Developer: 11 bit studios
Publisher: 11 bit studios
Reviewed on: Switch
Code Received.
This War of Mine puts you in control of a group of civilians during the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. It focuses on the hardships and impact the war had on the every day citizens of the city. You’re tasked with finding food and supplies to keep your people alive, while also managing their mood and mental health. This War of Mine Complete Edition on Nintendo Switch comes with everything that’s been released for the game since first launching in 2014, including access to the last two War Stories episodes that are released on console. It is a great package of one of the most influential indie games of the last decade and feels right at home on the Switch.
This War of Mine is essentially a run-based management sim. You start with a random house and a few people and must survive as long as you can. Your people will get hungry, tired, hurt, and sad; and you must build objects and appliances to improve and sustain their living conditions. This requires supplies, which means you have to go out at night and scavenge nearby locations for materials. Your people can survive a day or two without food or sleep, but their moods will deteriorate. The game uses it’s setting to great effect, making even the smallest sliver of hope seem amazing. It’s also quick to punish mistakes with grave results. Expect to play a few games before learning what appliances to build first and how to exploit the game’s systems.
You take direct control of your people and can switch between them with ease. You assign them tasks like cooking, making tools, or upgrading workstations. All these things take time as well as resources, and you can only accomplish so much in one day. Moving up to a station, door, or even a person and using it can be a bit of a hassle. The game originally appeared on PC and was built for use with a mouse. While an analog stick works, once you get used to it, it can be little imprecise when you have half a dozen things you can interact with and must use the d-pad to cycle through them all. It can also lead to mistakes, especially on the night planning screen.
It’s easy to get used to the controls, but one thing that’s consistently frustrating is the game’s prioritization of animation over precision. When you stop walking your character will take a few extra steps, as if they are slowing down. This can lead to moments when you want to stop on a very particular spot, but end up over shooting it. There’s really no reason for this and just makes the moment to moment movement more awkward than it needs to be. Other that that, the game plays well.
One of the big draws of This War of Mine is the personal story that it tries to tell through it’s characters. Each person can go through many different moods depending on what they do. Have Boris steal things from people and he’ll get guilty, Pavlov may get sad thinking about the past. While this adds to the weight of the overall scenario of a city town apart by war, in the Classic mode it can begin to fall flat. The longer you play the longer these moods and emotions just become another management challenge, like hunger or sleep. That’s very much alleviated in the War Stories mode.
War Stories are crafted scenarios that bring you through a series of events, while still having you engage with the management aspects of the game. There are three scheduled War Stories to be released, but the only one currently out on the Switch is titled “Father’s Promise”. It follows a grieving father as he searches for his daughter by night, and trying to survive during the day. It does a good job of combining the best parts of the gameplay with a well told, personal story and may even be a good place to jump in if you are finding the Classic mode a little too unforgiving.
The overall performance of the Switch version is very good. The game plays smoothly and I never ran into any bugs or slow down. I will say that all the load times on the Switch are long and the game seems to be a battery hog in handheld mode.
This War of Mine Complete Edition is a great addition to the Switch’s library. It’s a good game to sit down with and play for a few minutes, or a few hours. The art style translates well to both the big and small screen. While the controls can be a little finicky, this applies to all the console versions and is an unfortunate by product of it’s PC origins. Overall, it’s great to have such a well made, thoughtful game on the Switch eShop.
