Creator of Holocaust video game says he wants to 'keep Shoah memory alive'

My grandmother and her first husband and his father looked after children from the Kindertransport. https://t.co/O4SXyyiOnj pic.twitter.com/BzN7KzVqaA

— Luc Bernard (@LucBernard) June 21, 2022

“It’s a bit like denying that it ever existed,” the British designer told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency. 

The game allows users to play as members of a Jewish family in Vichy France who are eventually arrested as part of the 1942 Vel’ d’Hiv roundup and deported to the Pithiviers transit camp.

Via this camp, the site of a former train station, deported 6,800 people to Auschwitz.

The French-born developer said the game was similar to an interactive film in which players can make choices but cannot control the overarching storyline, which in this case is the family’s tragic fate.

“I couldn’t make a game where you win at the end. That wasn’t the Shoah, there was no choice,” he stressed.

He interviewed Holocaust survivors and consulted the archives of Holocaust museums in both Washington DC and Los Angeles ahead of the game's release. 

Un créateur de jeux vidéo veut enseigner la #Shoah aux gamers à travers un jeu vidéo, "The Light in the Darkness", où le joueur incarne une famille juive vivant sous le régime de #Vichy pic.twitter.com/XqsbmO5WTZ

— FRANCE 24 Français (@France24_fr) February 28, 2023

He said the project first began 15 years ago but was put on hold as the idea was criticised for being “disgusting” and “creepy.”

Mr Bernard said it was his goal “to get more developers interested to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.”

The game is on display at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture and can be purchased for free on Epic Games.