Marko abandoned us. Emilia committed suicide. Katia died after being wounded in a raid. Roman's not as sick today, but he won't budge after hearing about Emilia, so we'll have to keep an eye on him.

These are the survivors—my survivors—hunkered in the fictional city of Pogoren, capital of the fictional Republic of Vyseni. It's all imaginary, a blighted urban made-up-scape, but it could be Sarajevo, or Gaza, or Fallujah, or Ukraine. It could be where you live.

I trawl my mouse across a chiaroscuro multilevel building that looks like a nihilistic Wes Anderson diorama with skittering pencil-sketched backgrounds. Roman sits on the cold concrete floor not far from the entrance, head in hands, sobbing about the futility of it all. He won't move from his spot, and with no one else to feed him, all I can do is watch the clock. I started with three survivors and eventually picked up a fourth (that was Emilia, who came seeking shelter). But I'm down to just one, an ex-militia former hoodlum "trained in combat," now mentally and emotionally shattered. Roman did something unspeakable last night, and the awful thing is, I made him do it.

11 bit Studios' This War of Mine, a war survival game for mobile and PC available now, shames and humbles me.

My survivors squat in a shelled-out building framed by plumes of smoke and the silhouetted husks of tanks. Sunlight blooms around the edges of pulverized concrete and jags of timber, just one of several gaping holes in this makeshift base, a dangerous breach that lures looters at night. I need to patch those holes. But first I need wood to cover the breaches and components to make the nails.

Before that, Roman needs food, and bandages, meds, and above all else a reason to live. That's going to be a circle to square, because he's seen unspeakable things and performed even ghastlier deeds. And now he's stuck in this broken-down stone block, alone and in the throes of a psychological fugue.

11 Bit Studios

This War of Mine imagines an endless civil war. Civilians are trapped in a besieged Stalingrad-like city, suffering from hunger and disease and shelling. Snipers roam the city, as apt to pick off civilians as they are insurgents. The phones don't work. There isn't enough food or medication. Your group operates out of a single structure, viewed from the side like a dollhouse, with apparatuses you can fiddle or upgrade to produce helpful goods or improve existing ones. Each survivor has a hierarchy of physical and mental needs equipoised against variably treacherous means of fulfilling them.

Your goal is simple: Survive. I'm not sure for how long, or if there's even a "win" state, because the best I've managed so far is 25 days, and that felt interminable.

Days and nights creep by at 10-minute intervals, one every three or four seconds. Instead of leveling up their attributes, your survivors suffer various conditions on an ever-backsliding scale: wounds, illness, hunger. You can direct them to unlock or crowbar open doors, rifle through debris, and claw past piles of rubble in search of parts, potable water, and luxury leavings like coffee beans or tobacco leaves that can act as palliatives or purchase necessities in trade with others.

When night comes, you have to choose who gets to sleep (did you build a bed?), who's on guard duty (are they rested enough?) and who's off to scavenge the remains of houses, squats, hospitals, churches, military outposts, supermarkets and schools. These places may harbor food, meds, or weapons, but they're also side-scrolling danger labyrinths you navigate by clicking to peep through keyholes or open doors, hiding in background nooks to avoid passerby.

Don't mistake side-scrolling for Mario-style platforming: You move like a real person would, slowly, and if you're sick or starving or wounded you stagger at a snail's pace, clutching your side in obvious agony.

You're allowed to visit one location per night, and you have until morning to return. You can take items to trade with other survivors or weaponry to fend off those who would rob you. As you ramp up your base, you can cobble ballistic weapons together from parts. Your survivors have perks that impact these evening runs, like "fast runner" or "good scavenger." The latter may be the game's most valuable, providing precious extra carry slots for items.

11 Bit Studios

Things get tricky when you come across what others claim to be their personal property. You can opt to trade for this stuff, or simply try to swipe it, but the latter usually prompts a weaponized reaction. You don't want to get hurt, since even slight wounds left unchecked eventually become lethal ones.

But the worst comes when you face heartbreaking moral dilemmas, your companions' health dwindling, your only choices brutally dehumanizing ones. Suffice to say one of these is the terrible thing I made Roman do, and as his mental state consequently deteriorated, he wouldn't let me forget. "We're ruthless robbers now," he said at one point, standing near cupboards newly flush with stolen belongings. This War of Mine is at its best when it's reflecting your actions back at you.

You can perform rare Samaritan deeds by deploying survivors to help visitors who drop by your building perform helpful or even heroic feats. But this is at the expense of time you'd otherwise have to improve your shelter, soothe your companions, or simply rest. But as the days and eventually weeks creep by, the negatives overwhelm the positives, and bad choices seem inexorably to consume what few there ever were of good ones.

I've seen some refer to This War of Mine as an antiwar video game. That's too reductive—like calling pictures of civilian casualties in conflict zones "pacifist propaganda."

The scenarios This War of Mine engages are less antiwar than they are actual war stories, and that, I think, is the point: This is what unflinching war looks like from the standpoint of those powerless to stop it, the ones caught in the teeth of the machine without catchy operational monikers to rally behind or celebrated by politicians to usher them home as heroes. The ones whose war this isn't.

It's what Cormac McCarthy was getting at in The Road: We're a faint signal cutting through the static of existence, and war, with its reduction of civilian lives to collateral damage, scrambles even that.

The version of war we're often sold involves abstract military numbers, splashy interactive news maps and easy slogans on bumper stickers. In real war, whatever the reasons and however noble the rhetoric, it comes down to individuals like the ones in This War of Mine: People like you or me trapped in appalling scenarios, their social constructs crumbling, needing basic shelter, food, a bed to sleep in, pills or antibiotics, and perhaps most of all, a reason in all the madness not to check out for good.