Through the Darkest of Times is a somber and deeply human strategy game that approaches resistance during the Nazi era with an honesty and gravity rarely seen in the medium. Developed by Paintbucket Games and published by HandyGames, it places you in Berlin in 1933, just as Hitler rises to power. Instead of casting you as a heroic super-spy or soldier, the game hands you control of a small band of ordinary civilians—teachers, artists, workers, people with no weapons and little influence—who choose to resist despite knowing the odds are stacked nearly impossibly against them. From the opening chapter onward, the game establishes a tone of quiet dread, moral complexity, and constant uncertainty, forcing you to experience the era from the perspective of those fighting an invisible war against a system growing more oppressive every week.
The entire game unfolds in weekly turns, each representing another step deeper into the regime’s tightening grip. In these turns, you send your group members on clandestine missions: distributing forbidden leaflets, painting anti-regime messages on walls, collecting donations, sabotaging operations, and recruiting sympathetic supporters. Each decision demands careful consideration. Members have strengths and weaknesses, and every mission carries a risk of arrest, interrogation, or death. Resources are scarce, morale is fragile, and your resistance cell must remain hidden to avoid being crushed outright. This steady pressure gives the gameplay its emotional weight. You never feel powerful—only determined—and the constant fear of losing a comrade or being discovered mirrors the real dangers faced by historical resistance groups.
Presentation is one of the game's most striking qualities. Its stark, hand-painted art style, reminiscent of expressionist illustration, captures the bleak mood of the setting without resorting to graphic depictions. Weekly newspaper headlines ground the experience in historical context, while narrative sequences reveal the increasingly nightmarish reality of daily life under fascism. These scenes show ordinary people confronting discrimination, violence, fear, and moral dilemmas that force them to define what “resistance” really means. The writing avoids dramatizing events for shock value, instead relying on small, personal moments that communicate the heavy emotional atmosphere of the time.
Mechanically, the game blends resource management, planning, and occasional branching narrative choices. The strategic layer requires tracking money, secrecy, group morale, and the rising dangers around the city. Missions can fail for reasons beyond your control, and even success may feel bittersweet, as the broader historical events continue their inevitable march forward. Major turning points—book burnings, Kristallnacht, declarations of war—arrive whether you are ready or not, and your group is forced to adapt in order to survive. This lack of influence over the grand direction of history is deliberate. The game acknowledges a painful truth: resistance in Nazi Germany did not topple the regime. It survived because people refused to remain silent, not because they expected victory.
This commitment to realism, however, introduces some limitations. While powerful narratively, it can make the game feel repetitive or mechanical once you understand how to assign tasks and manage risks. Missions often follow similar patterns, and the strategic layer lacks the depth some players may expect from a turn-based resistance simulator. The game is strongest during its story events, but these sequences unfold along a relatively fixed historical track, meaning replays lose some emotional impact as the surprises fade. The experience is gripping the first time but less compelling when the major events and outcomes are already familiar.
Even with these shortcomings, Through the Darkest of Times succeeds at something rare: it uses strategy gameplay to illuminate the psychological and moral struggle of everyday resistance. It asks players to confront fear, hopelessness, and responsibility, not through large-scale battles but through small acts of defiance that require quiet bravery. Its impact comes not from “winning” but from enduring—continuing to resist even when success is uncertain and the cost is unbearably high. The game does not aim to empower the player; it aims to make them understand the sacrifices of people who resisted, even when history was not on their side.
Ultimately, Through the Darkest of Times stands as a thoughtful, emotionally resonant portrayal of resistance under tyranny. It is not a power fantasy nor a traditional strategy game—it is a memorial, conveyed through interactive fiction and careful planning. For players willing to immerse themselves in a difficult and sobering subject, it provides an experience that is reflective, meaningful, and quietly devastating.
Rating: 8/10
