This War of Mine: The Little Ones

With The Little Ones, This War of Mine’s video game role reversal is more brilliant than ever, but the expansion on its own is rather underwhelming. It can be thought of as an unusually complex difficulty modifier, as the child characters are almost entirely liabilities. Their contributions and accommodations form unique and well-integrated mechanics, however, so they’re never frustrating. Unfortunately, except for making the most useless character slightly less useless, nothing about the expansion addresses the game’s existing issues. Children should strengthen the anti-war message, but their ability to do so is hamstrung by a problematic design choice: when something happens that would kill another character, an adult merely takes the child away. I understand the intention behind this, but anyone buying this DLC has already committed to a game about the horrors of war; there’s no point shying away from tragic subject matter now.