This War of Mine: Stories - Father's Promise (PC) Review

Stories: Father's Promise acts as an episodic add-on, and the plans for future development seem to focus on delivering three bespoke tales of survival in this harsh and broken city.

The main gameplay mechanics are pretty much like for like from the original release, and the compelling strategic gameplay remains, focusing on battling hunger, trading resources with merchants to build improvements to the shelter, and savaging during the night using stealth or force on the dangerous inhabitants.

One observation from the 2014 release was that there was a lack of narrative structure to the playthrough, with it very much being a free-form sandbox. This worked, of course, perfectly well and sometimes the greatest stories in gaming are the ones generated by the player themselves. However, there is also room for developer creativity and this is what Stories seeks to deliver.

Mostly, this is delivered well. The idea of picking one or two "hidden heroes" within the chaos emphasises the struggle within the desolate landscape and heightens the raw emotion of suffering caused by warfare.

The hero in the introductory chapter Father's Promise instance is Adam, who is trying to protect his daughter Amelia. When the adventure kicks off, Amelia is already in a bad state and Adam's wife has already been victim of the savagery. Things soon escalate, with Adam forced into a desperate hunt to save her.

Adam is immediately a very relatable character, and one only has to take a brief glance at the modern world to capture the suffering of everyday humans caught up in conflict. It is apparent that the writing and dialogue comes from an established writer and it does not fall into cliché or superficial emotions.

Impressively, although the story of a father trying to save his daughter is a well-worn trope of many survival tales, here it works very well, with the narrative being used to push the story forward with steady momentum. Where the base survival mode of the original could get bogged down, there is always the push of constant movement, with scavenging at night in order to obtain the clues as to Amelia's location.

None of the challenge has been lost in Father's Promise, and, in fact, due to the nature of the push to keep moving forward, the pressure seems to intensify as each day draws in. The onset of winter and the increasingly scant food supplies and fuel mean that Adam tends to get sicker and hungrier all the quicker.

Then thrown into the mix are the roving bandits that make the little key decisions such as scavenging and making the shelter vulnerable - or staying in bed to battle exhaustion, but losing out on valuable supplies - all the more nerve-wracking.