Through the Darkest of Times - historical resistance strategy game in the Third Reich

[vonAchdorf]

A group of former Yager devs founded a studio some time ago to work on this game. I've been following the project for a while, but now, after they, in perfect timing for the Gamescom, performed the marketing stunt* to be the first game in Germany, which will be allowed to display swastikas (and still get an age rating), it's time for a thread.

* (they detailed their motivation in a Gamasutra blog, which is an interesting read)

Through the Darkest of Times is a strategy game, that lets you play a resistance group in Third Reich Berlin. The game covers the entire time from Hitler’s seizure of power 1933 to Germany’s unconditional surrender 1945. You plan actions of your group while at the same time try to balance the morale of your members, get resources needed for the actions and avoid getting caught by the Gestapo. Big political events follow the actual historical time-line and influence your options and what happens to your group. Your members are fictional and procedurally generated on each playthrough. They come with different personalities, abilities and views. As leader of the group, it's your job to fight the regime by winning hearts and minds of the people, holding your group together and leading them through the darkest of times.

Why we do this

We are developing Through the Darkest of Times, because we truly believe it needs to be made. Civil resistance in Third Reich Germany is such a fascinating and relevant topic, and it is source of so many interesting stories of true human heroism in a truly horrible time, that we think it’s a shame there is no game about this yet. We are also convinced, that most games still tackle this period of history poorly and leave out the important parts. Nazi Germany is too often just shown as another faction and its aesthetics are used without commentary or context. Games are a narrative medium just like film or books, they can do better than that – we hope that Through the Darkest of Times will help to move the medium forward and encourages more developers to go there.

Can I play a specific resistance group like the White Rose?

Members are fictional and the game creates them procedurallyon each playthrough, giving them different personalities, abilities and views. While you aren't playing as a specific historical organization, there were a number of groups that were very similar to the ones in the game, such as the Schulze-Boysen-Harnack group or the one around Herbert Baum.

How is the game structured?
The game plays in turns and chapters. Every turn is one week and every chapter is covering a specific period of the Third Reich: Seizure of Power (1933), Peak (1936), War (1940/1941), Collapse (1944/1945).

I'm interested in how they'll tackle the ideological diversity of the resistance movements - they will have resistance members from different backgrounds and with different motivations (monarchists, democrats, communists).

I didn't find more English gameplay (but they showed the game at Gamescom).

http://throughthedarkestoftimes.com

 

[Burning Bridges]

Ugh

As a former East German schoolkid I had the pleasure of talking to real resistance people and what they actually did. Which was mostly making leaflets and smearing things on walls, like adolescents do but with a higher risk factor.

I remember one guy in particular. Sorry I couldn't take this guy very serious. When we saw him again in the town the kids made fun of him. I dont know exactly what it was but as kids we sensed something was wrong with him, probably that he was boasting with silly things just like another kid, and we did not like it. I also resented that he apparently had not a single criticism of the communist regime, which is odd if he was such an upstanding enemy of opression.

I did not realize it at the time. but keep in mind we were almost in the same situation. My father was a raging anticommunist who just keeping his trap anywhere else but home, and some of my friends fathers were even worse. (one friends uncle even went to jail for smearing "GDR = KZ" on a wall although I think it was not even him and they pushed it in his lap because some Stasi person wanted his luxurious house).

But so we talked a lot about how our state sucked in private, but being careful not to do it when a teacher could be listening. And this guy told us how he did that under fascist opression and also make propaganda when he was older, but he found "our" opression great, so much that he went to our school and told us how lucky we were to be born in this system. If he had secretly recruited us to make propaganda against the Stasi I would think different of him.

One thing I remember he told us with glowing eyes that he used a plank with a bucket of water with a hole, and a batch leaflets on the other side, so they would have some time to escape. I think that's the level of "sophistication" that you would reach if this was researched well .. i.e. not that impressive. Smearing messages on walls, spreading leaflets that say "Hitler criminal", hit and run tactics and getting away with it.

