Making the Tougher Choices | This War of Mine: The Little Ones Review

This War of Mine: The Little Ones is the console edition of the game that came to PC in late 2014. This War of Mine highlighted, that during war, not everyone is a soldier and showcased the desperate trials civilians need to go through in order to survive during times of siege and war. Here is what I thought about the PC release of This War of Mine.

” This War of Mine is a gorgeous look into the horrible ramifications that result from an ongoing war. The plight that civilians suffer through is yours to experience as you do everything in your power to survive. Keeping your group healthy both physically and mentally is a true test and the dynamic between the night and day aspect is a fantastic way to break up the gameplay. 11 bit studios have captured the bleak atmosphere beautifully and have created an addictive game that will have you going to some drastic lengths in order to last another day in these devastating times.”

The Little Ones doesn’t add a whole lot to the base game in terms of updated mechanics or gameplay however what it does add allows the game to fall into even deeper and darker depths than that of the original. The Little Ones’ main concept is the addition of children into the mix. Highlighting another brutal truth about the impact of war on children and how it affects not only the kids themselves but also the people around then. Forcing you to make tough decisions that will question your overall morality. How far will you go to keep your child healthy and well fed or at the very least happy?

Everything that made the base game so brilliant is still present in The Little Ones, managing resources to keep all of your people healthy, fed and happy, risking it all every night to scavenge enough materials for your group as well as the tense and brutal combat that can tear everything you have worked so hard to get, away from you within seconds. The small problems that I had with This War of Mine was that the daily routine became somewhat monotonous, where once you had scavenged everything and built what you needed, the day time boiled down to feeding everyone and then sleeping. These issues are slightly fixed with the introduction of kids. Children aren’t like the adults where they can sit on their own or entertain themselves. Children long to play games, build toys and help out around the house. If you don’t pay enough attention to your child, they can become sad or even depressed which tends to demoralize the group as a whole.

The brutal choices that you have to make are so much more important and made even more intense in The Little Ones when there is the sinking feeling that there is often a child’s life on the line. Early on in one of my playthroughs I was playing as father and daughter, two days in when I had exhausted all the food we had, it was clear that I needed to head out and scavenge what I could to help my hungry little girl. With only two of us at home this made me have to make the choice between staying home and protecting my daughter from any raiders that could come at night, or taking to the streets to scavenge what I could, while leaving her unprotected. After coming back from a relatively simple and successful scavenging expedition, feeling proud of myself that we could survive another few nights. My daughter came sprinting into my arms with tears in her arms telling me that bad men had come during the night, hurt her and stolen some of the little goods that we had. Bandaging her wounds, cooking her a meal and playing with her was all I could do to try and make sure she was happy and try and gain back her trust in me to keep her safe. This was just one of the examples of the tough choices you will need to make to keep you and your loved ones alive.

Teaching children the skills that are needed in order to survive is also very important when trying to keep your small community alive. After long nights of standing guard or scavenging for food the adults are often too tired to be up all day, cooking food, planting vegetables or filtering water. These are handy skills that the adults are able to teach the children so they can be helpful around the house. This adds a great new layer to the, as previously mentioned weaker part of the game.

Although The Little Ones doesn’t add a tonne of new content to the base game, the addition of children makes the player ask themselves even tougher questions than the original iteration intended for you to ask. Will you go further than you would have originally when there is child involved? What lengths are you willing to go to? Will you steal? Will you kill? Capturing the brutality of war and its effects on everyday people is explored to greater lengths and the small additions that The Little Ones has brought has made a great game an exceptional one.

This review is based on a retail copy of the PS4 version of This War of Mine: The Little Ones published and developed by 11-bit Studios