I am happy TWOM exists as a piece of culture. I am not happy it is relevant because war exists. Neither am I I do not consider it a good game.
The point of TWOM is to reproduce a survival experience during a modern day siege. That's why the game is a 2.5D stealth-plateformer-management-visual novel game. You think it's a lot ? It is. Exactly as managing to survive a siege is. That's the genius of TWOM : it shows you how fragile is life by making any aspect of it's design absolutely ruthless and crucial, while letting you incarnate people. And people, as we all know, are normal : they fail to do stuff. They even don't have any ideas on how to do most things. It sounds frustrating ? It is. Especially if it happens on day 20... If you read my logs on the SoulsBorne serie, you probably know I dislike frustration, the lack of infos and hardcoreness. As for myself, I tried the main questline and the oldies radiomen. I failed those two quests and left the game.
You've understand it, TWOM is in my opinion a good idea shaped in a good game, but the idea itself is a bad game idea so I consider the game bad after all. It lets you play civilians stucked in an sieged Sarajevo. You must find way to survive by :
- Organizing your daily tasks...
- To gather stuff : scraps, supplies, ammunitions, money...
- To craft things : weapons, tools, furnitures, fortifications...
- To... I don't know. Eventually wait until the end of the game I guess ? I died before.
Each of your survivors has a talent : this one is a good cooker, this one hits hard, this one is stealthy... You must use them in the most efficient way to survive. Most of the time, in the main questline at least, you'll have one people doing daily things, another one sleeping and the last one going in an expedition to find stuff. As said earlier : every thing is absolutely necessary to your survival. Each mistake is lethal.
When we focus on the part of the game I liked the most (even if I found if kind of boring overall), which is managing your home, we might think at a first glance it isn't as ruthless as I say. But believe me it is. You'll have to build furnitures. To do so, you'll have to build tools in a first place. Every thing is expensive. Each tool gives you access to a limited amount of new furnitures to build. That means that if you craft a useless tool in a first place, you'll certainly die. Slowly but certainly. That also means that if you craft a bad furniture you'll die, because it used ressources necessary to do other things. For instance, what's the point of the radio ? What's the point, in the early game, of a heat source ? If like me, you constructed both in the first days, you'll regret it and you better restart.
The dialog + inventory + barter system is very good though. Items are stackable to a limit (which depends of the item we're talking about) in an inventory case. Tools and/or weapons also take an inventory case. When you see someone, you can either fight him, either talk to him, either avoid him. If you talk to him, you'll sometime have to trade items with him. Each item has an hidden cost that seems to depend on what the people you talk to needs more : if he's ill, he'll consider medicine a wealthy item for instance. There are even specific items like vodka or cigarets that are really powerful in a barter situation but near useless in the rest of the game. Inventory space is also a real thing : if you decide to go to the main square to see merchants, you'll have to seriously consider what you take with you, because it must be the most valuable for those merchant as well as taking the least space in your inventory to let you take what you want from them.
Eventually, I must talk about stealth and fight system, which is where the whole game collapse in my opinion. The other systems hide a lot of infos (where's the most valuable place to put a reservoir, how much worth is a fake cigaret made of grass... ?) but they are not based on timing and sometimes are not that ruthless. The stealth-combat system is, on the other hand, based on timing and is absolutely ruthless when it comes to gunfire.
Basically, you point n clic things. When you do so, your character goes in position to execute the task. If you clic once, he does it slowly and without making noise. If you clic twice, he does it fast in a noisy way. Noise alerts enemies. Enemies have guns. They shoot at you. You die. The game doesn't features saves. That's the first scenario.
The second scenario is they shoot and eventually hit you, but you manage to survive. Congratulations, you're now wounded, and you'll die of stravation/illness because your two other surivors cannot handle the daily task on their own and they'll eventually get ill or seriously exhausted. And you'll die.
The third scenario is you didn't made an noise so they didn't shoot at you. Unfortunately, the game forces you to go further and thurther in your explorations. You'll eventually end in a very dangerous area, full of armed soldiers you'll have to face. Now, you have to solutions : either play the worst game possible by hiding and waiting a looooooooooong time in dark holes for guards to pass, either you try, on day 30, to attack a guard. Unfortunately, there was no tutorials for that. You don't know how to do so. You finally approach the guard and try to neutralize him. You clic on him. Wrong call. I guess you should have clicked on the icon upon him, with the knife in your hand. He saws you. He shoots you. See scenario 1 or 2.
Again, that's logical. If I was stucked in a sieged city, I myself wouldn't know how to disarm/kill/stun a military aswell. This is the better "You are a civilian stucked in a war" game experience. But that game experience isn't something I actually want to experience. Nonetheless, I am really happy some game devs took the time to think about that experience and eventually delivered a game that made a lot of people think. A game that recenters the debate about war in videogames : war is a tragedy. Nothing less, nothing more. This is something important to tell, and TWOM tells it correctly.
So does the metal gear solid serie in a way better way in my opinion but that's not the topic there. TWOM is a good game with a good message. But I hated it's frustrating and ruthless game design.
