It’s proof that an indie title doesn’t have to use an 8-bit aesthetic, and that actual assets are crucial in helping drive a point home. In this game, that point is equally simple as my lack of tact. War sucks. It’s brutal and costly in more ways than we can fathom; lives, relationships, integrity are the first things to be lost when war rears its ugly head.
A current-gen console follow up-slash-re-release of This War of Mine, previously on PC and mobile devices, The Little Ones adds, well, little ones. You’ll start off as a group of three survivors — maybe with a child, maybe not — in a war-torn land, holed up in a multi-storied house filled with very little. By day, your group works within the house, building furniture, crafting stations and securing the structure itself. Lacking materials of every kind, you’re required to scavenge at night, heading to various locations to source food, building materials, crafting items and weapons. It sounds simple enough, but don’t be fooled; there’s far, far more at play.
The odds are always against you. Upon my first playthrough, two of my three characters started with an illness, meaning I had to prioritise finding medication — or, supplies to craft a device that would in turn creation medication — each night. I struck out more often than not, and that caused me to spiral into a pattern where one of my group would be deathly ill or, the other, starving. I couldn’t generate enough to fix what ailed my people. It honestly caused me to become as depressed as those living in my makeshift house.
What’s worse, each location comes with its own backstory of sorts, just like your characters. At a supermarket, I came upon a woman who was about to be raped by a power-hungry soldier. I immediately knew that if I helped her, my weaponless character surely would have met her end at the hands of his semi-automatic weapon. Rather helplessly, I stood by as the act unfolded; returning home, my character fell into a deep depression that I struggled to contain even weeks after the event. That wasn’t helped when I came across a starving homeless man in another house, crying at me as I left because I couldn’t spare any food. Or the children I found in a nearby school, equally as impoverished. In the end, I couldn’t do enough for my character; her depression pushed her to suicide.
In another round — I quit the last after the suicide, as I quite literally couldn’t push myself to keep playing after my failure — I was able to take a child home and begin to show him how to begin to fend and scavenger for himself. I felt a bit better after my previous distaste, but not fully. Needless to say, every decision you make in The Little Ones will weigh upon your conscience. Needlessly killing and robbing people brings as much of a crisis of conscience as letting violence occur around you.
It’s not always doom and gloom, thankfully — very infrequently, you may come across a good Samaritan who bestows you with much-needed food or medication. Just don’t count on it, though, especially when you’re most in need. The imbalance of that very structure fits the warzone theme quite well — all looks lost, but it’s important not to give up all hope.
Crafting is a huge part of survival; you’ll need to build stations for food, alcohol, healing items, weapons and more, and each station is as important as the other. Sure, you could make all of your food, but you could also concentrate on booze. Rather than spending every day in a drunken stupor, that liquor can be used to barter with other groups — that and cigarettes were like gold at a nearby military complex. With so many options to choose from, coupled with so many status ailments and buffs that you might have wafting about your house, you really need to step back each day and really plan what’s to come. Even with a meticulously laid-out path, you’re still at the mercy of your environment; one must simple hope that a looter doesn’t come barreling in to destroy the fruits of his or her labour.
This War of Mine: The Little Ones is a great little game, equally shining a light on the best and worst of the human condition. Polished and refined, the only real indie-ness of the title comes with a couple funny, flubbed animations when members of your group interact with one another. While those slip ups are easily forgotten, the rest of the game isn’t; it comes highly recommended.
This War of Mine: The Little Ones was reviewed using a promotional code on Xbox One as purchased by the reviewer.
