Preview | Svoboda 1945: Liberation |

LifeisXbox’s Svoboda 1945: Liberation preview | This title by Charles Games is probably the biggest surprise to me when looking at all the games participating in LudoNarraCon. Svobody 1945: Liberation takes place in a small village in the Czech borderlands. Locals witnessed the horrors of WW2 only to face the horrible events that came after. You arrive and your job is to decide what to do with the local school: tore it down or make it into a historical landmark? But there is more than meets the eye: the scars of the past still run deep in the village and somehow, your grandfather played a part in this little village’s history.

Interesting take on games

Svoboda 1945: Liberation is unlike any other game I’ve ever played, that’s for sure. I was on the fence about this title, but once I started playing the demo, I was both interested in the story and intrigued by how the game works. Svobody 1945: Liberation uses a mix of interactive video fragments, video footage, and comics illustrating certain events. The demo is quite short, but already shows all of these features, and it all blends together beautifully. You engage in multiple-choice dialogues where your answers and questions matter, and you learn more about the history of this little town. On the Steam page, it says ‘Delve into a captivating story about the liberation from Nazism, the expulsion of Germans, Communist collectivization and moral dilemmas amidst the rebuilding of the Czechoslovak Republic’. I have only seen the tip of the iceberg in the demo, but this all sure sounds promising and very interesting.

Emotional and educational

Back at university, I first learned about serious games and how these types of games can help educate children in a more fun and interactive way. Ever since then, I’ve been a fan of the idea, and Svoboda 1945: Liberation seems like a perfect example of a serious game. It teaches you about the history of the Czech Republic, and the raw and emotional videos make the experience feel so real. Even though I’m personally not familiar with the history of this country at all, I still found myself feeling for these people and I absolutely loved listening to what they had to say. The characters and stories in Svoboda 1945: Liberation are fictional but knowing they are based on archived testimonies and real historical events really fascinated me.

This title is definitely one of the biggest surprises for me. This is also one of those games that didn’t really catch my attention when looking at the Steam page or the screenshots. But the minute I started playing it, I was hooked and wanted to know more. Not only about why the main character’s grandfather was involved, but also to learn about the history of Svoboda

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Svoboda 1945: Liberation is set to release in August and I am very much looking forward to this release. I love that Charles Games has taken the time to create a game like this, and I hope many more like this will follow all around the world. Educating people about the past is very important, and I feel like these developers truly understand that.