The Light in the Darkness: Director's Cut

The Light in the Darkness: Director’s Cut is a free narrative game following a Polish-Jewish family living in Nazi-occupied France. Rather than placing the player on a battlefield or offering a fantasy of changing history, the game stays with ordinary people as state policy, persecution, and deportation dismantle their lives.

A Deeper Understanding

The Light in the Darkness follows a Polish-Jewish family who made France their home, only to watch that home turn against them. Their experience is personal and intimate, but it opens onto a deeper understanding of the Second World War in France: the defeat of 1940, the German occupation, the collaboration of the Vichy regime, and the round-ups that sent French Jews to their deaths.

The game also looks further back. France entered the Second World War still carrying the wounds of the First. A generation of young men had been killed or maimed, leaving behind widows, orphans, and veterans who never fully came home.

Why a Game About the Holocaust?

Video games are an art form as powerful as film and literature, and we believe they carry the same responsibility to tell the stories that matter most. For a generation that grew up with games, an interactive experience can make history personal in a way a textbook cannot. Players don’t just learn what happened; they live alongside the people it happened to.

Why Is It Free?

The Light in the Darkness: Director’s Cut was made possible with funding from the Claims Conference and Meta. Because of their support, we can release it for free. Holocaust memory should never sit behind a paywall, and we want this experience to reach everyone who might never pick up a history book.

A Living Historical World

The world of The Light in the Darkness is built to be historically accurate. Real documents, real dates, and real locations are woven throughout the game, so players can follow events as they actually unfolded and see how quickly everything changed.

That attention to history extends to the culture of the era. The game includes Le Roman de Renard (The Tale of the Fox), Ladislas Starevich’s classic French stop-motion film, available to watch in full. As the eighth animated feature film ever made, it’s a remarkable piece of film history in its own right. It also plays an important role in the story, but to say how would be to spoil it.

Auschwitz

The story of The Light in the Darkness follows a family through the Holocaust, and for so many Jewish families, that story ended at Auschwitz. Leaving it out would mean stopping short of the truth and sparing players the very thing the game exists to confront. Including it was never a question of shock value. Without it, the story would be incomplete and dishonest about where the Holocaust led.

We believe video games are a serious art medium, as capable as film or literature of tackling the darkest chapters of human history. Games have the power to put people inside history rather than in front of it, and that makes them uniquely suited to preserving memory. Taking on Auschwitz is our commitment to treating this medium, and this history, with the seriousness both deserve.

Cast

Every character in The Light in the Darkness is brought to life by a full voice cast, making the family’s experience immediate and human.

Alanna Ubach as Samuel and Marie
Ubach is best known for voicing Mamá Imelda in the Oscar-winning Coco and playing Suze in Euphoria. Her films include the Legally Blonde films and Meet the Fockers, and Bombshell, which earned her a SAG Award nomination.

Paul Roffman as Moses
Roffman starred in and produced America’s Favorite.

Melissa Weisz as Bluma
Weisz is known for playing Chaya in Netflix’s Unorthodox and Golde in Little America.

Ido Samuel as Jakob
Samuel is known for his roles in We Were the Lucky Ones, FBI: International, Tehran, and the award-winning short Dirty Bomb.

Built for Steam Deck and Steam Machine

The Light in the Darkness: Director’s Cut has been optimized to run smoothly on both Steam Deck and Steam Machine. On Steam Deck, the game is tuned for handheld play, with performance, controls, and text sizes adjusted so the experience holds up on the smaller screen. On Steam Machine, it takes advantage of the extra power to deliver the game on the big screen, so you can experience the story from your couch.

Whether you play in your hands or on your TV, the Director’s Cut is designed to feel at home on Valve’s hardware.

Content Note

This game depicts the persecution and murder of Jews during the Holocaust, including scenes set in a concentration and extermination camp. It is intended for mature audiences and is best experienced with time to reflect afterward.