The idea behind the TouchArcade Game of the Week is that every Friday afternoon we post the one game that came out this week that we think is worth giving a special nod to. Now, before anyone goes over-thinking this, it doesn’t necessarily mean our Game of the Week pick is the highest scoring game in a review, the game with the best graphics, or really any other quantifiable “best" thing. Instead, it’s more just us picking out the single game out of the week’s releases that we think is the most noteworthy, surprising, interesting, or really any other hard to describe quality that makes it worth having if you were just going to pick up one.
These picks might be controversial, and that’s OK. If you disagree with what we’ve chosen, let’s try to use the comments of these articles to have conversations about what game is your game of the week and why.
Without further ado…
This War of Mine
If you’ve been at all paying attention to the world of video games, you’re no doubt fully aware of how glamorized warfare often is. I suppose the Call of Duty games are the best example, but often times, particularly in first person shooters, all of the serious implications and elements of warfare are stripped away leaving only the highly glamorized action-packed portions. Sure, most CoD games try to add some kind of human element, but it’s always given the back seat, while massive explosions and huge set pieces are in the spotlight.
This War of Mine ($13.99) is the complete polar opposite of that. Instead of playing as an exoskeleton-clad super-soldier mowing down swaths of enemies, you control a small group of people just trying to survive while war is being waged around them. It’s a remarkably clever concept, and really makes you stop and think about the human cost of war, far more than any other game I can think of in recent memory as the setting, art style, and everything else just brings about this feeling of total despair as you have no control of the fighting going on around you.
The gameplay itself has two main cycles, during the day you hunker down and craft things, and during the night you’ll go out scavenging for supplies. Much like last week’s pick for Game of the Week, Don’t Starve ($4.99), the depth and complexity of all these systems that power the game is just incredible- Particularly as even the emotions of your characters can have an impact on their performance in the game.
The above video by TotalBiscuit fantastically walks you through most of what you do in the game, with the only real differences between the PC version he’s showing and the iPad version on the App Store is instead of pointing and clicking you’re tapping and dragging. Other than that, the iOS port feels 1:1. However, if you like survival games, I’d recommend just going into This War of Mine really not knowing anything about it. The curveballs the game throws at you will be more impactful if you don’t see them coming. Either way, if you thought war sucked before, wait until you play This War of Mine.
