eor: (odds)
eor ([personal profile] eor) wrote2022-04-01 03:26 pm
Entry tags:

How about a nice game of chess?

At the start of the war in Ukraine I bought the game "This War of Mine" because for a limited time all the profits were going to the Ukrainian Red Cross. The game was released back in 2014 and I might have heard something about it in passing around that time, but I'd never really looked into further. Probably anyone who regularly plays new games played it long ago.

Last night I finally got around to opening it up and starting a game.

I think players will probably fall into three groups:
1. Think the game is dumb and slow moving
2. Find the game depressing and never play it again
3. Find the game depressing and keep going back to it to try to "win"

The game only accounts for a few bits of the complexity of survival. It appears to give the player a pass on drinking water, which I can attest adds a significant level of complexity in real life. But even with its limited number of factors, it does a good job of giving the impression of the limited resources, the most precious of which being time and people.

The object is to stay alive until there is a ceasefire. But you neve know when/if that will come. I haven't played it enough to know, but my first impression is that it's a Kobayashi Maru. Just like Sarajevo or Mariupol.

In a bit of cold irony, I was so busy making sure the stove was fed to keep my characters warm that I didn't notice the fire keeping me warm had gone out.

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