There are games like Call of Duty, where you pick off enemy soldiers one by one, not caring where they come from and who they are.
Then there are games like.... this one.
That makes you feel guilty for stealing from an old couple's home. And when kids knock on your door to ask for food for their sick mother, you have to think twice because that's all the food you have.
So this is a game where you start off with 3 civilians, living in an apartment that is somewhat still liveable (it has a fridge! SCORE! And a heater tooooo), but there are parts of the home destroyed, so it isn't exactly robbery proof. You're in the middle of a war, where there are scarce supplies in the city and you'll have to assign someone to go out to scavenge in the night.
The first round I played, one of my players died of depression on the third day, because I got him to rob an elderly couple's house. And thinking like how one would in normal games, I cleaned them out. Even when the old man was begging me to leave some medicine for his sick wife.
I got pretty frustrated, and I restarted the game. There's no save mechanism so it only saves before the next morning. Meaning, whatever you build in the day/ scavenge for in the evening, counts for nothing if you choose to exit. And when your characters get shot by hostiles and die, the game saves. The message is clear, you can never save and redo your life in times like these.
This is Pavle, he digs digging.
When I played through my second round, I decided to try punching a fellow (friendly) scavenger for fun.
I died.
And so the house was left with 2 people. Which, actually works out because there weren't enough resources to go around. So I continued playing, although the 2 people started becoming sad.
But mostly, I went to the abandoned places on the game map and collected resources, instead of killing hostiles.
One day, while I was playing, my boyfriend asked if I could knife Marty (a trader willing to trade for medicine for his father) for fun. He'd been playing Fallout 4, and that seemed to be the most logical thing to do, in Fallout 4 that is. I did, for fun, but with one stab, Marty died. And then Marty, whose father is a sickly man, comes out and mourns his fallen son. My boyfriend was appalled.
You can't kill him dear, look at him. That's not right, my boyfriend mutters.
Huh, but look at all the supplies I get from killing him! I said.
But you just killed a poor defenseless man and his father is so sad. Look at the supplies though. Wah so much.
Are you schizo? I asked. First he asked me to kill this man, then he says it's not right. Alright, alright... in the end, I restarted the day. Yay! Marty no die.
Shortly after, someone came to the house asking if he could stay. Great! 3 more people. And from that day on, I didn't kill a single soul and was so proud of it. Oh. Except that rapist guy who was going to rape the poor girl in the Supermarket. That's er, justified right?
Finally, war ceased on the 43rd day, just as I was about to saw my way through a ruined block of flats. And I survived, miraculously, after scavenging parts and having my own "factory" at home and sustaining on rats.
This game is oddly satisfying, but depressingly so. And so it showed me, if Singapore is ever going to be in war and such conditions, I'd die pretty fast.
