But there is also rich story background for the characters you recruit, and through gameplay you might even find out personal information about that will endear them to you-or even make you despise them. The story is surprisingly rich, and deep. Sometimes they can be helpful, but other times they can get you and your group into trouble. Each of your crew has their own personalities, and even backstories to explore and interact with. While the resistance as a whole is represented by numbers, your resistance group is the small group of people who will be doing a lot of the grunt work-including your player character. The same goes for members of your resistance. Most of the choices you make in regards to the story, as I’ve mentioned, will be through text interactions. You have the opportunity to be defiant, and even step in to help in some cases-to your potential detriment. You are helpless as you watch Germany turn into a fascist state, and anti-Semitism finds its way to the streets in bloody display. This isn’t a perspective that I’m used to, and it’s not a very comfortable one. Genre discussion aside, Through the Darkest of Times is a representation of some of the darkest times leading up to World War II, where you play as part of a political resistance trying to subvert the Nazis’ inevitable rise.

While it uses its different parts well, it can feel a bit complicated and maybe even a little bloated compared to a game like Papers, Please! Dialogue is an extremely important aspect too, since what you say or what you decide to do via text prompts can have significant effects on the outcome of any given encounter. Building morale and gaining supporters as you weigh risk versus reward makes part of the game feel like a resource management sim, but a lot of the interactions with the game are through text prompts that almost border on visual novel, or adventure game. Through the Darkest of Times is a strategy game with some sprinklings of adventure and resource management genres whose mix of genres make the whole experience feel a bit eclectic. But games intimately depicted from the viewpoint of a person or group of people who are historically on the losing side of a conflict have been more common lately with the advent of games like This War of Mine, Warsaw, and Papers, Please! When history is depicted, it’s more often through grand strategy war games-and you can often change the outcome.

It used to be unusual to have glimpses of important historical events depicted in video games.

Through the darkest of times guide