Dont think there is much gameplay in that. Especially as you would have been working with extremely diverse people from witnesses of Jehova to communists to the arrogant kids of arrogant professors and intellectuals to plain nutcases, criminals and hooligans, and people who change their mind and betray you.

One of the few resistance people that actually impresses me is the guy who nearly blew up Hitler. And he worked completely alone and never confided to anyone. If Hitler had not delayed his plane chances were very high that he would have succeeded and killed him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Elser

I mention him because imo his method of working completely alone and without confiding to anyone is the only one that has a very high chance of success. As soon as other people are involved it will probably go wrong either because they do stupid things or betray you.

 

[Space Satan]

Jew simulator. Just what we needed in 2018. At least SJW won't bash it because MUH 6 BILLION

 

[Alfgart]

Good goy

 

[mondblut]

Can I play as a Gestapo infiltrator to expose the traitors for a deserved gassing?

If not, fuck this game.

 

[vonAchdorf]

"Germany is going to be great again"

They just couldn't help themselves.

I hope they avoid the temptation to make their game a commentary on contemporary politics, because that would quickly devaluate it. Until now I had the impression, that they did a good job (even though they are of course, Berlin and all, rather left-wing).

 

[Dayyālu]

As a former East German schoolkid I had the pleasure of talking to real resistance people and what they actually did. Which was mostly making leaflets and smearing things on walls, like adolescents do but with a higher risk factor.

While the idea of heroic resistance fighters that blow up trains and engage in shoot-outs is somewhat appealing, in most cases when the repression mechanisms of a regime are strong such kind of "resistance" is all what is left. Again, Germans do not work like normal people in most cases, being, well, Germans, but you need both popular support, a weakening of the legitimate government and a widespread access to unregulated firearms and explosives to do anything relevant. Such cases happened in Italy and in France when fascist or pro-fascist governments went into a deep crisis, but before you got merely what you would call "childish pranks". The problem of security infiltration was very real, and that's why you had to work with the limited resources you got.

Even in Italy, where the Communist Party was very well organized and the opposition forces had some leeway (and OVRA was a bunch of amateurs compared to German services) for much of the fascist twenty years, after power was consolidated, the instructions were to lie low and wait for better times. That came when the regime collapsed by itself. Direct military opposition even when the regime was crumbling ended often in tears (Vercors in France or countless "Partisans Republics" in Northern Italy) because a regime can be disfunctional as fuck, but it still has massive firepower advantages. Exceptions are the Yugoslavs, but even they suffered massive casualties and the Balkanites are a race on their own on making people bleed for every meter.

Lone wolves like Georg Elser are by nature more difficult to check because they are lone wolves. It's the same problem that our society has with islamic crazies, and our control systems are massively more efficient than anything OVRA, Gestapo or Stasi could even dream of.

But after all, this is a game, thus they can avoid the historical problems resistance movements in Europe had and focus on being "apparently realistic".

 

[BING XI LAO]

Pro: has Monarchists
Con: inevitable Tumblr artstyle

 

[spectre]

This apparently just launched.


Ye gods, that fucking art style. Looking at some of the screenshots I thought the game was about heroic negroes fighting the nazis alongside rabbis... which would have some comedic value.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Can I play as a Gestapo infiltrator to expose the traitors for a deserved gassing?

If not, fuck this game.

Sure you can. Here's how

1. Convert to Islam.
2. Claim refugee status and move to Germany. *Receive grants and state aid as bonus*
3. Be patient and await further orders from HQ.

 

[Burning Bridges]

So the Nazis have no eyes?

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Oh fuck, one of these games.

