I'd like to request recommendations (spoiler free!) for games where you need to make choices, take sides, kill or not kill someone, follow or do not follow orders, but where the consequences actually matter - and most importantly, where the choices aren't "obviously good choice vs obviously bad choice".

Give me games where I can choose to side with one kingdom or another, but there's no clear moral high ground, or where I need to decide to save someone dear to me at the cost of innocent lives. I do not want things like "save all the children and get the happy ending and make flowers grow" versus "kill everybody and everything blows up and the world gets all its water replaced by acid".

What games fit this requirement?

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[–] DeepFriedDresden@kbin.social 41 points 9 months ago (3 children)

This War of Mine. Honestly can't believe nobody else has mentioned it.

You play as a group of civilians in a war torn country. By day you craft things needed for survival like a stove for cooking, guns for protection, barricades to prevent raiders. At night you send one person with a backpack to scavenge an area of your choice for things like food, medicine, supplies etc. The others will either sleep or guard the property. Things you do while scavenging have real effects on your characters. Decided to rob an elderly couple? Your characters will react based on their personality.

Things become grim fast if you decide to start robbing supplies or get attacked. Your players get sick, become depressed, starve, get hurt etc. I've never made it to the end.

It's a great way to understand the struggles of being a civilian in a war. The Polish government actually recommends it for educational purposes and the devs have donated a lot of proceeds to charities serving people impacted by war, including Ukraine most recently.

[–] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It’s very good, but the tone can be totally broken if you master combat. Killing soldiers doesn’t lower morale, so they are free targets.

Depending on what locations spawn, it is possible to completely ruin the intended vibe. I’ve wiped out the military outpost and ended up with so many supplies I didn’t know what to do with them all.

[–] B0NK3RS@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

TWOM is so good. What you say about things going bad fast is very true and the repercussions of something minor are real.

[–] DeepFriedDresden@kbin.social 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I was a bit aggressive on like my second playthrough and ended up killing a couple people to get their medicine. The guy that killed them was too depressed to scavenge and killed himself. Then another person got depressed because of that and wouldn't do anything. Then she got sick and died shortly after. I was too sad to play for awhile after that one.

[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

I feel the same. I'm too traumatized by a couple of my playthroughs to play it anytime soon... But what a great game.

[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

I was going to mention this game, +1.

Trying to desperately survive in a world that's upside down, fighting the hopelessness and trying to survive just one more day and slowly realising the you're just one day closer to death...

Man, it's a really great game, but I can't play it again anytime soon.