That Dragon, Cancer isn’t what most people would consider a good game. For the duration of its brief two-hour running time, it’s not enjoyable in the slightest. That Dragon, Cancer is a profoundly uncomfortable experience, yet it keeps the player engaged throughout, exhausted and yet unable to look away.
Released on Jan. 12, the game represents several years of work by Ryan Green, Amy Green, and Josh Larson to tell the story of Joel Green, who died of cancer at the age of five in 2014. It’s a story that anyone who’s been affected by illness can relate to.
The narrative is just as much about the horrible nature of cancer as it is a story about hope and faith. There’s a strong focus on how Ryan and Amy Green—both Christians—struggle with God in their time of crisis. There are also some intensely personal moments between the two regarding their different experiences. It is this very personal nature that makes That Dragon, Cancer so captivating and relatable. There are so many small moments which had this writer tearing up that it’s hard to offer an objective review. The game doesn’t hold back when it comes to emotional moments, and the sense of hopelessness conveyed is emphasized by the beauty of the game’s aesthetic.
That Dragon, Cancer has a very simple design. Characters are polygonal and simply designed, lacking even faces, but they’re very well animated. Environments range from dark blue hospital rooms to bright and colourful forests.
The really impactful moments come from the blending of these styles, where a vibrant, dreamy setting will have cancerous growths in the periphery or the hopeless dark void will have a flashing arcade cabinet. Aesthetic decisions like these exemplify the mixed nature of a life living with sickness and the developers should be commended for their mature handling of the subject matter.
Some might say any criticism of That Dragon, Cancer is invalid, that to criticise the work is to criticise the very real trauma from which it was conceived. That’s a question this reviewer doesn’t feel needs addressing because That Dragon, Cancer is exactly the game it should be.
Grappling with immense ethical dilemmas in an extremely personal sense, it ultimately succeeds as a celebration of Joel Green’s short life. His parents should be proud to have taken such a painful ordeal and turned it into something so sincerely meaningful.