Games like this are bullshit, they're bullshit because most reviewers are going to review it under its subject matter and it'll always be, "NAZIS ARE AWFUL. THIS GAME IS GREAT BECAUSE IT TELLS YOU THAT." Anything to do with gameplay will be swept under in some throwaway sentences like, "While it does leave some things to be desired" "The resistance gameplay could use more refining" "The story was engaging enough to push me through unremarkable gameplay" or something to that effect. The point is, it all becomes about how evil the Nazis are and if you can fuck around with Nazis and make them look bad then your game is by default good. I was browsing Steam's new releases, see this 9/10 game and was curious, I took once glance to see my eye catch "history" and "Germany" and immediately knew why it had 9/10.

Here's an excerpt from ScreenRant's review:

Through the Darkest of Times is not a lighthearted game. By many definitions it isn't even a fun game. But it's an important game, and it's also a very thrilling tactical experience. This game will not be enjoyed by everyone but it carries a lesson that everyone should learn one way or another.

It's weak, corny ass Oscar bait in video game form. A game that by its existence you need to like and clap for.

 

[Galdred]

Actually, the management of a group of civil resistance in an oppressive regime is interesting, but nazi Germany may be one of the least interesting exemples of that. Not only because the oppression, but because there was not any perspective to succeed in anything (ie, sparkling something greater that could topple the existing regime).
Actually, it would be more interesting to play some civil resistance movement with real perspective, like in India, in Poland in the eighties. One interesting things in cases where there is a lot of opposition to the regime is that there can also be a lot of competing factions, that don't agree on the objectives, the methods, or just the people, and you need to either absorb them, "steal" their members, or find an agreement so that they don't get in the way too much.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I would definitely play an open world game where you need to find ways to assassinate Hitler against very heavy odds, like Georg Elser. Or let's say an Arma like game where you lay ambushes, or free prisoners from KZs and get them over the border like in the "Great Escape" movie.

But this heavily constrained cartoon experience of Nazi Germany is just not for me - I prefer first hand sources for myself.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

So the Nazis have no eyes?

Eyes are the window to the soul. No eyes. No soul.

'Bout as subtle as a sledgehammer to the noggin.

 

[spectre]

So I demoed it because it's labeled as a strategy and I have a soft spot for all those resistance-movement sims.
As a surprise to nobody, the game is trying to push an agenda between the lines (spoiler: Trump is literally Hitler). I mostly ignored it and tried to focus on the gameplay.

The game's divided into chapters, first one covers Hitler being elected and the Reichstag Fire in 1933, together with a few other events, then you take a three year break
the second covers the preparation to the Olympics and there's talk about the incoming war, but I haven't played past this point yet.

You control a group of five guys described by a bunch of stats and general political affiliation, the main game focuses on planning missions on the map which let you gather resources
which range from funding and support to specific items like paper, paint or evidence. The system is quite simple, missions have stat requirements and a list of traits that would be beneficial or detrimental.
This is mostly logical, so if you're trying to rally support among the workers you need people skills (empathy and propaganda), they will also be more inclined to listen to a member of the working class,
or someone with socialist leanings, rather than an academic. If you're gathering support in the local parish, it helps to be a devout christian yourself. Etc.

There are items that can help you with the task, it's your call how many resources to commit - how many people and additonal equipment, such as bicycles which can help you move around or stolen SA uniforms
which help you get by unmolested. With time, your guys will attract unwanted attention which can obstruct your progress in completing their task or get them imprisoned. If you stir too much trouble
in one part of the city, the authorities' attention will be focused there, so that's another aspect to manage.

