Mar 20, 2025

Preview: The Darkest Files – Bringing Former Nazis to Justice

Rahul Shirke

The Darkest Files Hub

Preview: The Darkest Files – Bringing Former Nazis to Justice
Walkthrough
- Part 1 – The Insurgent
  - A New Job, The Widow
  - The First Suspect (Kiebitz)
  - (More parts are in progress!)

The Darkest Files is set in 1956, when Germany was a country divided in two, still wracked by the consequences of its actions in the second World War. Even if Nazi Germany had been defeated, the many, many people who worked under the Nazi regime or collaborated with it, remained in positions of power and prestige. It seemed that the nation wanted to bury its past and move on in silence.

Not everyone was willing to take to task those who committed crimes with impunity during the Third Reich. However, a special unit coalesced under prosecutor Fritz Bauer and sought to bring justice to silenced cases.

In The Darkest Files, you take control of a fictional young prosecutor named Esther Katz, who has recently joined this real-life special unit, and will have to investigate and prosecute two sprawling criminal cases.

The Darkest Files is an adventure game at heart and its thrust is figuring out what happened in Nazi-era cases, taking interviews, piecing together who’s telling the truth and who isn’t, and arguing your case in court. If all of this sounds daunting, then add to that the threat of being ostracized and threatened for doing your job.

It’s no understatement to say that The Darkest Files is steeped in real history. Among its real elements is Fritz Bauer himself, who is presented as an important character and mentor in the game, guiding Esther through difficult turns and bolstering her confidence against the odds. Even the cases that Esther deals with are based on true crimes, although the details and names have been changed for privacy.

Apart from following Esther’s dangerous professional life, the game will also explore her relationships with family and colleagues, and delve into her past and her identity.

Along with her, you will learn about life under Nazi rule, sift the truth out of a web of falsehoods, and your skills will mark the difference between perpetrators being brought to justice – or walking free of consequences for their crimes. Bringing together testimonies, interviews, documents, photographs, and other evidence, you’ll have to build an airtight case to bring down the men who got away with dark deeds.

German developer Paintbucket Games is no stranger to dealing with topics relating to authoritarianism and its dark implications. Their debut game Through the Darkest of Times was released in 2020, and set in Nazi Germany, where you must lead a resistance group in 1933 Berlin.

The developer would then go on to develop Beholder 3, taking over the series from its original developer Warm Lamp Games. Here too, Paintbucket would explore life under a totalitarian regime, shining light on the dark compromises that ordinary people have to negotiate in such an environment.

The Darkest Files will be the developer’s most damning work yet when it comes to exploring complicity with fascism and the real, horrific consequences thereof. At a time when the world seems to be tilting sharply towards fascism, this is an important role for video games to play.

The Darkest Files is scheduled for release on March 25th, 2025. It will be available on Steam for PC and Mac, and there’s a demo out that you can check out to get an idea of how the full game will play.

For more information on the game, check out its official website here, and the developer’s Linktree here.

Thank you for reading this preview of The Darkest Files on Into Indie Games! For more interesting articles on all things indie games, check out the links below!

Rahul Shirke