Serious games for interactive stories about emotionally challenging heritage

Serious games are digital games that are intended to teach or train the players, to give them new knowledge or change their beliefs and attitudes about something. As a new form of media, serious games might also be applied to a wider range of purposes, including cultural heritage. However, difficulties include the need to be faithful to historical facts, while giving the player freedom; and the need to deal with subject matter that is sometimes offensive, or repulsive or even horrific. We designed and made a serious game for the emotionally challenging subject of the Holocaust, specifically with refugees escaping Nazi persecution across Europe. The game relates the story of a Holocaust survivor, who was a young girl at the time, as she fled with her Jewish family from the Nazi invasion of Poland. There are mini-game elements that illustrate particular episodes of the story and make the game more interactive and varied. For special authenticity, the narrator speaks with the voice of the main character, now that she is an elderly woman. We describe the design of the game, and evaluate it as a serious game for the digital heritage of difficult subject matter.