So far, doesn't seem too bad. My biggest problem was it's such a fucking bother to get anything done in this game. It's very RNG driven, starting with you team, which depending on the luck of the draw
can be a bunch of wankers that aren't really good at anything. I suppose this may get better with applying some metagame knowledge, but in my first playthroughs I went all cautious and managed to accomplish
diddly squat - spread some leaflets and paint a bunch of shit on the wall. I got some "intelligence" and "critical intelligence", but there was never an option to do anything with it.
I've seen an option to free some political prisoners, but I never managed to find the opportunity to get the necessary third SA uniform to even attempt it. Another option was to vandalize some sort of an exhibition,
but again, getting the right stuff to pull this off required following a long chain of missions which would eat up all of my resources. In any case, this didn't feel satisfactory at all
to do all this work only to deface some walls or give intel to a foreign journalist.
Perhaps things would be different if I were to focus on a single objective and beeline towards it, but I felt hampered at every step by the RNG which randomly decides that my best propagandist
Henrietta got knocked up and no longer feels like being part of the resistance (come to think about it, it's ironic how such gameplay considerations go against the game's progressive narrative
as it seems that the best way to get shit done is assemble a group of like-minded heterosexual christian men, if only it wasn't such a fucking bother getting them on board,
you don't really get to pick your own character for this, all you can do is hit randomize, adjust the appearance and hope to get it right this time).

In a way, I am reminded of This war of Mine, which I consider to be a non-game, and something I don't enjoy at all. It is built around you giving a fuck about all the little stories
happening to the characters and actually making progress is secondary. So much for this being a strategy game.

All in all, it felt like a waste of time, especially when most of the work I've done in chapter 1 didn't carry over to chapter 2 and I was stuck with the same group of wankers and one bicycle.
Characters seem to level up every now antd then which involves increasing one attribute score by one, so any progress is very slow. I'd avoid it unless you have a thing for badly drawn characters or want another This War of Mine
(although TWoM seems to have more depth to its gameplay). For the record, I really liked Papers, Please, and this game doesn't really hold a candle to it. While it does seem to have the historical facts straight,
(at least I didn't spot any glaring inaccuracies), the presentation seems overly sanctimonious. It's as though the main character is stuck in an echo chamber with very few attempts of breaking through it and very little space
for grey areas.

 

[vonAchdorf]

So I demoed it because it's labeled as a strategy and I have a soft spot for all those resistance-movement sims. As a surprise to nobody, the game is trying to push an agenda between the lines (spoiler: Trump is literally Hitler). I mostly ignored it and tried to focus on the gameplay.

I can't understand how you can cheapen your allegedly serious historical game with contemporary "Make Germany great again" memes (and if it's them or the translator who's responsible for that). But maybe they really believe that Trump's almost Hitler, they are German leftists.

 

[spectre]

I actually stopped paying attention to the in-game descriptions because of the overly sanctimonious internal commentary of the main character.
I can't really tell you how much of this is in there, but I did catch one reference to "Fake News" which was quite eye-rolling.

Now, "make germany great again" is a tricky one, because I suppose you could justify it as somewhat historically accurate:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/make-germany-great-again/

Similarly, I don't doubt that people have the notion of "fake news" back then, it being the time when Goebbels pretty much wrote the playbook on this thing,
but when paired with all the rest, I'm rather doubtful about the authors' intentions.

In the end, what it does is draw people into pointless arguments (I was looking to answer a few gameplay-related questions on the game's forums and
found plenty of this shit going on) and I agree that such forced contemporary optic cheapens the game's message.
And the game does drop some nice bits here and there, for example with christians being on the fence about Hitler, because, come on,
at least he put the commies in their place. Or when one of the characters is dismayed that their mother had a change of heart and is now joining with the Roman salute crowd.
Or when the game acknowledges that Hitler was voted in with over 90% votes in favor. Or when an American journalist acknowledges that the wold is impressed
by the work done in Germany. This should in fact show that the player character and their resistance is in the minority, but the game
doesn't really do anything to drive this point home. I guess that's indicative of the authors trying to walk the thin line and not being accused of promoting fascism.

Which is why I'd rather focus on the gameplay instead; and I do find it lacking. For one, it's way too RNG dependent and buggy.
At one point one of my characters randomly left for moscow because on the crackdown on communists... problem was his displayed in-game affiliation was christian liberal.
The way missions are structured is another problem for me, say you need to buy paper to print leaflets, if the die roll decides to fuck you over and you get two stacks instead of three,
you'll have to do the mission again next week (and pay for it two times), because you need three stacks, no more and no less, to progress up that event chain.
You wanted to buy paint? Same deal. Three is the number of buckets ye shall strive for.

