Talking about the loss of a loved one is difficult, especially when first introducing someone to the tragedy. You might be tempted to just tell the story and that’s that – who cares if they don’t understand? What is even more of a triumph is being able to not only demonstrate what that loss looks like but also what it feels like. That Dragon, Cancer is extremely straightforward, but it uses the medium of video games to make the player feel for the loss of someone to cancer. More specifically, it takes you into the mind of both a child and its parents as they struggle with the acceptance and loss of a loved one to something completely out of their control.
Written by Ryan and Amy Greene, the game is a narrative experience that takes you from happy days at the park to depression in a hospital room. Taking place generally from the perspective of Ryan Greene and occasionally his son, Joel Greene, the story focuses on Joel’s fight with cancer as his parents Ryan and Amy struggle in their own unique ways with what is happening. The story takes you to a couple different areas, but all of them have a lingering sadness behind them as the game injects personal, troubling conversations into the mix accompanied by a sorrowful score. It is a sad story, and one that will likely have some people stop playing because of how relatable it may feel, but what it offers for putting someone in that position is beneficial to empathy games such as this one.
Ryan gets way more focus as a character than Amy, with Amy often just relegated to voicemail messages left on Ryan’s cellphone. She is always at a distance in the game, which fits suitably with how distanced Ryan’s reactions are from Amy’s. The two are at odds for the duration of the game as Amy maintains hope for Joel to get better, believing that God will help them, while Ryan struggles to understand how she can have hope and believe that anyone is going to be able to help. This type of character dynamic is nothing new, but the game places the player in the shoes of the atheist/agnostic character which is the wiser decision since it is more of a blank slate. He also has the only real character arc in the game’s story. Amy is a support who very briefly gets to waver in strength, but it is all too brief of a sequence.
A lot of the moments when character development happens is very obvious in what it is doing. Subtlety is lacking in any moment of the game because it is trying really hard to let you know how it feels like to be a parent of a child with cancer. Sometimes these moments are still powerful, but other times it becomes tough because you know what it wants you to feel. The voicemail is one such instance that constantly reminds you that you should be sad right now. There’s never any comfort in those phone calls, but by only having those voicemails present, the game makes those calls seem contrived in intention.
Those moments are few and far between, though. Voicemail is constant, but the scenes which are heavy-handed yet powerful are also just as persistent. I found myself in a room filling with water as I jumped from perspective to perspective, dealing with each character’s emotions during a specific moment in Joel’s chemotherapy. It’s powerful, but also extremely interesting. It is the only time you get the perspective of tertiary characters, but it’s also when you have the most fleshed out character moment for Amy – someone who is often relegated to the role of support character in Ryan’s struggle with acceptance of Joel’s death.
This is only one of the few instances where the game is more than just a straight line through the story. That specific scene allows for players to go back in time and hear other character’s perspectives during specific parts of the scene. Another two components actually involve some minor gameplay. Those three moments are extremely powerful, but are also the only three moments that stick out in the roughly 100-minute experience. Everything else is a constant that is always moving forward. Depression is seeped deep within this game, making it hard not to come out of it having felt something.
The most important thing to take from That Dragon, Cancer is that it is not a story about their son having cancer. If anything, it’s a story about a father struggling with cancer. And that father co-wrote the game, so who better to tell the story? It does a great job at making you feel for the father’s plight, but That Dragon, Cancer could used more fleshing out of the character. Its use of gameplay elements are sparing and enjoyable, but add to the feeling of heavy-handedness that never relents throughout the duration of the game. If you want to know what it feels like to be a father with a son dying of cancer, this is a powerful game that will move you and will probably make you sad that someone ever has to go through such a terrible tragedy. As a piece of interactive storytelling, though, it lacks subtlety and depth beyond its father character.
A PC copy of That Dragon, Cancer was provided by Numinous Games for the purpose of this review