“It’s a bit like denying that it ever existed,” the British designer told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.
The game allows users to play as members of a Jewish family in Vichy France who are eventually arrested as part of the 1942 Vel’ d’Hiv roundup and deported to the Pithiviers transit camp.
Via this camp, the site of a former train station, deported 6,800 people to Auschwitz.
The French-born developer said the game was similar to an interactive film in which players can make choices but cannot control the overarching storyline, which in this case is the family’s tragic fate.
“I couldn’t make a game where you win at the end. That wasn’t the Shoah, there was no choice,” he stressed.
He interviewed Holocaust survivors and consulted the archives of Holocaust museums in both Washington DC and Los Angeles ahead of the game's release.
He said the project first began 15 years ago but was put on hold as the idea was criticised for being “disgusting” and “creepy.”
Mr Bernard said it was his goal “to get more developers interested to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.”
The game is on display at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture and can be purchased for free on Epic Games.
