Through the Darkest of Times

 

I've had some time on my hands and an old laptop which makes very alarming noises when it runs Fallout New Vegas, so I've been passing the time playing games that are less demanding technically. I tried Through the Darkest of Times: a Historical Resistance Strategy Game, and essentially stayed in my seat until the credits were rolling. 

Darkest of Times, is quite gripping once its stuck its claws into you. WWII is a saturated market in fiction, but a game about the activities of a civilian resistance cell in the heart of Nazi Germany is ground less trampled. The setting is Berlin with rare travels beyond, and the timeline is January 1933 to August 1945, the birth and death of Nazi Germany. There are two modes though they're the same at their core, Resistance is the games harder difficulty, there is more pressure from the police and members of the group will leave if morale collapses. Story mode, is the easier difficulty, it removes the members leaving the group if morale is too poor but you can still lose members and the game if your characters morale gets too low. Its a turn based strategy game, you pick your character who is the leader of a small resistance group, the maximum membership is five. Each turn lasts a week and the opportunities and risks for your group change constantly. Your character and the members can be very diverse, politically and economically, and these traits can alter gameplay and some of the random events of the story. 

For an example, my group was mostly a coalition of Anarchist manual workers, social democrat servants, and a Communist metal worker. This meant we found appealing for support from workers and unionists pretty easy but struggled when developing contacts in the Christian and conservative circles. Also the communist fled early in the game to escape the crackdowns on communists. In one of my playthroughs a member was a lesbian and we briefly explored the growing atmosphere of violent oppression against Weimar's homosexual subculture. The timeline of Germany is fixed, it follows the actual events very closely and each turn presents you with three headlines about events that happened in that week in history. 

Occasionally your character will take part in story events, and every turn your group will have a brief discussion about life in Berlin and sometimes these will have choices and consequences for your group and its members. The goal of the game is simple, survive and cause as much trouble for the Nazi regime as possible. You have many opportunities to do this, anti-Nazi meetings, book smuggling, leafleting, hiding persecuted citizens, exchanging information with journalists and intelligence services, prison breaks, sabotage, raiding SA and army supplies etc. The difficulties lie in both the repressive arms of the Nazi state, the SA, police, Gestapo etc, and even more in maintaining a balance of resources, morale and activity. 

The two main resources needed are money and supporters, money is used to buy goods and services from contacts, while support opens up new opportunities for action in Berlin's neighbourhoods. Morale, is the morale of your character and the group, the clever thing about this mechanic is that since you are a small group operating in the shadows of a strong and powerful totalitarian regime, morale is constantly draining. Your groups commentary and story segments make it clear that you are a tiny island in a growing sea of nationalist frenzy. To stem the tied of morale collapse you must engage in constant and effective action. Painting the walls of a workers district with anti-Nazi slogans won't bring down the Third Reich, but it'll cause a stir and make your partisans feel better.

Of course, defiance of Hitler is extremely dangerous, so the more your partisans act, the more surveillance and injuries they're likely to suffer, so you have to manage your team wisely, not just by assigning the best suited to the task but also have some members cool their heels for awhile or go into hiding overwise they become more of a hinderance than a help. 

A key feeling while playing Darkest of Times was frustration. That isn't a bug its a feature. Even in Story mode it is very difficult to carry out effective actions. Actions that could cause severe damage like sabotaging the Olympic propaganda campaign will require a lot of special equipment that can only be sourced from many difficult tasks, and the deadlines between chapters is tight. Often you can get trapped in this cycle of limited actions while staying out of the clutches of the Gestapo. The game is loosely based on the existence of German civilian resistance groups in Nazi Germany. They are overlooked in the great narratives of WWII because they found it very, very difficult to perform even token acts of resistance and often paid for these with their lives.

As far as I'm aware no matter what choices you make and how lucky the random events are to you, there is no ending where you successfully derail the Nazi party regime and its plans for conquest. You can sting them a little and intervene for the better in some small ways, and you pay dearly for these achievements. Its a frustrating game, and a sad game, but quite moving, I found myself bitterly disappointed when I couldn't talk the neighbours children out of joining the Hitler Youth, and felt elated when I managed to provide a refuge for a Jewish family, or assisted a strike of indentured labourers. Pick your battles and hope for the best.