The point of TWOM is to reproduce a survival experience during a modern day siege. That's why the game is a 2.5D stealth-plateformer-management-visual novel game. You think it's a lot ? It is. Exactly as managing to survive a siege is. That's the genius of TWOM : it shows you how fragile is life by making any aspect of it's design absolutely ruthless and crucial, while letting you incarnate people. And people, as we all know, are normal : they fail to do stuff. They even don't have any ideas on how to do most things. It sounds frustrating ? It is. Especially if it happens on day 20... If you read my logs on the SoulsBorne serie, you probably know I dislike frustration, the lack of infos and hardcoreness. As for myself, I tried the main questline and the oldies radiomen. I failed those two quests and left the game.
You've understand it, TWOM is in my opinion a good idea shaped in a good game, but the idea itself is a bad game idea so I consider the game bad after all. It lets you play civilians stucked in an sieged Sarajevo. You must find way to survive by :
- Organizing your daily tasks...
- To gather stuff : scraps, supplies, ammunitions, money...
- To craft things : weapons, tools, furnitures, fortifications...
- To... I don't know. Eventually wait until the end of the game I guess ? I died before.
Each of your survivors has a talent : this one is a good cooker, this one hits hard, this one is stealthy... You must use them in the most efficient way to survive. Most of the time, in the main questline at least, you'll have one people doing daily things, another one sleeping and the last one going in an expedition to find stuff. As said earlier : every thing is absolutely necessary to your survival. Each mistake is lethal.
When we focus on the part of the game I liked the most (even if I found if kind of boring overall), which is managing your home, we might think at a first glance it isn't as ruthless as I say. But believe me it is. You'll have to build furnitures. To do so, you'll have to build tools in a first place. Every thing is expensive. Each tool gives you access to a limited amount of new furnitures to build. That means that if you craft a useless tool in a first place, you'll certainly die. Slowly but certainly. That also means that if you craft a bad furniture you'll die, because it used ressources necessary to do other things. For instance, what's the point of the radio ? What's the point, in the early game, of a heat source ? If like me, you constructed both in the first days, you'll regret it and you better restart.
The dialog + inventory + barter system is very good though. Items are stackable to a limit (which depends of the item we're talking about) in an inventory case. Tools and/or weapons also take an inventory case. When you see someone, you can either fight him, either talk to him, either avoid him. If you talk to him, you'll sometime have to trade items with him. Each item has an hidden cost that seems to depend on what the people you talk to needs more : if he's ill, he'll consider medicine a wealthy item for instance. There are even specific items like vodka or cigarets that are really powerful in a barter situation but near useless in the rest of the game. Inventory space is also a real thing : if you decide to go to the main square to see merchants, you'll have to seriously consider what you take with you, because it must be the most valuable for those merchant as well as taking the least space in your inventory to let you take what you want from them.
Eventually, I must talk about stealth and fight system, which is where the whole game collapse in my opinion. The other systems hide a lot of infos (where's the most valuable place to put a reservoir, how much worth is a fake cigaret made of grass... ?) but they are not based on timing and sometimes are not that ruthless. The stealth-combat system is, on the other hand, based on timing and is absolutely ruthless when it comes to gunfire.
Basically, you point n clic things. When you do so, your character goes in position to execute the task. If you clic once, he does it slowly and without making noise. If you clic twice, he does it fast in a noisy way. Noise alerts enemies. Enemies have guns. They shoot at you. You die. The game doesn't features saves. That's the first scenario.
The second scenario is they shoot and eventually hit you, but you manage to survive. Congratulations, you're now wounded, and you'll die of stravation/illness because your two other surivors cannot handle the daily task on their own and they'll eventually get ill or seriously exhausted. And you'll die.
The third scenario is you didn't made an noise so they didn't shoot at you. Unfortunately, the game forces you to go further and thurther in your explorations. You'll eventually end in a very dangerous area, full of armed soldiers you'll have to face. Now, you have to solutions : either play the worst game possible by hiding and waiting a looooooooooong time in dark holes for guards to pass, either you try, on day 30, to attack a guard. Unfortunately, there was no tutorials for that. You don't know how to do so. You finally approach the guard and try to neutralize him. You clic on him. Wrong call. I guess you should have clicked on the icon upon him, with the knife in your hand. He saws you. He shoots you. See scenario 1 or 2.
Again, that's logical. If I was stucked in a sieged city, I myself wouldn't know how to disarm/kill/stun a military aswell. This is the better "You are a civilian stucked in a war" game experience. But that game experience isn't something I actually want to experience. Nonetheless, I am really happy some game devs took the time to think about that experience and eventually delivered a game that made a lot of people think. A game that recenters the debate about war in videogames : war is a tragedy. Nothing less, nothing more. This is something important to tell, and TWOM tells it correctly.
So does the metal gear solid serie in a way better way in my opinion but that's not the topic there. TWOM is a good game with a good message. But I hated it's frustrating and ruthless game design.