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Most board and card games are logical puzzles, arm-wrestling with brains, simple or complex ways for testing one’s reflexes and memory. Many of them may also feature adventures and storytelling – most of the time, quite light-hearted and amusing. However, recent trends show a medium like board games has a much larger potential than that, and we are only starting to explore this potential. Inspired by the dramatic and compelling This War of Mine video game, we realized that its theme and concepts could give us a way to explore new possibilities that lay within the board game medium. Our goal was to present This War of Mine: The Board Game (TWOM: TBG) not so much as a form of amusement, but more as an experience, a simulation.
TWOM: TBG is not meant to make you feel good about yourself - that’s not to say this won’t happen during play - but its main purpose is to be thought-provoking. While designing and writing* this game together with Michał Oracz, we aimed to bring to the table the same level of emotions that books and movies can give. When I started writing the Book of Script (the book which represents the narrative core of the game) the hardest part, for me, was not to force any kind of morality on the players. Research - hours and days of research - helped me to rid myself of any pretense for moralization. After reading war journals and memories of survivors, and seeing countless documentaries, both amateur and professional, I came to a stark realization: there are no good and bad people among the civilians when a war is raging, there are only survivors. A person who didn’t experience these extreme conditions shouldn’t make judgments. This is why making a “good” decision in TWOM:TBG will not be awarded with points or even a minor reward. We (the authors) won’t tell you what’s right or wrong, but we hope you’ll come to the conclusion yourself or among friends. There’s only one goal in TWOM: TBG, its final objective – survival. The rest happens not so much on the board but above it. The best games we had were the ones where a group engaged into a lively discussion…those are the most memorable.
Although it’s vaguely implied (both in the video game and its tabletop adaptation) that the conflict described is the one that happened in the 90s and is known as the Balkan War, we followed the road paved by 11 bit studios – creators of the original game: they openly said the setting of This War of Mine is a contemporary war, in a city that could be placed almost anywhere in the world. The choice is not accidental. Wars happen all the time and we always tend to think that the places where they do are remote and have nothing to do with where we live. On the contrary, if you want proof this is not the case, just take a look at pictures of how Aleppo looked before the war and how it looks today. If this was a discussion, you would probably ask me: where’s the fun in that? Board games are supposed to be fun. I dare say, this is wrong. The border between a book, a movie, a video game, and a board game is where we draw it. A game can be engaging, challenging, and addictive without being silly or set in yet another generic fantasy world where you kill imaginary creatures by the dozens without a thought.
Is TWOM: TBG a game for everybody? Yes, we really hope so, especially with the Open & Play mechanism that lets you enjoy the game immediately after setting up all the components, since you learn as you play, but this doesn’t mean everybody will be a fan. As Tom Vasel alluded to in his recent review of TWOM: TBG: “This is a game that makes you think, but not thinking about how I beat this game… this is a game that makes you think, wow, so this is what people go through — ordinary people go through in a war…” and, honestly, I believe this is the highest praise our game may receive: it proves that we were able to pass on the message that was first sent by 11 bit studios. The one that caught the attention of the whole gaming world.
*I used the word writing on purpose – the game features the Book of Scripts, which is its integral part. All of the 1947 story snippets included in it provide not only an insane level of replayability, but also immersion rarely seen elsewhere.
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