When it comes to survival and crafting games, few titles dive deep into the genre and offer a deep, morally intimidating gameplay loop. BothInto the Dead: Our Darkest DaysandThis War of Mineuse exceptional game design that keeps you on the edge of your seat as you guide a group of survivors through gruesome scenarios.
While one game focuses on a zombie apocalypse, the other brings about the horrors of war in an emotionally rich narrative. These two games have a lot in common, and certain mechanics and themes can be the differentiating factor when picking one.
Thematic Presentation - This War Of Mine
Realistic “What If?” Scenarios
Within the context of war, few games manage to tell the tale of those who suffered in silence. This War of Mine centers the game’s themes around that. The survivors of a war-torn landscape aren’t looking to be any heroes. They’re on the verge of collapse, hanging onto the final threads of their traumatic psyches.
Fighting the ills of war and the anti-human forces of nature is what makes this game so brilliant. You may be managing ordinary survivors who are doing their best to hope for a better tomorrow, but everything about your journey is what leads to an extraordinary theme—finding thewhyworth living for, as you understand thehowthat goes into it.
As you progress through the game, themes of war and humanity’s darker sides start unraveling almost without any filters. While these themes may be visible in Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days, the post-apocalyptic zombie theme can sometimes keep the seriousness away. After all, it is a theme finding its roots in horror and fiction, and not something inspired by real-life scenarios.
High Risks, High Rewards
If you aregetting into the game as a beginner, Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days will offer a challenging take on a theme that’s a bit too common across different forms of media. Even after days of watching your survivors fight, starve, or cry themselves to death, the game still feels challenging, no matter how skilled you think you may be.
It’s easy to feel comfortable and safe when weapons are at your disposal. After all, you can craft and find them throughout the game. However, each swing of a melee weapon and a fired bullet has heavy consequences, and fighting the undead should be avoided when possible. This gripping sense of realism makes movement and combat mechanics a lot heavier and tough to master.
On the other hand, This War of Mine uses its moral and narrative complexities to craft a memorable journey, but these simply don’t reflect in the game’s combat and scavenging mechanics. Rather, it focuses on management systems that ask you to take care of survivors' needs as the days pass.
Moral Complexity - This War Of Mine
Every Decision Is Questionable
While both games feature several instances of moral decision-making, This War of Mine excels at showing you why your decisions matter. For instance, your survivor may rob or kill someone to survive… only to take their own lives as a consequence of that decision.
The game seldom lets you pick the right or wrong side. Rather, these decisions are often gray, urging you to take a step back and think about your choices. This level of involvement keeps the experience intense, leading to several moments of regret and questioning. Questions like, “Should you have let that character live?” or, “I did the right thing… right?” will often linger hours after your playthrough.
These kinds of decisions exist in Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days, too, but limit themselves to who gets to live, die, or be left behind. This may add some depth to the experience, but your attention is likely to be diverted by the game’s survival, combat, and management mechanics.
Through its 2.5D art style, Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days builds on the aesthetics of a decaying landscape that features several impressive objects and animations. Everything from wrecked interiors, nightmarish zombies, to streets filled with corpses stays true to the game’s theme, keeping you on the edge as you explore Walton City’s collapse.
The game’s early-80s visual palette defines the overall tone, staying true to the technology and trends of that era. And when you’re not appreciating a zombie’s sense of clothing and movement animations, you’ll be admiring the environments and locations that may or may not be accessible based on your progress.
This War of Mine, on the other hand, stays minimalistic with hand-drawn aesthetics and grim, sketch-like appearances of characters and environments. It’s certainly atmospheric and adds to the game’s depth, but may feel outdated and limited compared to Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days.
Emotional And Narrative Depth - This War of Mine
It’s okay to not feel okay
When feelings of sadness and remorse are felt through a screen, you know the game’s good. This War of Mine doesn’t hold back with its storytelling, even when you’re justlooking for places to loot. Each action of yours holds a heavy weight, in alignment with the moral decision-making that connects the story arcs in the game.
The narrative weaves itself through the threads of loss, guilt, and despair. The death of a character may leave a deep impact on you, and there’s rarely a happy ending to most of the interactions that take place between characters. While this could help you cherish the little joys much more, always sleeping with an eye open is pretty much the backdrop here.
Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days has a slightly different take on tragic undoings. With each death and emotionally heavy interaction, you learn a thing or two to quickly “reset” your experience and try things again. The characters themselves are usually self-reliant, and already have worse things to think about. You know, like horrifying zombies.
Dumb(er) Ways To Die
While both titles encourage multiple playthroughs, Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days is designed for high replayability. As you progress through the game, it becomes evident that key locations and skills are essential to keep track of. With this knowledge, every playthrough comes with a brighter shimmer of light—maybe there is hope left for your survivors.
When you come across certain encounters and events, your familiarity finds new grounds to stand on. Even if you’ve developed a habit of repeating past mistakes, each attempt at escaping the city will likely feel better than the last, promising a fresh experience. This gameplay loop feels rewarding, without hindering game difficulty or making things all too familiar.
This War of Mine has a more open-ended take on this concept. There is a permadeath concept and unpredictable events in the game, following the roots of a classic choose-your-own-adventure approach that isn’t endlessly variable. After a certain number of playthroughs, you’ll notice certain patterns repeat themselves, which makes losing the game feel a lot more punishing.
Building Your Escape Plan
A structured narrative and fixed gameplay loops don’t necessarily have to get in the way of players' freedom. While both games have flexible gameplay styles, Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days provides much-needed player agency over how you claim your freedom. Between moving shelters to scouting new locations, the game provides ample opportunities to plan an escape route.
This can modify and change based on how things go in the game, shaping up an experience that’s flexible as well as surprising. Tactically, there’s a lot of player freedom with how combat situations are resolved. While stealth is part of the core mechanic, it’s not limiting. Survivors can flee from battle, trick zombies, use environments against them, and even avoid certain encounters altogether.
This War of Mine offers a variety of choices that can alter your experience, but it simply asks you to watch as things happen instead of letting you live those experiences out. Once you’ve made a choice, the game starts branching out its narrative. Ideally, this works as a storytelling instrument, but not necessarily as a lived-out journey.
The Best Humans-Are-The-Worst Simulator
Both these games are a somber reflection of humanity’s grimmest moments. Whether it’s a war or a zombie apocalypse, one thing’s for sure—people aren’t very nice when it comes to survival of the fittest. When such themes show up, how does the player hope for a better future? While This War of Mine keeps trying to find answers to that question, Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days provides the player with a canvas on which they can paint an answer.
With unparalleled player agency, a refreshing art direction, and dire moral dilemmas, the game becomes a perfect blend of survival elements and philosophical themes. Its powerful gameplay design never leaves you alone with your thoughts. There are survivors to care for, relationships to build (or break), and hordes of undead to fight. In the end, both games are excellent at what they do, but Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days continues to build on the strong foundations of a post-apocalyptic survival game.
