[Trigger warning: If you are offended by missing details, maybe to the detriment of your own side, please note that the following paragraph is intended to put the game in the right context. Therefore it is highly simplified. Anything else would go beyond the scope of a game review.
Update: I will now disable the comment function.]

Yugoslavia was a socialist satellite state of the former Soviet Union, patched together after World War 2 from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, among others. After the collapse of the USSR, it fell into a bitter civil war. The Serbian military fought separatist rebels, and because of numerous crimes against the civilian population, the UN finally intervened. The 4-year siege of Sarajevo made particular headlines. This large city was occupied by rebels and besieged by the military. Snipers had almost all streets in view and bombs fell more or less regularly. Rebels, looters and soldiers fought each other, causing great suffering among the civilian people, including the then teenage game developers in whose situation the game throws us. We control a small group of civilians in the bombed city, without weapons, food or even beds.


At first glance, This War Of Mine is just one survival simulation among many. Like in Don't Starve, Rust or The Forest, the goal is to ensure the survival of a small group of characters. In contrast to the rather imaginative scenarios of other survival games, however, this one is about a real, brutal war. The protagonists are not knights in shining armor, but math teachers, TV cooks, warehouse workers, and yet this fight for survival is so much more than a DayZ. The gameplay is often tedious and repetitive. You have to cook food, eat, sleep and rest to be ready for the night. This hopeless cycle perfectly captures the grind of daily survival. Simple, taken-for-granted things like coffee or cigarettes are more valuable than diamonds. Days seem to last endlessly and mistakes are punished without mercy. Death is permanent and every decision irreversible. If you take the risk of armed combat against other groups, a wounded character may die of his injuries days after. If you exchange valuable medicines for food, they might be missing only a short time later. The nightly raids demand fierce, sometimes immoral decisions and have harsh consequences on the group.


Moreover, there are no fictional end times here that take away the burden of reality, no zombies and no aliens that you can beat up on without a guilty conscience and that make you believe that it won't come to that in reality. No, This War Of Mine has so already happened, it is happening right now and it will happen again. It's Yugoslavia. It's Ukraine, Syria, Gaza, Afghanistan. All over the world there are civilians experiencing exactly what the developers portray so painfully realistically. A war. Right on their doorstep. Right now. That's what makes This War of Mine stand out. It counters the smooth superhero warfare of shooter and strategy games with demoralizing suffering. It's unusual and guaranteed not to entertain. But that's exactly how it's supposed to be.


This War of Mine is a game about feeling powerless and lost. Every seemingly screwed up design element supports this. The incomplete information it reveals about the status of the game's characters creates uncertainty. The combat controls leave no room for finesse, making any exchange of blows with bandits or soldiers unpredictable and, most importantly, undesirable. If a tutorial window explained everything in a friendly way, then the moments when characters react so strongly to events, as in hardly any other game, would not be so shocking.


It's heavy fare. Being good means having enough food for two days, instead of having to decide who stays hungry. In an interview, designer Pawel Miechhowski answers the question of whether This War of Mine is supposed to be fun: "No, it's supposed to be an experience." It is.
It's an unpleasant experience.
But one that is worth experiencing.