It Takes a War on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Graphics! Guns! Glory! Get ready to drop into a devastatingly real depiction of the battlefield as you and your team take on a relentless foe. It Takes a War presents a new vision for the team-based tactical shooter genre.
It Takes a War is a walking simulator, story rich and surreal game
developed by Thomas Mackinnon
and published by Pantaloon.
Released on November 06th 2025 is available in English only on Windows.
It has received 577 reviews of which 540 were positive and 37 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.7 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 5.89€ on Steam, but you can find it for 0.98€ on Eneba.
The Steam community has classified It Takes a War into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at It Takes a War through various videos and screenshots.
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Any at least semi-modern processor should work fine
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Any at least semi-modern (non-integrated) graphics card should also be fine
- Storage: 15 GB available space
- Sound Card: Yes please
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
It Takes A War - The Dissection of An Unraveling Friendship ITAW is a game that hit me very hard and personally right in the gut because of its subject matter, and I really want to talk about the way I feel after completing it. It is a hard game to talk about without spoiling it, simply because of the way it was designed, therefore this review will probably be more geared towards those who have finished the game and want to gush about it or find out what other people thought about the underlying premise, the message it sends, and maybe even have a debate about it. This game's replay value is incredibly low because it tells one cohesive and linear story throughout around an hour of playtime, which concerns me not because I think the game is "too short", but because by nature of Steam's refund policy, any game that you have under 2 hours of playtime of, can be refunded, no questions asked. So I think there are going to be a lot of people who finish this game after seeing all it has to offer, after consuming this product that people made, and simply choose to yoink their 5€ back from the developers who clearly wanted to have an analysis and discussion of something that plagues many people in the online space. If you are here, you already know what this game probably is because you've been getting nagged about that one video that keeps popping up in your Youtube Recommendations. If not. Then let me tell you that this game's store page is deceiving you. This is a game that is deeply psychological and philosophical because it tries to let the player examine the failing dynamics and bonds of a friend group that has gotten toxic. One where people no longer respect each other's boundaries, where people are left out of activities as they quietly meet in a VC behind their back, and generally seeing the flawed way that people in a friend group can act and hurt eachother, whether they mean to do so, or not. Yeah, you know I am right. When you play this game, and you finish it, you will come to the realization: "I've been here before, I know all of this". That's because you have. And not just you. But all of us. Whether it is on the internet or in real life. You have seen a friendgroup fall apart, you have seen MULTIPLE fall apart. And all of that over the span of your entire life. You have been in this situation, whether it was as somebody doing the hurt and knowing or not knowing about it, or being the one who was hurt while everybody dismissed your concerns or started a fight over it. To me particularly, this kind of subject matter hits a lot more close to home because I personally feel like I go through friendships like they are tissues, befriending somebody or a group only for some calamity to happen that tears me away from that group, whether it is them unfriending me, blocking me, or me choosing to be the one to do so. What this game sets out to do is try to present you with one of these situations, and try to get you a look at all of the people, and try to take their life situations into account, and to try and sympathize with the way that they might be acting. However. I think that this game, even with it handling its subject matter well and coming to a decent (if very flawed) conclusion in the end, does itself a disservice by doing one thing: The supernatural ARG stuff. This game has the tendency to modify the rules of the game, mess with it, and subvert any expectation you might've had. You will get fake Steam messages from people you don't know, from people you DO know and are actually on your friendslist. That's because the game pulls data from the Steam API to tailor parts of the game to you, and when that aspect of the game works, it really works and hits hard and close to home. But where it doesn't work is when it rips the control from the player and "kills" the game by removing all players, or teleporting you, or making you go through a door that is a portal to an area with a completely different artstyle to what you just played. And sure, while that is probably by design, I found it to be annoying, and it made me roll my eyes once it happened for the third time. But even with all of that aside. This game is a passion project. It's not a pretty game to look at, or even fun to play. The "AI" is completely rudimentary and reminds me of a baby's first Unity game. But there is nothing wrong with that. The "game" serves as the perfect slice of cheese to mold around a hard-to-swallow pill: It is okay to say goodbye and to let go of a friendship that you feel has become bad for you to be in, if it takes a mental toll on you to keep repeating the same fights you have with your friends over and over... But. It takes a War to say farewell...
