Playing History 2 - Slave Trade

I want to believe in what this game is trying to do, and that tension is exactly why it is so hard to write about without flinching. Playing History 2 - Slave Trade is a point-and-click edutainment title aimed at 11-to-14-year-olds, placing the player in the role of a young enslaved boy named Tim aboard an 18th-century slave ship crossing the Atlantic. The premise carries genuine weight. The execution, unfortunately, undermines it almost every step of the way. Mechanically, the game is a simple point-and-click adventure: you talk to characters, collect items, combine them, and push a thin linear story forward. A trust score tracks how you interact with different parties on the ship, and the tension in that system is actually the most interesting idea here. Trying to serve a slave ship captain while quietly protecting your captured sister creates a real moral friction that, in better hands, could have been quietly devastating. Instead, the dialogue choices are too sparse and the fetch quests too routine for the moral weight to fully land. A separate ship-steering segment has you collecting food supplies while avoiding wind blasts. There is also a goggle mechanic that lets you spot hidden objects in scenes, which is a charming enough adventure-game flourish but never deepens into something meaningful. The controversy that followed this game's original release cannot be left unaddressed. A minigame that required players to arrange enslaved people into the hull of a ship like puzzle pieces drew immediate and widespread condemnation. The developer removed it, issuing an apology that most critics found dismissive rather than genuine. Even after that removal, the game left other uncomfortable design choices intact: collectible food icons rendered as cakes and wine, and an African character whose appearance leaned into dated stereotypes rather than historical authenticity. Critics described the overall experience as tone-deaf, and the removal of the controversial segment made an already short game feel more incoherent, not more respectful. What remains after the dust settles is a game completable in roughly an hour, with no keyboard shortcuts, a fixed resolution, and a comic-book visual style that keeps everything at arm's length from the gravity of the subject matter. Voice acting is inconsistently present depending on your install. The Playing History series won BETT awards for best learning game in Europe, and I can see the scaffolding of that ambition here. The idea of letting young players feel the impossible position of someone caught between a captor's demands and loyalty to a sibling is genuinely thoughtful. But thoughtful ideas require thoughtful craft at every layer, and this game simply does not have enough of either the runtime or the design maturity to carry through on them. If you are a teacher looking for a classroom conversation starter about the Middle Passage, there are richer, more carefully constructed resources available. If you are a general player drawn here by curiosity or the game's notoriety, the hour you spend will likely leave you unsatisfied rather than moved. The subject deserves better, and so do the young players it was made for.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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