As a result, achieving anything major requires you to jump over hoops in a ridiculously long sequence of missions.
For example, if the plan is to firebomb an exhibition, you first need to buy paint, meet with a friend to
unlock the mission to paint slogans on a wall, do the missions where you paint those slogans, gather enough money to set up a workshop,
gain access to an industrial lot, steal gasoline from the industrial lot, make firebombs with the gasoline, see that you need two more molotovs to even attempt
the objective, realize you'll have to go over this shit two more times.
In the meantime, you're trying to keep your heat low, keep enough supporters and money to keep the operation going and tend to the needs of your
team (and they can be a needy bunch, their relatives get imprisoned all the time, or they try to mooch you for money because they lost a job or got into trouble).
While it might appear as a nice challenge when I put it like that, it really isn't.

It's probably just me, I don't get it, and I don't have what it takes to be an activist. But, judging by the gameplay alone (and admittedly, I've only played the first chapters),
the game's message seems to be: why even bother with this shit, it's not like we'll be making any difference. I restarted the game two times
in hope to make use of what I learned and see if I can do better, but each subsequent attempt felt like trying to draw blood from stone.
As a result, I uninstalled and won't be going back again.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Which is why I'd rather focus on the gameplay instead; and I do find it lacking. For one, it's way too RNG dependent and buggy.
At one point one of my characters randomly left for moscow because on the crackdown on communists... problem was his displayed in-game affiliation was christian liberal.

I read that at first there were no character events at all. They have been introduced now, but they don't really take into account the character('s identity).

The way missions are structured is another problem for me, say you need to buy paper to print leaflets, if the die roll decides to fuck you over and you get two stacks instead of three, you'll have to do the mission again next week (and pay for it two times), because you need three stacks, no more and no less, to progress up that event chain.
You wanted to buy paint? Same deal. Three is the number of buckets ye shall strive for.

Yes, those missions a are a bit too binary. How about giving you an option to paint paroles with fewer paint buckets with accordingly diminished results.

It's probably just me, I don't get it, and I don't have what it takes to be an activist. But, judging by the gameplay alone (and admittedly, I've only played the first chapters), the game's message seems to be: why even bother with this shit, it's not like we'll be making any difference. I restarted the game two times in hope to make use of what I learned and see if I can do better, but each subsequent attempt felt like trying to draw blood from stone.
As a result, I uninstalled and won't be going back again.

Even if that's the message, because the outcome is clear from the beginning and it's not an alternative history game, it's not great game design. Like someone said above, it feels a bit like Oscar bait aimed at casual or non gamers.

 

[spectre]

Like someone said above, it feels a bit like Oscar bait aimed at casual or non gamers.

Yeah, it does feel that way. All the positive reviews it's getting are quite baffling to me, because it's neither a strategy, nor even a good game.
I wasn't really expecting them to let the player rewrite history, but at least something more than an exercise in tedium.

Which is why I kept getting reminded about Papers, Please, which had a similarly fugly art style (which, admittedly, grew on me),
but there was actual gameplay and it managed to drive its message across.
And there was a sense of moving forwards. With Through the Darkest of Times, I feel like I am constantly spinning my wheels.

I read that at first there were no character events at all. They have been introduced now, but they don't really take into account the character('s identity).

Well, given how buggy the scripts can be, I'd fully expect one of my guys to get pregnant at some point.

 

[ebPD8PePfC]

Finished the third chapter on non-story mode difficulty. You play as the manager of a small resistance group in Germany, starting from Febuary 1933. The game plays like Rebuild, where you have a small group of people, each with their own attributes, and you assign them to different missions which require those attributes. In between you get small short semi interactive cutscenes. You need to manage morale and supporters, as well as get more items that would help you finish missions.

