This War of Mine is a dark survival game where you control a group of civilians trying to stay alive in a besieged city.

Your task is simple: survive.

The pace of the game is imposed by the day and night cycle. During the day snipers outside stop you from leaving your refuge, so you need to focus on maintaining your hideout: crafting, trading and taking care of survivors. At night, take one of your civilians on a mission to scavenge through a set of unique locations for items that will help you stay alive.

Make life-and-death decisions driven by your conscience. Try to protect everybody from your shelter or sacrifice some of them to endure the hardships. During war, there are no good or bad decisions; there is only survival. The sooner you realize that, the better.

As part of 11 bit studios’ ongoing effort to gain recognition for its ‘meaningful entertainment’ philosophy, they’re proud to announce that This War of Mine has made another prestigious achievement. The game portraying a dire civilian fate during a wartime struggle has secured a coveted spot in New York’s The Museum of Modern Art as part of the exhibition Never Alone: Video Games and Other Interactive Design on view through July 16th, 2023.

“Never Alone seeks to help us understand video games as various parts, different tools, and techniques that designers bring to bear to shape our experience with games,” states Paul Galloway, Collection Specialist at the Museum of Modern Art and co-curator of the exhibition, that puts interactive design at its center.

“There is often a kind of a conversation about games as fun, games as a diversion, but I think that there’s an increasing range of games that ask more of the players. When I played This War of Mine it made me sad, it made me afraid, it made me very tense, and in the end, it left me with a very changed understanding of what it is to be playing in a war space,” describes Galloway.

This War of Mine was welcomed to the Museum of Modern Art along with 35 other video games as a part of the permanent collection. This allows the Museum to study, preserve, and exhibit video games as part of its Architecture and Design collection. Starting in September 2022, the game is also a part of War Games - an exhibition exploring the message about conflicts that are conveyed by war-themed games, in the Imperial War Museum in London.

This War of Mine is available for Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.