In war, not everyone is a soldier.
This very unusual game takes itself seriously, and that’s a good thing, because they picked a hell of a serious theme – survival in modern city torn apart by war. Based on the successful video game by 11 Bit Studios and created with the help of a Kickstarter campaign, the Polish company Awaken Games has created an astonishingly professional and thought-provoking game for their debut. Yes, it can be grim and depressing, but there are also small victories and moments of great humanity, and I’ll happily sacrifice a bit of ‘fun’ in exchange for such a different game.
The beating heart of This War of Mine is the almost 2,000 paragraphs in the Book of Scripts, an achievement that rivals Tales of the Arabian Nights, and in my view surpasses it, because the stories are far more coherent. In several plays I’ve come across some gut-wrenching decisions and horrifying situations, and frankly I applaud the publisher for not shying away from the grim realities of their theme.
While there’s a rough rule about passing around the book and having a ‘leader’ at particular stages of the game sequence, the characters are controlled as a group, and I’ve found the game works better if the players all discuss the options together and take arbitrary turns at reading out paragraphs and moving components. In fact, it enhances the feeling of us all being involved in a shared struggle to survive.
It’s quite an astonishing game, beautifully produced, and gets my vote for most thought-provoking of the last few years. No, it’s not particularly ‘fun’ – but it’s a fascinating experience, and you really should try it at least once.
The only misstep concerns the rules. In an attempt to create a ‘play as you go’ system, they buried many of the rules among the paragraphs of the Book of Scripts, and it only makes the game more confusing and difficult to understand. Thankfully, this rules summary and reference includes all those rules – so be warned, you’ll lose the advanced rules ‘surprises’ if you use it, but I think it’s a price worth paying for understanding what’s going on.
Still not had chance to play this. I want to, but I feel I need to be in the right frame of mind for such a dark theme.
It’s a great game. The stories that come out can be very dark at times, I admit, and it can also be pretty hard, but I still highly recommend it.
It did receive some negative reviews, but I knew what I was buying. It’s so different from anything else… the setting makes Cthulhu games seem light and fluffy…
Exploring new themes should be rewarded. I also think that hiding the rules the way they did hurt its reception, so hopefully this summary will help to remedy that for newbies.
Finally, I played my KS Edition of this game last night. Very interesting game. And I have to agree…the “concept” of “learning the rules as you play” is a real nuisance. No description or pictures leave you guessing too often. In theory, it is a good concept…but the execution was very sloppy.
What we did not like at all…and that was the consent in a 3 player game…is that to go with the storytelling part of the game you have to hurt your group play mechanic wise…on purpose…with no real reason to do so. Or just ignore the storytelling to play “efficient” for your survivors. As an example…the “look around” option on the locations where you spent 2 explore chances for loot has only been one time out of 15 with an effect…all others were fluff. We all would have liked to better mix those two things together…in that case more actual game consequences good/bad/neutral integrated into the fluff parts.
Just bought this a few days ago with the expansions as i love the video game and wanted to play this through with my son as he liked the game too. I’m ok with darker heavier themes. I love stories in any form they come in be it movie, tv show, book, personal, or video games so i’m excited to actually experience a story driven board game. I’m so glad you made some player aids as the rule books and expansions were difficult to really come to grips with in some areas.
Is there any chance that you will add/Update the game’s FAQ and the contents from the expansions to the Summary and Reference sheet?
I really love your game an
Thank You.
Sorry Ian, I think I’ll just keep this one at the core set, unless there are any significant rules changes in the FAQ.
I absolutely love your guides. Thanks so much! This one was not on bgg, fwiw