“This War of Mine” – a cooperative simulator of survival of a simple man in the war. You and a few other people skulking in a destroyed house. There is devastation everywhere, snipers are shooting in the street, cold, scared, hungry. And all – forward to survive. Remove the rubble, fill the breaches in your shelter, create from improvised things essentials and try not to die.

Each hero has his own character and a set of abilities, passions and level of empathy. Someone always needs to smoke, someone always drinks coffee, the third always wants to read, or listen to the radio. Some are good at finding supplies, some sneak around quietly, some will pick any lock or bring more things on their hump, and some can’t do anything at all. But all are equally hungry and thirsty. And they can also get sick, or fall into such a depression that the result of it can be a gallows or escape from the shelter. And how to provide food, water, medicine, cigarettes or coffee?

We’ll have to get out of the asylum and make forays into the city under the cover of night. But it won’t be peaceful there either. Not only that snipers do not sleep, but also meeting with other people can bode little good. A radiantly smiling person may turn out to be a bandit, whose friends are already sneaking up on you from behind with a knife and axe, and peaceful people will bring even more worries, because everyone needs help. As if it’s easy for you.

And so, day after day, fighting with night raids of bandits, with cold, hunger, disease, depression, the eternal lack of resources and a dozen more troubles, you learn to survive and keep your people in a more or less bearable condition. And believe me, it will never be easy for you.

On the table it all looks like this: the field is your house, dotted with rubble, holes in the walls, closed doors, piles of garbage, furniture and other things. The game has several phases divided by time of day. During the day, each character in perfect condition (well-fed, calm, healthy, rested) can perform three actions that you as a team plan for the best effect. If you don’t meet one or another of those needs, the characters will start to mope and won’t be able to accomplish all of their tasks. During the day, you may also have chance encounters with people that will benefit or harm you, or even a new hero.

In the evening, you plan who will rest (will they?), who will stay to guard the shelter, and who will go to town for supplies. You choose a location, collect your inventory and go to work. The location is explored with the help of a set of research cards – you pull cards, fulfill conditions, get encounters with people, sudden encounters (so-called Destiny Strikes) or supplies. Each location has a different set of supplies, somewhere there is a lot of food, somewhere weapons, somewhere medicines, etc. Depending on the capacity of the hero’s hump, the luck of your hand (the outcomes of encounters and the amount of supplies depend on the dice rolled) you return (or not, you can easily die) to the shelter.

If you think that’s not enough, the game also has global goals, the fulfillment of which determines whether your heroes will get to the end of the game alive or at least healthy. For example, you need to collect vegetables for the Red Cross, otherwise everyone will get depressed. There are also Fate cards, which can dramatically change what’s going on, and there are life-saving Decisive Action cards, the effects of which can save even the most desperate situation in a difficult moment. And this is not to mention the elaborate and complex systems of combat and bartering with peaceful people. But one of the most interesting differences of the game is the story book.

In the box you’ll find a thick story book with almost 2000 (!!!) story scenes written in it. All these scenes break into the context of the game, add additional atmosphere to it, allow you to fully feel the world and what is happening, to understand the characters. Almost all encounters are tied to this book, some of them giving players a moral choice. Help an old lady fix her doors? Find medicine for a child? Shelter a dog? Each choice sends you to a fork in the road that can either benefit or harm you. All story elements in the game are divided into color segments, at a certain point in the story of your game depending on this or that drawn card changes color. And for almost all actions, all cards at the bottom are annotated with the color and number of the story scene you’re reading out of the book.

Those who have played the game on PC may ask “What’s the reason for me to sit down to play a board game?”. It’s simple. When you step away from the blue screen to the table, you can experience all the same emotions as the video game version of “This War of Mine” and even more. With friends, this game is transformed, you have to learn to work as a team, make the same choices based on discussion (and discussion in This War of Mine is a beautiful thing, not unlike conversations at other board games), and learn to do some things all over again in the real world at the table. Some elements of the game have been changed to be possible in the board game format, some have been added, and the story, instead of just text in the character bio column, has become a more meaningful element that makes a real difference in the game.

If you’ve already played the game and are tired of it, but still don’t want to leave this world, the tabletop version will be a real breath of dirty, smoky air filled with soot from gunshots and dust from crumbling buildings. The best effect will happen if you sit down to play the board game with a friend who has also played the video game version. Your joint experience and knowledge will help not only to quickly orient in what is happening, but also to lead the party in a more meaningful, serious way. And the simplest thing of all: tactility. When you see the playing field, accurately recreating the house from the game, when you see the cards of heroes with the same names and photos, when you see the same locations, when you take in your hands minifigures, it all completely changes the perception of the game and causes an irresistible desire to sit down to play right now. And then to spend many hours playing the game.

“This War of Mine” – an incredible quality game, thought out to the smallest detail. It pulls you in from the first card drawn and will hardly let you go until you start reading the epilogues of the story. Difficult, unpredictable, endlessly interesting and constantly challenging for the whole team of players, it will conquer you with its oppressive atmosphere, the feeling of constant misery and hopelessness of a man trapped by the hammer of sniper fire and the anvil of cold hungry death.