Stories from the History of Czechoslovakia: A Serious Game for Teaching History of the Czech Lands in the 20th Century

The project Stories from the History of Czechoslovakia aims to develop a serious game designed to teach high-school students about the political, social, and cultural history of the Czech lands between 1938 and 1989. By utilizing a single-player, dialogue-based adventure format, the game seeks to move beyond rote memorization, instead encouraging students to analyze historical events through the diverse perspectives of various population segments. The narrative is constructed from authentic personal testimonies provided by eyewitnesses, which are integrated into interactive comics, animations, and mini-games to create a multifaceted learning experience.

The development process involved a multidisciplinary team of historians, educators, and game designers. To manage the complexity of this collaboration, the team implemented a rigid formal structure based on a two-level hierarchical finite state machine. This framework allowed for a unified design language and enabled the creation of an authoring tool, StoryBuilder, which facilitated the separation of game content from the engine. This approach ensured that historians could directly contribute to the narrative while maintaining historical accuracy and avoiding the over-simplification of sensitive, ethically charged testimonies.

A feasibility study conducted with 71 high-school students assessed the game’s potential reception. Findings indicate that while students are generally skeptical of digital games in formal education, they are receptive to the adventure genre and value content grounded in real-world history. The data suggest that high-fidelity 3D graphics are not strictly necessary for engagement, as students responded positively to the proposed comic and video-based aesthetic. The study concludes that the game should function as a supplementary tool, with its success heavily dependent on teacher-led debriefing and classroom discussion to contextualize the historical content effectively.