When one thinks of Nazis in video games, one's mind likely goes to Wolfenstein. That long-running series has built its own trademark around mowing down faceless hordes of Swastika-wearing stormtroopers. But in all the excitement and bloodshed of the Wolfenstein series, it can be easy to overlook the very real horror of the Nazi regime and its effect on Germany. The atrocities of the Third Reich are impossible to ignore in Through the Darkest of Times, a strategy game that tasks the player with living through Adolf Hitler's reign in Germany and leading a resistance against his pervasive evil.

In Through the Darkest of Times, you must recruit members to your resistance movement, manage morale and resources, and try to marshal supporters, all while struggling both to avoid detection and to successfully make a difference in the fight to free Germany from Hitler's clutches. It is a deeply tense game right from the beginning, and this tension is rarely if ever relieved. Even disregarding the number of decisions the game forces you to make and the struggles you have to undergo, the game still induces stress by accurately simulating the fear and stress of living through the reign of the Third Reich. Paranoia reigns, and you can't trust anyone.

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At the start of the game, the player is tasked with creating their character. While you're free to customize your character's appearance, including hairstyle, eye color, and accessories, the only way to determine the character's gender, name, and occupation is by randomizing them. While a more involved way to select gender and occupation would've been ideal, there's something to be said for randomizing the character's name. Through the Darkest of Times is not a good game to experience with the sort of strange or humorous nickname a player might come up with. Your new resistance leader is paired with two other characters, and can recruit more as the game progresses. Each character has scores in a variety of stats, including things like empathy, secrecy, and strength, all of which make them a better, more specialized resistance member and informs what sort of missions they can go on. There are other traits, including occupation and political leaning, that can influence mission success as well. For instance, if you've arranged a meeting with a government official who could be tempted to pass along some intel, it might be a bad idea to bring an anarchist along for the ride.

Reichstag burning in Through the Darkest of Times

Missions are the bread and butter of Through the Darkest of Times. Every in-game week the player is presented with a map of Berlin and a number of mission options you can send your resistance members on. Each has different conditions for and odds of success. You can commit one to three resistance members to each mission; the higher-stakes jobs might require you to send more than one member. If you succeed, you obtain a resource that will be useful to you in your continued fight. These resources could be money that you can spend on future missions, supporters to swell your ranks and find new mission opportunities for you to pursue, or more specialized things, like paper that can be printed into propaganda leaflets or paint that can be used to write slogans on walls. The ramifications of successfully completing a mission is occasionally a bit difficult to truly understand, but for the most part it's pretty clear how each job will benefit your cause. Some missions can't even be undertaken until you've done a prerequisite mission, which gives the player the opportunity to undertake a more involved and focused resistance effort.

Every mission also presents a chance of failure in the form of witnesses. Witnesses could be an average citizen getting suspicious, or police, or an outright assault on whatever operative is at risk. When you're observed by a witness you can either flee, aborting the mission entirely and receiving no rewards, hide, waiting for the witness to pass by and attempting to get a reduced reward out of the encounter, or fight back, driving off the witness and potentially gaining the full reward. The choice is never an easy one to make; if your character fights back and fails, they could get injured or even killed. If they flee, they'll lose whatever resource they used to undertake the mission again, and attempting to regain that resource could be a lengthy process that opens the door for further failures. You are almost never guaranteed success, even in the simplest of tasks. Even buying paper is a risky proposition in Nazi Germany. This is deeply stressful but it's also a powerful reminder of just how difficult life was in such a dark period, especially for someone trying to fight back. No matter what, you are never safe.

Shop Boycott from Through the Darkest of Times

In addition to the missions, between weeks the player character might find themselves in a brief scene that further demonstrates the stakes of what they're fighting against. These vignettes are chilling to experience, and in a wide variety of ways. The terror evoked by your visit to a camp full of mistreated Romani citizens is much different than the terror that's evoked when your neighbor joyously tells you that she got a new job as a guard at a concentration camp, but they're both just as severe, and both equally grim reminders of what's at stake. The art style complements the anxious, strained world of your resistance leader marvelously; the game is dark and shadowy, and the character models all have very wide, very distinct eyes, as if they're constantly on the lookout for the next threat.

Through the Darkest of Times is not a lighthearted game. By many definitions it isn't even a fun game. But it's an important game, and it's also a very thrilling tactical experience. This game will not be enjoyed by everyone but it carries a lesson that everyone should learn one way or another. The events that took place in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s must never be repeated, but if they are, the most important thing and the most dangerous thing you can do is take a stand and fight for what you believe in. Through the Darkest of Times is an excellent experience that lets the player do just that.

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Through the Darkest of Times is available for PC and Mac. A digital PC download code was provided to Screen Rant for purposes of review.