Games of 2014: This War of Mine

[Administrator]

Is it weird that my favourite game of the year is the one that made me feel like shit? It certainly feels weird, now that everything is upbeat and festive and goodwill to all men is swilling around the place. Back in the dark damp days of November, however, This War of Mine's chilly, scratchy jolt of wartime angst felt perfectly at home.
And it's the concept of "home" that is at the heart of 11 Bit Studios' cruel creation. That's one of the things I love about it. Set during some interminable European civil war, you spend the game's daylight hours trying to make the most of a bombed-out shell of a building, patching together small luxuries like an armchair or a mattress, scraping together the parts to build a cooker or a boiler and plugging what holes in the wall you can, in a vain attempt to keep bandits from stealing what meagre possessions you've managed to find.
It sounds horrible. It is horrible. But it's brilliant.
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