That Dragon, Cancer

It seems that the gaming industry has recently opened its doors to that theme, one that for centuries has been a hard topic to discuss in other art forms. Thanks to a focus on narrative, something that has increasingly influenced the medium for the last decade - allowing developers to explore concepts that may have been considered taboo before now - in recent years video games have finally managed to discuss a theme as complex and painful as death.

But if until now this subject, and the consequent pain, was explored in games through exceptional events such as civil conflict or world wars (whether fictitious or real, as happened in recent games such as Ubisoft Montpellier's Valiant Hearts: The Great War or 11 bit Studios' This War of Mine), the issue has become more complex when the pain and the harrowing journey of mourning that follows after have started to touch a world altogether more private, the so called "everyday life". And that's what That Dragon, Cancer - a new point-and-click game developed by Numinous Games, available from tomorrow on PC and Steam - is gently trying to do.

That Dragon, Cancer tells the dramatic ordeal experienced by Ryan Green (one of the developers of the game) and his wife Amy, who, in a few months, witnessed the slow and agonising journey towards death of their five-year-old son, Joel. Initially developed as a project to keep alive the memories of the most intense and exciting times spent with their child, That Dragon, Cancer has gradually become a sort of therapy, a minimalist graphic adventure - with some Cubism influences - which traces the stages of the grief that gnaws away at the soul and that's common to many families. Normalise the pain, make it part of our daily lives: this is the noble aim of this small and profound work by Numinous Games.

The sense of shared grief, which is one of the key elements in the game, also depends on the choice to not characterise the protagonists, as if to suggest that no matter who this drama revolves around, the pain and suffering experienced by a family watching their child slowly die is the same for many others. What matters in That Dragon, Cancer is indeed the path, the stages of a long exhausting journey, which along the way includes not only touching memories, but also deeply dramatic moments, which, however, are told with great elegance.

The experience comes to life through the simple and classic point-and-click adventure structure, with a couple of short but incisive platform sections, all meant to offer a break to the player, a pause from the sweltering swirl of emotions which we're forced to face. As we said, we particularly appreciated the artistic style of the game, where the colours and forms - together with a sophisticated soundtrack, composed by Jon Hillman - perfectly recreates a surreal atmosphere that sits on the edge of a dream, a state usually experienced by anyone who has to live through this sort of extreme emotional pain.

Although there's some minor technical bugs, they haven't affected the emotional power that the game offers. That Dragon, Cancer is a game to be handled with care, to experience through every single moving piece of dialogue, where often we're left feeling like we've taken a punch to the stomach. However, what we appreciated the most is the elegance, in form and content, with which That Dragon, Cancer explores this difficult theme, this "private grief", and it does so without taking advantage of easy emotional manipulation. The beauty and the drama in this wonderful work is depicted in the way they reflect on the black and white, the light and shadow, the hope and agony of those who try to resist the pain and be strong day after day.

And if the result is to offer a culturally relevant and important title that offers reflection on a theme as deep as humanity contemplating death, but at the same time providing moral support to the many families forced to live through similar dramas, That Dragon, Cancer is revealed as a beacon of light in the darkness, which once again confirms the great potential, especially from an emotional point of view, inherent in video games.