Grief like a stray dog

The year is 1944. You are Nadia, a 13 year old girl whose mother is sick. Your mother is a postwoman in a small rural community not far from the fighting in WWII. You end up having to take her place, having to know the terror and grief of being the messenger who often has to deliver the worst possible news. The toll it takes on her to do this work, and to keep her own family from falling to despair, is almost too excessive to bear. The thing is, very little of this game is a work of fiction - Nadia's character is based on the developers' grandmother's own experiences as a young postwoman on the outskirts of Rzhev, and the characters in the story are direct experiences from people who were around during that period, all who had their own brush with a funeral notice. The artwork is sparse but beautifully done, every marking made deliberately with a skilled hand. The credits end with the developer's grandmother tearfully recollecting her own experience with the war, how only one of the teens deployed returned home without a leg. I went into this game blind, expecting something else, and the gravity of the discussion being held slapped the taste out of my mouth. How lucky I am, to have something so important in my life to challenge me in this manner!