This War of Mine was meant to be played with a solemn attitude. It rips away at our guard and brings out the (often unwilling) monster in all of us. The people who learn the most from this game demonstrate high empathy, grounded moral values, and a hope for society that show just how much we still care, deep down inside.
And that's all well and good. I've been there too at some point. This game is a toll route to survival and it demands our emotional energy as its price. I emerged from my initial playthroughs with a sombre optimism about society's ability to pull through and show kindness in the worst of times. That's the hallmark of a good game - an effectively communicated central theme.
But you know what these games do to you, after you finish a first playthrough? The craving for more on a deeper level. For some, it's the dissection of game mechanics; for others, it's the exploration of every nook and cranny of the story and its maps; and for a pretentious hoarder like me, the audacity to think I can survive this game with EVERY survivor well-fed, happy and hopeful while staying away from senseless murder. And it just so happens that being able to do a custom playthrough with all settings optimized and a draft of great survivors is helping me satisfy all of these cravings.
For anyone who has played TWOM, to play a bit then come back to it after a few years isn't hard. The game controls are straightforward (for a regular gamer, anyways), and in most respects, knowing less about the game mechanics just adds more to the gaming experience. And as your experience as a TWOM survivor grows, so does your desire for harder challenges.
That's not my playstyle though. I was familiar with basic mechanics the first time around, and this time I was able to delve deeper into the mechanics, all for understanding how best to take advantage of every situation. I wanted every bang for my buck. Beating the Final Cut scenario with Livia just made me realize even more how much I wanted to hoard resources and optimize the survivors' situations. Perhaps at one point I'd want to test my mettle against harsher scenarios, but that would all happen for another day. For now, I need to get through my cheese playthrough.
Basically, I'm gonna go for a 'most resources gathered' run as my primary objective, and testing out and exploring the new content maps as a second.
In my next blog post I will talk about how I came to build my custom scenario, and the cast of characters that helped make this playthrough possible.