- The game has a story mode, which is great, because than the official mode can actually be a game with win and lose states. Story mode saves every turn, game mode has checkpoints.
- I like the art style. Economical, but still looks cohesive.
- The cutscenes are semi-interactive, but almost none of the choices seem to have an impact on the rest of the game. Shame, because the decisions could have easily been tied to other stuff. There are too many of them, about one every turn, and as you go through the game they turn into info-dumps. I started skipping them in the second chapter.
- Every turn you get newspaper headlines that give some historical background. Short and informative.
- After some time your guys level up, which lets you increase one of their attributes. This is kinda tacked on.
- The biggest problem with the game is the lack of clear achievable goals. Maxing supporters and morale is easy, at which point you can try to complete a bunch of chained missions with increasing difficulty. The problem is that you don’t really know what those missions at the end of the chain give you, and the missions on the way there are really hard. Failure often sends you one step back in the chain as well, which makes the entire thing feel rather pointless. I keep sending my guys to do them and they fail, so I don’t know if it’s even worth the effort. I only do it because there’s really no other ball to chase.
- The lack of goals translates to a lack of strategy. You can’t plan if you don’t have any objectives. You can’t get a “one more turn” feeling when there are no interesting events on the horizon, and there’s no progression toward anything. To solve this problem they can implement a point system that rewards partial success in mission chains, since getting to the end of the game is trivial anyway, but players still need something to strive toward.
- The game lacks feedback in regards to success / failure. In macro terms, Nothing happens if you don’t do the big missions. You don’t win but and you can’t really lose, so you move from turn to turn with no feedback. In micro terms, the missions REALLY need a success / failure visual effect, because at times it isn’t clear what was the outcome of the mission.
- The game uses RNG in a rather confusing way. There are two bars: preparation (success chance, though the game fails to say it), and danger (chance for bad encounter). The first determines the chance that you get anything out of the mission, while the second determines whether something bad will happen (which usually results in failure). In hard missions danger means running into the police, which is pretty much a failure.

For hard missions the success is calculated like this: preparation * (1- danger) = success chance
Easy missions are – well - easy, so we can ignore them.

The problem is that in hard missions both bars represent the same thing, whether you succeed in the mission, but they are separate and their interaction is unclear. If both bars are half filled it looks like a good chance to succeed (the success bar is half filled), but the actual chance is only 1/8 (you must pass both tests!). There’s a big difference between the visuals and the underlying mechanics.
You can send more people to a mission, which increases preparedness, but also increases danger at an almost direct ratio. I don’t need to explain why that’s stupid.
You can also Hide in bad encounters, which decide whether you succeed with penalties, but it's essentially hidden RNG on top of RNG, so I don't like it.

- missions have duration in weeks, but as far as I can tell the duration is always 1, so this feature should probably be removed.
- The game is situated in Berlin, which means that the developers can only give limited freedom to the player before they cross into alternative history. They could have situated it in some random small German town, so the players could have some impact on the world they play in (burn down a local Nazi monument), without falling into a power fantasy that’s completely diverges from history (burn down a famous Nazi monument in Berlin, which obviously never happened).
- Some people might be bothered by connections to modern day politics, but it’s only 2-3 historically accurate sentences at most, so it’s not a big deal unless you’re really sensitive.

The game is mediocre, but it tries to deal with WW2 in an original manner, so you have to give it some credit. The design has issues, but they aren’t conceptual, which is far more than I can say for games that are nothing more than a series of cutscenes connected by shoddy puzzles (Attentat 1942, 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, My Memory of Us). It’s good compared to other edutainment games, but it’s not really worth playing unless you’re really into one of the niches it caters to (ww2 historical game, managing a resistance group, etc’).

 

[lightbane]

As a surprise to nobody, the game is trying to push an agenda between the lines (spoiler: Trump is literally Hitler). I mostly ignored it and tried to focus on the gameplay.

It's one of these games then.

It's very RNG driven, starting with you team, which depending on the luck of the draw
can be a bunch of wankers that aren't really good at anything.

Sounds fitting. A projection of the devs behind this "game".