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I'm leaving a positive review just to spite that one French guy who left an obnoxiously long negative review. This is a cheap, short and all things considered interesting lil game, it's not life-changing, nor addictive, but that's not what it's trying to be. For what it's worth, I think it achieves what it sets out to do, give you something to think about for a minute and maybe catch you off-guard with one of its slightly unsettling moments. I'm glad we can get neat creative projects like this on Steam, gonna pick up the dev's previous game to try out and I'm looking forward to his next release!
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I did not actually like this game very much, but I'm gonna recommend you check it out and make up your own damn mind. Do it for their sake and also your own. It's an earnest piece of art and is worth engaging with if it seems interesting to you. Straight up don't read my criticisms below and just hop in blind. Support the little guys. That being said, devs if you are reading this, here are my criticisms: By far the biggest issue I had with the game was that the writing felt very syrupy and on the nose. I appreciate that the game is exploring a very specific social interaction through the lens of online spaces (one that I can very much relate to), and I appreciate the overall themes its trying to explore. That being said, it feels like the game is paradoxically deeply uninterested in capturing those kinds of interactions and spaces as they truly are. There is a distinct lack of vividness in the dialogue/performances/gamefeel in that none of them seem to truly capture how people actually talk or how these types of games actually feel to play. The game also does a lot of telling and not showing. It spells out verbally what each and every metaphor, piece of visual symbolism, etc is meant to represent in a way that, to me, felt pretty groan worthy. At the end of the day it felt like the story was more interested in being about the concepts it presents "on paper" rather than actually developing its characters into believable people and immersing you properly into the situation. For a story like this, that sort of direction really falls flat for me. The climactic speech that is given by the solo-queuing player to colin towards the end felt especially didactic and cheesy in a way that rang pretty hollow to me. I hope this doesn't come across as too mean, I wanted to share this criticism because I respect the effort that went into it, and there were a lot of creative and unique choices put into the game as well. I was honestly really impressed to see text to speech integrated into the game as it was, and I think that novelty was a really smart way to extract a sound byte out of the player to use for later. The sudden freeze frame with a sticky note that says "Got you." was pretty great as well. The basic conceit of the game, of course, was the thing that got me interested in it in the first place, so I gotta give props to that as well.
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I haven't played the game yet. I bought it a few weeks ago, and it refused to work. At a certain point in loading the first map it simply stopped, and then nothing. I contacted the dev, and it turned out, there was one other person with the same problem. Since then the developer rolled update after update, created a seperate beta branch for this problem, invited me for sessions with unreal experts and the other player with this problem, and so on. There was so much work done for this small percentage of people for whom the game doesn't work! And since today, it works! He found the problem. THIS, at least for me, is the dedication keeping the gaming medium running at it's heart, not all the big money made with microtransactions and the like. Pure love for the dev, and, obviously, it's enough for me to leave a positive review. :)
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I felt the urge to write this after seeing a negative review boosted to the top focused almost entirely on the gameplay and lack of replayability. To be clear, the reviewer is correct - the shooting in this game doesn’t feel very good, but honestly for a game that’s a lot closer to say The Beginners Guide than CS 1.6, I think that’s a bit of a pathetic hill to die on. The focus of this game so clearly isn’t about rushing B and fragging terrorists, It’s about being in your late teens and feeling that slow death of a friendship group - The paradox of always being surrounded by friends online, and yet never being seen for who you are by them. It’s a story that’s clearly very personal to solo developer Thomas Mackinnon, and I think one that’s told in a wholly unique way. Yes the shooting is a slog; Yes some of the voice acting is amateurish, but you know what, it got me, and it got me good.
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Frequently Asked Questions
It Takes a War is currently priced at 5.89€ on Steam.
It Takes a War is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 5.89€ on Steam.
It Takes a War received 540 positive votes out of a total of 577 achieving a rating of 8.72.
😎
It Takes a War was developed by Thomas Mackinnon and published by Pantaloon.
It Takes a War is playable and fully supported on Windows.
It Takes a War is not playable on MacOS.
It Takes a War is not playable on Linux.
It Takes a War is a single-player game.
There is a DLC available for It Takes a War. Explore additional content available for It Takes a War on Steam.
It Takes a War does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
It Takes a War does not support Steam Remote Play.
It Takes a War is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for It Takes a War.
Data sources
The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 21 March 2026 06:10 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 23 March 2026 08:20 |
| Steam price | 28 March 2026 21:05 |
| Steam reviews | 28 March 2026 11:55 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about It Takes a War, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about It Takes a War
- SteamCharts - Analysis of It Takes a War concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck It Takes a War compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
1
Developer
Thomas Mackinnon
Publisher
Pantaloon
Release
06 Nov 2025
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