''Attentat 1942'' is a Czech

point-and-click Point and click are the actions of a computer user moving a pointer to a certain location on a screen (''pointing'') and then pressing a button on a mouse, usually the left button (''click''), or other pointing device. An example of point and ...

adventure game, in which players take the role of Jindřich Jelínek's grandchild. Jelínek was arrested by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

shortly after the assassination of

Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...

, ruler of the Nazi-occupied Czech lands and the leading architect of

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. The objective of the game is to establish what role he played in the attack, as well as the reason for his arrest. Throughout the investigation, players interview eyewitnesses, discover the family's back story and learn more about life in the

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; cs, Protektorát Čechy a Morava; its territory was called by the Nazis ("the rest of Czechia"). was a partially annexed territory of Nazi Germany established on 16 March 1939 following the German oc ...

Development

The game was developed by Charles University and the

Czech Academy of Sciences The Czech Academy of Sciences (abbr. CAS, cs, Akademie věd České republiky, abbr. AV ČR) was established in 1992 by the Czech National Council as the Czech successor of the former Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and its tradition goes back ...

. It is the first game in the Czechoslovakia 38-89 project, which covers different events from contemporary history. ''Attentat 1942'' is a significantly enhanced version of the game "Československo 38-89: Atentát", which was released in Czech in 2015, adapted and changed for an international audience. Revenues from the game are to be invested into the continuing research and science in their field. The core development team is composed of the lead game designer, Vít Šisler (from the

Faculty of Arts A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate). In American usage such divisions are generally referred to as colleges ...

), the lead programmer, Jakub Gemrot (from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics), art director Richard Alexander, and students from Charles University and historians from the Institute of Contemporary History of the

. The illustrations were created by Peter Novák (Ticho 762), and the music was composed by the band DVA, which also created soundtracks for the games Botanicula and

Chuchel ''Chuchel'' () is a 2018 video game developed by Amanita Design. Story The game follows the protagonist Chuchel, a Dust-style creature, as he tries to retrieve a cherry stolen by a giant one early morning, with his all-in-one best friend, enemy a ...

. The game was released for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

and Mac on Steam on October 31, 2017. Subsequent Linux version was made available in Spring 2020 as well as mobile/tablet versions in summer that year. The game is available in Czech, with English,

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

, and German subtitles.

Release

The game was released on Steam in October 2017. It was available worldwide, except for Germany, where it was banned due to German laws barring games containing Nazi symbols. In May 2018, ''Attentat 1942'' won the "Most Amazing Game" Award at the A MAZE festival in Berlin, although attendees could not play it. In August 2018, the policy of

USK Usk ( cy, Brynbuga) is a town and community in Monmouthshire, Wales, northeast of Newport. It is located on the River Usk, which is spanned by an arched stone bridge at the western entrance to the town. Usk Castle, above the town, overlooks th ...

, the authority providing age ratings for video games, was changed to allow games with Nazi symbolism to receive age ratings, depending on their individual "social adequacy". ''Attentat 1942'' was released in Germany as the first PC game with Nazi symbolism with the USK age rating after the policy change.

Reception

The game holds a 75% rating on

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

based on thirteen generally favorable reviews. Rock, Paper, Shotgun stated: " 'Attentat 1942''captivates from start to finish by humanizing history brilliantly."

Destructoid ''Destructoid'' is a website that was founded as a video game-focused blog in March 2006 by Yanier Gonzalez, a Cuban-American cartoonist and author. Enthusiast Gaming acquired the website in 2017, and sold it to Gamurs Group in 2022. History ...

's review was also positive: "''Attentat 1942'' will be a treasure not only for a fresh perspective on a widely reported period of time but also for the amount of work that you can see the developers put into making sure their story fit within the confines of history."

Awards

* "Most Amazing Game" at A MAZE festival in Germany. * "Best Learning Game" at

Games for Change Games for Change (also known as G4C) is a nonprofit organization. The organization provides support, visibility, and shared resources to individuals and organizations using serious games for social change. It also runs the G4C Student Challenge ...

in the U.S. * "Excellence in Narrative" nomination at

Independent Games Festival The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, ...

in the U.S. * Second place at the Game Development World Championship in Finland * Czech Game of the Year 2017 * "Educational Game" at

The Independent Game Developers' Association The Independent Game Developers' Association (TIGA) is a trade association representing the business and commercial interests of some video and computer game developers in the UK and Europe. History TIGA was launched in 2001 by Patricia Hewit ...

Awards 2018 in the UK{{Cite web, url=http://tiga.org/awards/2018-winners, title=2018 Winners, date=2018-11-01, work=

, access-date=2018-11-02

References

2017 video games Adventure games Educational video games MacOS games Video games developed in the Czech Republic Windows games World War II video games History educational video games Czech resistance to Nazi occupation in video games