10 Video Games That Punish You For Making The Ethical Choice

5. This War Of Mine

This War of Mine old couple
11 Bit Studios

There’s a Papers Please sort of game genre that seems to want to make you sad, and This War of Mine absolutely belongs in the same bucket.

This War of Mine is a strategy survival game where you’ll have to make difficult choices for a group of civilians hiding out in a fictional city under siege. You’ll need to maintain the group’s health, hunger, and mood and deal with encounters with other NPC survivors. This is where things get tricky. Well, trickier. Outsiders will ask for food and medicine and it’s up to you to help them if you want, or you can rob or kill them. Of course, the ethical thing would be to help your fellow man but giving away your extremely scarce supplies is going to make things incredibly difficult for you in game and for the survivability of your group.

If for some reason this doesn’t sound like a painful ethical nightmare already, you can always grab The Little Ones DLC.

This expansion adds a child survivor who can’t help the shelter initially or defend themselves but needs constant attention, is prone to depression, and needs to be taught to help out with various chores over time. It’s a losing battle trying to keep everyone safe and happy the entire time, but making the ethical choices in this instance will often make things far more dire.

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Jess has been a journalist and content creator in the games industry for over 15 years and has been WhatCulture's resident Australian import and sorry cop since 2020, upping the quotient of swearing and apologising in WhatCulture Gaming's annual blooper videos considerably. She previously worked at GameSpot for 10 years, most notably hosting GameSpot News in addition to E3 live shows, and PAX panels. She regularly livestreams a variety of games on her 'jessmcdonell' YouTube and Twitch channels and hosts the 'Do It On The Day' podcast. She has won awards for her news and feature work in gaming as well as an accolade for her comedic writing (likely an admin error). She can be found on X at @jessmcdonell and Instagram at @jessicamcdonell sharing her current videogame fixations, industry insights, and videos of her cat, Karma.