11 bit studios, the development house behind Anomaly: Warzone Earth announced its upcoming game, This War of Mine. Suggestively, the game adopts the tagline "In war, not everyone is a soldier."
In This War of Mine, the focus is shifted away from military operations portrayed in most games. Instead, it is a dark survival game where players control a group of civilians trying to stay alive in a besieged city. During the day snipers outside stop you from leaving your refuge, offering players time to craft, trade, upgrade their shelter, feed and cure their people. At night they must scavenge nearby areas in search for food, medicines, weapons and other useful items.
This War of Mine was inspired by real-life events and delivers a message. "This can happen in your city, in your country," Michal Drozdowski, lead designer, said. "While designing a new game, we came across an article that described how one man survived in a besieged city. We learned about his hardships and the horror of that experience. We decided to work around this idea and make something real, something that moves people and make them think for a second. It's about time that games, just like any other art form, start talking about important things."
In This War of Mine players have to make life-and-death decisions based on their conscience. Try to protect everybody from your shelter or sacrifice some of them in order to prevail; there are no good or bad decisions during war. There's only survival.
This War of Mine is being developed for PC and mobile devices, and will be shown to media for the first time at the Game Developers Conference next week. More info can be found on the game's site.
