There are many works about the theme of war in the game world, and most of them are 3D shooters that shuttle through the fire of war and can give players a sudden thrill. These titles are fun, but I personally think that the best war game is a side-scrolling 2D game - This Is My War. This game may sound similar to "Battlefield", but this time you play as a civilian affected by war, not a heavily armed soldier, without the thrill of killing the enemy, without the handsome military uniform, this time only hunger, despair, choice and waiting.
The background of the game is from the siege of Sarajevo in the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1996, which is the longest siege war experienced by civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina since World War II, and players who are interested in this can expect my next game background decryption. So without further ado, let's talk about this special war-themed work.
This is a different war game, players do not want to play as soldiers to win the war, but to play as civilians to survive the war. The gameplay is about business survival, and at night it turns into an adventure game, the controls are very simple, the difficulty is the struggle between survival and humanity, and all the decisions you make will affect the ending of this character. It is divided into true endings, ordinary endings, bad endings, death endings, escape endings, and suicide endings.
The main line of the plot is also very clear, that is, a group of civilians are trying to survive in the war, and eventually need to survive until the end of the war or completely destroyed. At the end of the war, if the character does not die, commit suicide, or escape, after clearing the level, the player will be told about the change in the mentality and follow-up of these people who have experienced the war, and if those three situations have happened, he will tell why he committed suicide, why he fled, and the cause of death. Each character has these 6 endings, and each character's experience background mentality is different, so there will be no repeated endings.
At the beginning of the game, players need to control 1~4 civilians to survive in a relatively intact building, and the main gameplay is to control the character to collect materials and craft tools to survive the war. Almost all of the characters are civilians with no military training or special background, so players need to monitor their health, mentality, and hunger, which will accompany you until the end of the war. The number of characters also increases over time, and each character also has his own characteristics, such as cook, football player, firefighter, deserter, carpenter, etc. They will also get corresponding abilities, such as increased movement speed, less cooking supplies, and the highest efficiency through work distribution.
At night, you can go out and collect supplies, and you can go to the city's churches, supermarkets, abandoned buildings, and even other people's homes. Before departure, you have to assign the affairs of everyone in the family, go out to search, stand guard at home, sleep and rest, according to the status and characteristics of the role. If no one is sent to stand guard at night, no one will know if the shelter is attacked, so it is recommended to take turns to stand guard if the situation allows, because the guard will also consume energy and physical strength.
People who go out to search also have to allocate backpack space before they go, basically empty their backpacks, and bring a weapon and lock picker, unless you want to make a deal with other survivors. The same genus should also pay attention to the door locks or fences in the area, the door locks can be opened with lock picking tools or warping sticks, and the fences need to be destroyed by saws, usually there will be better materials behind it.
The game also provides a sound positioning system, although the picture is horizontal 2D, but the field of view is limited by the character, if there is movement in the invisible area, the screen will show sound waves, but it does not mean that it must be a person, it may also be a mouse or something that makes sound. Along the way, you may meet other survivors, they will ask the player for assistance or trade, basically civilian survivors will not actively attack the player, so at this time the player needs to choose to help, ignore it, or even kill people, everything is in your hands.
If you choose to help, you may have unexpected gains, but if you go to some private territory or meet a hard-line survivor, you will turn to attack you if you ignore their warnings, and you can choose to kill him or run away, or you can come back tomorrow and stealth to take all his things. But no matter what, you must go home before dawn, because there will be snipers sweeping all the moving creatures during the day, so you can only stay in the shelter and start upgrading the shelter with the supplies you collect at night.
And you can't just make sure you have enough food, you need workbench making tools, and later you can even make body armor or guns to protect yourself. Rainwater collectors ensure that you don't have to drink, water filters ensure that it is safe to drink, and sometimes holes in shelters need to be repaired to ward off marauders who attack at night. Build a radio to listen to war news, weather forecasts, and criminal activities, and players can get information from the radio to prevent some incidents, and if the battle situation improves, teammates will feel better when they hear it.
In addition to survival materials, we also have to worry about the mood of the character, if the character is driven crazy under pressure may commit suicide or escape, you need to make sofas, beds, radios, chairs, electric stoves, and even luxury goods such as cigarettes, coffee, spirits, etc., to upgrade the quality of the living environment. It is also recommended that players do not eat as soon as the character is hungry or treat a little injury, because in the war, your supplies will be very scarce, and you can last for several days at first hunger, and you can get better if you are injured and lie in bed to heal your wounds, and medical medicines and food are very luxurious things at this moment.
In addition to collecting and manufacturing to get things, another channel is trading. When you go out at night, you may encounter survivors who want to trade, or during the day someone will come to your door to trade after avoiding snipers, but players don't learn from these people who come during the day, we players will be shot directly when they go out. And the people who will come to your door are not necessarily here to trade, but may also come to ask for help or be helped by you to repay the favor.
It is worth mentioning that there is no currency in this game, and all transactions are carried out by barter. The value of materials and tools is relatively low, food is a more common trading prop, while cigarettes, coffee, spirits, medicines, these are extremely high-value items, you can exchange for a lot of things, but you also have to use the corresponding value items or quantities to exchange. It should be noted that each item has no digital value, and you can exchange a cigarette for a stone, and the other party will thank you or treat you as a fool.
Another interesting point is that this game does not have a common difficulty choice, the difficulty of this game is determined by the player, in other words, your conscience and cognition are the biggest factors that determine the difficulty of the game. Most of the survivors are unarmed civilians, and players are lucky enough to have some melee weapons and even guns. If you don't care about everything along the way, the supplies will definitely last until the end of the war, but what you do, the rest of the shelter will know, they will praise your human brilliance, they will spit on your humanity, and in the long run, this pressure will lead to the departure or suicide of the team.
Shortly after the game starts, I will remember a scene that I will remember for a long time - a girl is insulted by soldiers in the supermarket, will you watch all this do nothing and continue to loot supplies, or risk your life to stand up? There is another scene that impressed me: when they go to the house of an elderly couple, they will not resist but will beg you not to take the medicine, and the amount of supplies may be enough to last the old couple until the end of the war. If you take it and go back to see it in a few days, they will die in bed at home, you know this very well, but will you kill people for yourself, or leave silently, or obviously you are not doing well or give some supplies to the old couple? When two children cry and beg for medicine for their mom at your door, you turn your head to look at your teammate who is sick in bed, and you are struggling with humanity, will you choose to close the door or lend a hand?
All in all, the power of this work is not only the excellent gameplay, but also the sense of realism and substitution that can bring players, the game wants to express not only the anti-war concept, but also who is the eternal victim under the fire. In Poland, this game is even in the curriculum of the Ministry of Education, and compared to the thrill of playing as a commander or a special forces, this game gave me a whole new experience of war, where you have to constantly make terrible choices, sandwiched between mutual aid and plunder to stay alive.
Imagine if you were a mom or dad of three now, would you risk never seeing your children again just to go out in search of food for your family? In this situation where even maintaining food and clothing is a luxury, can you really ensure that your humanity remains? Many players choose to turn off the game under the heavy and depressing plot of the game, and even many people regret their choice and cannot sleep normally for several days. It is precisely because the heaviness, struggle, and oppression brought by the game are too real and strong, so that many players give super high scores even if they do not clear the level.
In war, everyone will die meaninglessly like a domestic animal, not everyone is a soldier, more are unarmed civilians, for soldiers, the purpose of war is to achieve victory, for civilians, war means to fight to the death. Bullets do not protect anyone, once the war begins, the gates of hell will open, and all beings will be equal under the relentless fire and bullets, this is my war, my story.