Winter Is Coming!

In the game, the radio was a very important thing.

If you wanted to trade in the game, then a radio was an indispensable item. Information could help us survive better in times of war.

Even if you did not trade, you would most likely still need a radio.

Because in this place where clothes could not cover your body and houses could not keep out the cold, knowing the changes in the weather was also extremely important.

In the game, we needed to stockpile as much water and firewood as possible before winter arrived. Only then could we lead our few characters through the long winter.

The radio had five channels: the modern music channel, the classical music channel, Radio One, Today's City News, and the weather.

Amid the dying embers of war, listening to classical music could slightly improve the characters' moods, though the effect was not obvious.

As Silver gradually came to understand the game, he discovered that the characters' moods were very important.

The entire game used black and white as its main backdrop, with oppressive background music playing throughout, constantly emphasizing the darkness of the battlefield.

This game dragged out the darkest side of human nature and put it on display for lashing.

In peacetime, stealing would still earn the condemnation of one's conscience. Did doing evil in wartime mean one's heart could escape suffering?

The answer was no.

Here, murder, arson, theft, and petty crimes would all lower a character's mood.

Characters could develop negative emotional states to varying degrees. People who were easily satisfied were generally also easily saddened.

Everyone had different levels of mental resilience. Especially during war, some people were more prone to breaking down.

When supplies were scarce, not everyone could remain cold-blooded and heartless. At times like this, even refusing someone's plea for help could make them feel guilty.

For example, failing to help children or neighbors who came seeking assistance, falsely accusing neighbors, or robbing and stealing from hospitals at someone else's suggestion could all leave certain people depressed and unhappy.

Others, however, were more cold-blooded.

In the game, the chef Bruno, the lawyer, and the craftsman Marin were relatively cold-blooded, but their coldness only extended to allowing others to do bad things.

If they did bad things themselves, they would still feel upset.

But some of the other characters in the game were less likely to feel sad after doing bad things. Stealing had less of a negative emotional impact on them, while doing good deeds easily satisfied them.

But they could not be turned into weapons and blades of war just because they were cold-blooded, free to slaughter outsiders at will.

Because even the most cold-blooded people would grow sad after killing too many, and even ruthless killers could break down.

When a character broke down and lost all hope, they could no longer go out or be controlled. They might even run away from home—or commit suicide.

The way to restore their mood was simple: let them eat their fill.

But even eating one's fill was a difficult problem here.

After discovering this key point, Silver liked using ordinary people, because the mood issues of ordinary people were much easier to handle in this game, and they were the least likely to cause problems.

The ordinary people here referred to those ordinary people from peacetime, the ones who would never stand under the spotlight.

Thieves, chefs, deserters... they could all live fairly well here. Everyone had their own specialties that could help them survive.

Because in such an extreme environment, trying to be a good person might get you killed first, and you would also have to face people coming to rob your home from time to time.

Meanwhile, lawyers, mathematicians, principals, tobacco merchants, and others respected in peacetime became nothing amid war. Even protecting themselves was a problem.

Instead, soldiers, porters, craftsmen, and even petty thieves—the people no one paid much attention to—were the ones thriving.

Silver could not even remember how many people he had robbed. Some who resisted, he killed; others, he did not.

By the end of the game, his eyes had gone numb.

It was just a game. Wasn't killing the norm?

He had abundant supplies and complete facilities. When he was hungry, there was food to eat, and every day there were cigarettes to smoke.

His characters slaughtered the military camp and slaughtered the half-ruined house.

Yet the three people at home remained in negative moods every day despite eating and drinking their fill.

After slaughtering the "half-ruined house," one of them went back for supplies for several days in a row. Then, one day later, he took a can of food and ran away.

The soldier who had slaughtered the military camp fought the chef at home every day. Both ended up injured, and both of their emotions had already collapsed.

Finally, that night, the chef ran away. Only the soldier remained, eating and drinking his fill day after day, enduring one white day and black night after another until the war ended forty days later.

After the game ended, the screen automatically displayed the postwar stories of the characters Silver had controlled. It described the various experiences of the people they had helped during the war.

Of course, if you stole all of someone else's food, the game would also tell you how they died.

You were the reason they died, directly or indirectly.

Silver fell silent. He looked at the photos and text on the screen. There were only simple written descriptions here.

The soldier who had slaughtered the military camp was called Roman.

[Roman survived the war. Tormented by his past experiences, he began engaging in illegal business and died several years later from the damage drugs had done to his body.

When the person who had slaughtered the "half-ruined house" appeared again, he had become the leader of a juvenile crime gang.

As for the chef who ran away, he tried to find his friends at night, but was shot dead by a military patrol while fleeing.]

Looking at the various endings on the screen, Silver fell silent. Without another word, he turned off the camera and smoked one cigarette after another.

Whether it was a protagonist who had killed too many good people or one who had become passive before the war ended, they would often commit suicide after the war. So this game was not merely about surviving a few dozen days during wartime.

"This game is way too depressing. If you're under eighteen, don't play it. Seriously." After saying that, Silver directly shut down the livestream.

He did not say goodbye to his fans, nor did he bid them farewell as usual.

Yinzi silently shut down the livestream and stared at the game's bleak black-and-white screen.

He suddenly remembered something the radio had said during the game.

"Meat has become almost impossible to buy on the streets. Be extremely careful when purchasing meat from unknown sources."

While playing the game, he had only felt that raw food had become more valuable. Now that he thought about it carefully, he suddenly felt nauseated.

The value of currency in chaotic times was distorted.

He had once heard people say that gold was valuable in chaotic times, while antiques were valuable in prosperous times.

After playing the game, all he wanted to say was that in chaotic times, gold was bullshit!

The most valuable things here were weapons, medicine, cigarettes and alcohol, and food!

Especially during that frigid winter, the stove had to keep burning.

A diamond could not be traded for a bottle of liquor in the game, nor could it be traded for a can of meat.

Yet a pack of cigarettes could be exchanged for twenty bullets.

The weather forecast on the radio kept changing with the passing days.

[Over the next few days, temperatures will plummet. It will become very cold, as if the war were not enough.]

This meant winter was coming, and the weather would become extremely cold.