













Game Details Developer: Numinous Games

Publisher: Numinous Games

Platform: PC, Mac, Ouya

Release Date: January 12, 2016

Price: $15

Links: Official Site Numinous Games: Numinous Games: PC, Mac, OuyaJanuary 12, 2016: $15

Death happens a lot in video games, but how often do games stop to reflect upon it, or upon grief? Most games cloak death in hit points, energy bars, and infinite respawns—death is reduced to a gameplay mechanic, a thing that can, with skill, be avoided or defeated. Even when games permanently remove warriors from a quest's adventuring party or force troubled virtual soldiers to question their motivations and press "X" to pay respects, death is not an end. So long as we hold a controller, the bodies are buried, the emotions are overcome, and the battle rages on.

That Dragon, Cancer is the form's rare exception: a game that follows a family's suffering through cancer therapy for their year-old son. The game dares to attach grief and tragedy to its core interactivity, and as such, it has grabbed a lot of pre-release attention. While it's not new for indie and experimental games to take on ambitious, emotional concepts and existential crises, never has one come along that has been so frank, so nakedly autobiographical, and so imbued with its creators' spiritual identities.

The game is difficult, but not because of hard-to-solve puzzles or combat. Its most touching moments made me pause to reflect, to collect myself, and, quite frankly, to sob uncontrollably. But this is a video game, not a book or film or TV series, and that means That Dragon, Cancer is difficult for reasons beyond empathy and triggered memories. Video games have the unique power to put players in control of a narrative and then steal that control away, and That Dragon, Cancer employs that power to incredible emotional effect—after all, what can render a parent as powerless as facing an unkillable cancer in your infant child?

But the game also addresses concepts like faith and spirituality, all while blurring the line between players and the real-life narrator. Some games use audio or visual cues to tell you how to get through puzzles or battles, but That Dragon, Cancer uses them to tell players how to get through grief. The result is the most morally vocal video game you may ever play—but while I had hoped that such a take would make this a powerful, challenging way to explore the concept of loss, I found myself ultimately disappointed in that aspect of an otherwise unforgettable tribute.

Drowning in a river

Over a series of 14 chapters, each lasting five to 10 minutes, That Dragon, Cancer tells the mostly true-to-life story of parents Ryan and Amy Green and their toddler son Joel. Mother, father, and baby are rendered in an abstract, angular manner, like low-poly 3D models from a late '80s computer project were smothered in a rainbow of watercolor and paper-grain effects. Care has been taken to remove overwrought animation or detail. There are no eyes, lips, or other potential uncanny-valley weirdness. Instead, characters move subtly—particularly Joel, who claps, points, and waves in very sweet ways.

The chapters are mostly controlled by pointing with a mouse or joystick to turn the game's camera and select elements to interact with. This will trigger simple things depending on context, like stepping in a direction, pushing Joel down a slide, or opening a greeting card. A few sequences play out like familiar video games, but they don't require platformer proficiency to complete. Those game-like portions also don't hinge on success or failure—which makes sense in this game's case, since it's never the player's fault if something bad happens to Joel.

These chapters are marginally interactive stretches of story within beautiful, often abstract environments, ranging from drab hospital rooms to towering cathedrals. Most of the chapters include narration by the real-life Mr. and Mrs. Green, who, to their credit, rarely sound melodramatic as they essentially relive the horrors of their child's cancer experience. The game has few traditional, scripted scenes where characters exchange dialogue or uncover major plot points; rather, the Green family's spoken passages usually play out in informal fashion—for example, conversations between parents and children, voicemails that recall Joel's treatment progress, or interior monologues about the ordeal of caring for a dying child.

These narrative bits are tucked into the clickable environments, and they all have wildly different interactive premises. In one, you can click to activate Joel's play in a playground; in another, you can flip through dozens upon dozens of greeting cards to read statements about grief; in yet another, you click to fly across a river that father Ryan is literally and/or figuratively drowning in.

As the game's co-writers, Ryan and Amy Green focus squarely on their own experiences—with the exception of letters, cards, and other passages of text within the game, written by outside, often unnamed contributors who suffered similar losses. Some of the moments do not resonate, particularly the happy-sounding recorded conversations between the parents and their older sons that have little to do with Joel. Thankfully, most of the game's big moments strike the all-important balance between intimate specificity and universal empathy, like when players helplessly click around a hospital room in hopes of finding a way to help a screaming, vomiting Joel fall asleep.

A parent’s love for a child

The game does not shy away from death—from fear, anguish, sadness, and a range of sobs and shouts from both the parents and their son Joel. You may assume no content in a video game could feel more intense than that, but TDC finds a way—by focusing hugely on the Green family's Christian faith.

One gameplay-like sequence includes the parents explaining to their older children that God is a warrior who stands beside people who suffer from cancer—the titular dragon—and battles it on their behalf. A few of the chapters are dominated with lengthy letters written and narrated by Amy that assert her faith in God's power and presence. "My doubt is insignificant compared to God's faithfulness," Amy writes in one. Her many letters describe a lot of emotional questions, but she does not explore her faith nearly as intensely or intimately—there's no digging about growing up with faith, or developing faith as a mother of multiple children, or whether taking care of Joel specifically shaped her understanding of the Christian faith.

In that respect, Ryan stands by his wife and cowriter's side, recalling New Testament stories about faith in Jesus; the closest he gets to questioning his spiritual path is in asking whether "Jesus will weep" for Joel as he did Lazarus. The game's pronouncements of faith punctuate many of Ryan and Amy's most emotional moments, and they are spoken and written as bulletproof tenets, meaning they come with an expectation of players sharing or at least accepting those values, as opposed to the game offering more stories, interactive sequences, or relatable context for Ryan and Amy's trials or ordeals as Christians.

Conversely, the game allows players to interact with and relate to the family's love for Joel—the nurturing, laugh-filled moments that universally bond parents with children. Unless you're a sociopath, you don't need such reminders to appreciate why a parent would love a child, but TDC players still get to push Joel down a slide, help him play with an emotionally charged See 'n Say talking toy, and comfort him during the terrifying ordeal of getting an MRI scan.

After completing the game and reflecting on what had transpired, I found myself wishing for similar intimacy or interactivity regarding the family's faith. In TDC, the Greens present the Christian God's word as seemingly untouchable and force us as half-player, half-narrator participants to follow the family's spiritual path. We don't get to absorb the faith-heavy process the same way as in a movie or a book—as bystanders who can watch and judge from our own perspectives. Players cannot merely click to align their values with the Greens.

At its best, the game forces us to let go of Joel—either this Joel, who feels so alive in the game by way of so many beautiful moments, or another form of Joel in our own lives—without any guidance, other than to check our own compass next to the family's own stories of happiness, pain, and confusion that we may relate to. That's the emotional heart of That Dragon, Cancer that I will remember most vividly: the moments when the family's words and the game's immaculately rendered scenes fit together in ways that are less about logic and rationality and more about emotion and survival.