The Light in the Darkness review – a sobering free educational game that confronts the Holocaust

Voices of the Forgotten; Arcade Distillery; Windows/PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox
Combining cartoon graphics and documentary evidence, this first-person adventure telling the story of a Jewish family in Nazi-occupied Paris delivers a vital historical message

Countless video games depict the second world war. Most guide players towards the battlefield, with its widescreen explosions and opportunities for sharpshooting heroics. Few head for the death camps. The video game medium is perhaps seen as too playful, too flippant, too lowbrow to approach the 20th century's looming vortex of atrocity.

The Light in the Darkness, a new game available for free as an educational tool, follows a an emigre Polish Jewish family - a husband and wife and their son - living in France during the Nazi occupation. It does not make it as far as the gas chambers; the camera pulls away at the point at which the characters board the train. But there is no doubt as to where the tracks lead.