes to draw you in while, at the same time, subverting and challenging accepted game design norms and trends, as well as bringing a relevant and powerful message. Consequently, war is a fitting and easy setting and theme for developers to explore, due to the inherent conflict found in war. This leaves little room for something truly original to pop up and present a refreshing alternative to the incessant ubiquity of war as a setting and theme.Ĭonflict is one of the most popular game design principles in any genre as it engages players to overcome challenges and achieve exciting goals. War as a setting and conflict as a central design principle is such a natural fit and easy fallback for many development teams. It seems that the saying “war never changes” holds true in game design trends.
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