Svoboda 1945: Liberation

Publisher: Charles Games · Creator: Vít Šisler, Lukáš Kolek

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Anecdote

A spiritual sequel to Attentat 1942, published in June 2021 by Charles Games with the same academic partnership between Charles University in Prague and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Svoboda 1945 transposes the documentary narrative grammar into the village of Svoboda nad Úpou in northern Bohemia, in the weeks following the liberation of May 1945. The player embodies a contemporary historian commissioned by the Ministry of Education to investigate a ruined school building, whose history gradually reveals the tragedies of the Sudeten German minority expelled from Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1945. Director Vít Šisler and his team gathered more than twenty-five hours of authentic interviews with surviving witnesses, expelled Sudeten Germans and repatriated Czechs. The game blends interactive dialogue with rotoscoped animated characters, narrative mini-games and nearly two hours of documentary video sequences featuring the actual interviewees. A playthrough lasts between four and six hours. The script addresses subjects long left unspoken in Central Europe: the forced population transfers decided by the Potsdam agreements, the violence committed against German civilians in reprisal for the occupation, and the forced coexistence of antagonistic memories. The art direction in washes and autumnal tones evokes the landscapes of the Krkonoše mountains. The soundtrack by composer Jakub Kudláč is enriched this time with traditional Sudeten songs collected by ethnomusicologist Eva Veselovská. The title has been distributed in Czech and German schools as part of a joint historical reconciliation programme. It extends with rigour the civic mission of Charles Games and confirms the maturity of the documentary memorial game genre.

Popularity & reception

Awards — Czech Game of the Year – Best Educational Game (2021) · Games for Change – Best Learning Game nominated (2022) · A MAZE. Award nominated (2022)

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