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There are cases when it might be more effective to let the characters go hungry for a day or two, allowing time to gain the extra resources required to make a more nutritious meal, or, instead of using fuel required to cook it might be used for heating or making moonshine. This is often made more difficult by the potential for illness and injury, harsh winters and nightly raids on the shelter. Survival requires the careful management of scarce resources, such as fuel, medical supplies, food and water. Emilia is a former lawyer and a coffee addict, good at boosting the morale of the others in the shelter. He is a valuable scavenger due to his ability to carry a lot back to the shelter. Marko, for example, a fireman before the war, has not seen his wife and two children for over three years. Even at night there is a risk of running into sniper fire or getting on the wrong side of a gang or solider.Įach of the characters has their own personal story, which is revealed throughout the game, along with different strengths, weaknesses, and worries. It is also possible to send someone on a scavenging trip to different parts of the city in the hope of finding valuable supplies or a potential trade. When night falls, the shelter must be guarded. The days are spent reinforcing this shelter, collecting water, cooking, brewing moonshine, crafting makeshift furniture and other essentials as well as the occasional comfort to make survival possible and, occasionally, slightly more bearable. TWoM presents players with an insight into the difficulties ordinary citizens face trying to survive these conditions.Įach day is spent in an abandoned, damaged house which serves as a shelter from the elements and the dangers outside. Those who were trapped in the city had no tap water or electricity they were constantly threatened by sniper fire and cut off from the outside world making food, fuel and medicine scarce. About 5,000 civilians died during the Siege of Sarajevo, the longest siege in modern warfare, lasting nearly four years.
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The one key aim – survival.Įlements of Pogoren, the fictitious city in which the game takes place, resemble Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.
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TWoM is a delicately drawn, two-dimensional, point and click game in which the player is in control of ordinary civilians in a warzone. It is representative of the game’s sombre tone, enhanced by melancholic background music and sporadic gunfire. A grey-scaled sketch of a ruined building and a wall displaying the graffitied message ‘Fuck the War’ serves as the opening image of the gritty computer game This War of Mine (TWoM).
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