This War of Mine was inspired by real-life events and delivers a message. "This can happen in your city, in your country," Michal Drozdowski, lead designer, said. "While designing a new game, we came across an article that described how one man survived in a besieged city. We learned about his hardships and the horror of that experience. We decided to work around this idea and make something real, something that moves people and make them think for a second. It's about time that games, just like any other art form, start talking about important things."

In TWoM players have to make life-and-death decisions based on their conscience. Try to protect everybody from your shelter or sacrifice some of them in order to prevail; there are no good or bad decisions during war. There's only survival.