This War of Mine is a side scrolling survival mental-state-destroyer game that will remind you that many people in wars are civilians. You play as several survivors who are hiding in a building. You control all of them and tell them what to do. You can build things to make it easier to survive, to protect your supplies, and equipment you may need when you leave to scavenge.

At night, you send out one of your survivors to one of several locations. Each location has dangers and difficulties. Some are hard to travel with several rubble piles that block your way and some have other survivors. This leads to some of the most devastating moments I have had in video games.

When I first played, the only people that I encountered with guns were instantly aggressive. They would fire at first sight and then hunt for me. On one of the later nights, I decided to go to a place that we knew people were. I saw someone with a gun and having a gun myself, I shot him without a second thought. The next thing that happened was a woman came out of the building screaming his name. She ran over to him and tried to talk to him. Others came out and just stood there looking at their dead friend. I came to the realization that these people were just like me, and I was the bandit here.

My only problem with the game is that it doesn’t stop there. The characters are affected by their experiences. For instance the character who shot the other survivor would not work for the next day and was “depressed”. The game tries to tell you, “ you should be sad! This is where you are sad!” I would have liked it to have stopped at just the act.

You should definitely pick it up if you are into survival games with depressing overtones. The game has great mood music, good gameplay, and a very decent price at $20 on Steam. It also goes for great discounts on the Summer/Winter sales.