The developer of a Holocaust-themed game rejected in 2008 by Nintendo has now announced plans to release his work for smartphone users. Luc Bernard, 26, announced his plan on the website ‘Indiegogo’, a platform which helps developers and inventors find funding for their products.
Bernard created a stir in 2008 with his game ‘Imagination is the only escape’ which he had developed for Nintendo and which looked at the events of the Holocaust through the eyes of a child. The gaming giant eventually rejected to market the game because it was deemed unfit for children, according to the ‘New York Times’.
Now Bernard announced that he would raise funds online with a plan to release the game next year, according to a report by the news website ‘The Verge’. Bernard’s mother is Jewish and his grandmother in Britain looked after orphaned Jewish children after World War II, he told the ‘New York Times’.
The game features a young boy named Samuel during the Nazi occupation of France in 1942. When Jews are rounded up for deportation to the Nazi death camps, Samuel spends much of his time in a nearby forest, and retreats into his own mind to shield himself from the reality of what'is happening. In this fantasy world he befriends a talking fox named Renard who takes him on a series of adventures. Much of the game takes place in this fantasy realm, which Bernard believes will heighten the emotional impact of some of the more powerful scenes that take place in the real world. "Every time reality comes back, it sort of just slaps you in the face."
The developer, who grew up in France, told ‘The Verge’ that the game was meant to inspire players to read more on the history of the Holocaust.