War is a terrible, brutal thing that has effects on a far-reaching scale, but it’s the stories of individuals that often land most powerfully close to home. Last Train Home, launched just last week on Steam, is one such tale – putting you in charge of a small group of soldiers desperately trying to get home in the wake of the Great War. Now, if you want to pick it up for yourself, you can get one of the most hard-hitting war stories, the excellent This War is Mine, as essentially a free game alongside it.
Last Train Home brings the close, squad-based tactics from some of the best wartime strategy games such as Commandos and Company of Heroes as your team of soldiers attempts to trek back home to Czechoslovakia aboard an armored train, amidst the Russian civil war between the Bolshevik Red Army and the Tsarist White Army.
You’ll have to scout for resources, engage in perilous combat or attempt to sneak your way through occupied terrain, and make tough choices about who to help and what to leave behind. With a small group of individually talented soldiers bringing their own skills to bear both on the field and in the train, and the harsh winter environment beating down on your camp, you’ll have to manage everyone carefully if you’re going to make it back alive.
Nine years before Last Train Home, however, This War of Mine put us in a different, but equally taxing situation. Inspired by conflicts such as the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War in the ‘90s, This War of Mine focuses on a small group of civilians taking refuge in a house in a besieged city. Your goal here isn’t to escape, but rather to hold out until a ceasefire is declared.
Here, then, you aren’t controlling a group of trained soldiers, but rather a number of civilian survivors. It’s all you can do to keep your group alive, and that means searching nearby buildings and choosing whether you want to assist, steal from, or even kill other survivors to better your chances of making it through.
Thanks to a partnership between THQ Nordic and 11 Bit Studios, you can now buy the pair together in a new War Stories bundle on Steam. The deal offers both Last Train Home (typically priced at $39.99 / £34.99) and This War of Mine (usually $19.99 / £16.75, but currently on sale for $3.99 / £3.35) for the combined price of $39.58 / £34.50. That means you’ll get both games for just under the usual asking price of Last Train Home.
For more of the most powerful wartime stories told in games, have a look through the best World War II games on PC. We’ve picked out the best management games too, not all of which are quite as life-or-death, thankfully.
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