Parallel World Game Developer

Chapter 27: Chapter #27: 2.3/10

At a glance, the modern gaming market was choked with loot boxes, microtransactions, and flashy cosmetic skins.

For the vast majority of players, This War of Mine was their first exposure to a game that stripped all of that away, offering nothing but raw, unfiltered survival.

Turning off his computer, Silver felt an overwhelming emptiness hollow out his chest. He stared blankly at the corner of his room, feeling as though his head had been bashed in by a sledgehammer.

He had played countless video games in his career, and war shooters were a dime a dozen. In those generic titles, you defended your country by gunning down hordes of enemies with overpowered, flashy weapons.

The enemies were just mindless drones—lifeless strings of code that respawned after death.

There was zero guilt in slaughtering them.

But this game?

Here, all he could do was die meaninglessly in the dirt like a stray dog.

In This War of Mine, you could choose whether or not to help other survivors, and those survivors weren’t always good people.

You could murder them and pillage their resources.

The only thing stopping you was your own internal moral compass. Mechanically, it was the easiest game any of them had ever played.

Yet, the actual completion rate was abysmally low.

[You have been playing for a while. Please rate this game!]

When players closed the client, the automated Steam rating prompt popped up on their screens.

Seeing that dialogue box, everyone felt a blinding flash of resentment.

Was the game easy? Yes, the controls were incredibly simple, far removed from the high-APM demands of an action roguelike.

But when it came to making actual choices in the game, the mouse felt extraordinarily heavy.

The download volume had far exceeded Marcus Shaw’s expectations, but the completion rate was staggeringly low.

"Do you have any idea how low the user score is this time?" Marcus asked, sitting across from Ethan.

Over the past few weeks of development, the atmosphere inside Sprout Studio had been incredibly oppressive.

Marcus still remembered how the artists and the developers would look at Ethan with bloodshot eyes, their expressions filled with a mix of sorrow and quiet horror at what they were building.

"What’s the score?" Ethan asked, raising an eyebrow.

He remembered that in his previous life, this game had actually faced temporary bans and severe cultural reviews due to its uncompromising, naked portrayal of human suffering.

It tortured the player’s conscience without an ounce of hesitation.

The gameplay loop was strictly divided into two phases: day and night. During the day, survivors fortified their shelter, cooked meager meals, and crafted luxuries like moonshine or cigarettes.

At night, you ventured out to scavenge and explore the war-torn city. Dealing with other desperate people in the crossfire fundamentally changed human interaction. Everyone was on guard.

You had to constantly worry if the person you were trading with was going to shoot you in the back for a can of beans.

Most importantly, the game gave the player weapons—crowbars, axes, combat knives, and assault rifles.

But baked into those mechanics were unavoidable moral choices. The game gave you the power to hurt others, but every act of violence was technically avoidable.

If you chose violence, your characters would grieve, blame themselves, and fall into deep depression. And if a character died because of your choice? The game kept going, but that character was dead forever.

No manual saves. No loading an old file to fix your mistake. Just like reality, there were no redos. Dead meant dead.

"It’s sitting at 2.3 out of 10. The rating is just in freefall. It might actually hit the absolute bottom of the Steam charts soon," Marcus said, his eyes filled with complex emotions.

The game was a massive commercial success with a staggering download count, yet the community was actively review-bombing it.

What baffled Marcus the most was that despite the abysmal user score, not a single player was actually refunding or uninstalling the game.

Ethan calmly unlocked his phone and pulled up the Steam review section.

Scrolling through the endless sea of feedback, he finally spotted a single [Super Difficult] rating. It was submitted by the streamer named Ruby.

[Ruby: This is the hardest game I’ve ever played in my life. I didn’t even make it to the end. Everyone in my shelter died before winter even arrived, but reading the forums, people are telling me I actually got the best possible ending. The game constantly tests your humanity, and punishes you for having a kind heart. There are situations you simply cannot avoid. If you refuse to compromise your morals for a single day, you won’t survive the war. You guys keep playing if you want. I’m too weak. I physically cannot play this anymore.]

[System: Super Difficult feedback acquired (1/1000)]

The rest of the player base stubbornly continued to click the [Very Easy] tag.

But if they had previously used that rating to mock the developer’s physics trolls, this time they were using it to vent their profound grief and anger.

[Reviewer: Before I played this, I watched the viral clips about the ’Restricted Area.’ After finishing my run, the image of that old couple in the Quiet House burned itself into my brain. I finally understand why the community named it that. Before the player arrives, that house is quiet, peaceful, and warm. After the player leaves, it is dead silent. Looking through the crack in the door, I watched them sitting together by the fireplace, reminiscing about the past. It looked like a tiny piece of heaven trapped in hell.]

[Reviewer: The locked door couldn’t stop me, and neither could those two frail old people. Their house was loaded with materials, food, and medicine. It really was... a quiet house. The old man looked at me and asked: "Are you going to kill us?" I didn’t say a word. I just walked around, looking at their things. The old man was terrified. "Please," he begged. "Just spare my wife." I didn’t take a single thing. The old man followed me to the door, just repeating: "Please, please..." I stepped outside and closed the door behind me. That night was the only time my scavenger returned home completely empty-handed. But maybe I actually gained something. Who knows.]

[Reviewer: If a real war broke out, I wouldn’t know how to build a bed, a radio, or a water purifier. I wouldn’t know how to craft bandages, distill alcohol, or assemble a firearm. I wouldn’t have the guts to pick up a combat knife and try to rob armed soldiers or terrorists. I wouldn’t know which streets were safe, where the supplies were hidden, or how to find a secure shelter. I wouldn’t know what it feels like to hear gunfire echoing day and night, or the howling wind that never stops, making it impossible to sleep.]

[Reviewer: I wouldn’t know that even with careful planning, every single day just gets harder. I wouldn’t know that a normal winter day could freeze a man to death in his own home. I wouldn’t know that stepping out at night meant risking a sniper’s bullet. When I played this game, I kept comforting myself. I kept saying: This is war. I have no choice. I don’t want to kill anyone, but I have to. But when my companions started dying one by one, I finally experienced the sheer, suffocating pain of having a life violently ripped away.]

[Reviewer: This is the best game I have ever played, and it is also the absolute worst game I have ever played.]

[Reviewer: I think Katia wants to drink tonight. But I have no companions left to drink with her, and I don’t even have any wine.]

[Reviewer: This game forced me to look at myself in the mirror. I didn’t like what I saw...]

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