The Snowfield


The Snowfield is a 2011 action and experimental narrative video game, developed as a student project by the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab, and set in World War I. The game is set on the aftermath of a great battle, with the player controlling a weakened soldier in the middle of a storm.
According to the developers, the game's development was an attempt to make a simulation-based narrative game without the need for massive, complex AI and massive content generation. Instead, the developers created several segments of gameplay — characters, objects etc. — and fine-tuned them based on how initial testers interacted with them. As such, The Snowfield is:

Reception

Adam Smith, writing for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, praised the game's narrative and design uniqueness, as well as its well-worked aesthetics. On Play This Thing, Greg Costikyan called it "a beautiful and horrifying game", praising its "stark, emotionally impactful setting". The game was a finalist at the 17th Annual Independent Games Festival, hosted in 2012, in the Student category.