That Dragon, Cancer Review

This review is written based entirely on the PC version of That Dragon, Cancer, and contains minor spoilers concerning the content of the game.

Developed By: Numinous Games

Release Date: January 12th, 2015

Platforms: Ouya, PC (Reviewed), Mac

Price: $14.99

Throughout it’s two to three hour run time, That Dragon, Cancer feels like an abstraction of reality. In large part, this is a result of the game’s art style, which distorts the facial features of the human characters. Equally important are the sequences of blatant surrealism that are peppered throughout the game. There’s one scene where it turns into a kart racer, another in which it’s an arcade style platformer. These function as brief respites from the core gameplay, which consists largely of walking, jumping, or towards the end, flying through different areas, the perspective constantly changing.

Above all, That Dragon, Cancer is exceptionally powerful. I could go on about the game’s style (which I will, later); but that isn’t what this game is about. It’s a brief journey through the lives of parents with a child, Joel, stricken with cancer. As the game unfolds, the player follows the two parents through their experience coping with Joel’s illness. As the developers themselves say, there are good days and there are bad days – the player gets to experience both.

We get to see Joel in his happiest moments, and these were perhaps the most effective. Seeing not only Joel, but those around him, in moments of pure elation is truly touching. They contrast with the majority of the game, but that only makes them seem more special when they come around. These moments also make the “bad days” an even worse – almost uncomfortable – experience. Despite not being a parent, and not planning on being one anytime soon, I felt that I could relate to the despair of Ryan and Amy (the parents) were feeling. It’s truly storytelling at its finest.

In a vacuum, all off this would have left an impact. But knowing that That Dragon, Cancer is semi-autobiographical only amplifies that impact. And, even if were to go in without that knowledge, I get the feeling that it would become clear fairly on. The story being told here is so personal, the voice performances so riveting, that thinking for a second that this wasn’t autobiographical would seem preposterous. It has a sense of authenticity to it, that despite some of the more surreal moments, makes the game feel less like fiction.

In a lot of ways, though, That Dragon, Cancer morphs from a personal story into a more general one – a story of dealing with loved ones battling cancer. There’s one sequence in particular in which this is brought to the forefront, and it almost became too much for me to process, to the point where I had to step away from the game for a few minutes. In this particular section, I almost didn’t go out of my way to find everything possible, simply because of how heavy it got. Fortunately, there are fairly vast swaths of the game that are fairly uplifting, preventing the game from becoming too “gloom and doom.”

The surrealism that this game so brilliantly employs is used mostly as a story telling mechanism. Yes, it’s a great way to show off the art style, which is awesome, but that almost feels secondary. We get to see Joel prancing through an imagined universe, a brief sequence of kart racing, and, in the game’s greatest moment, Joel’s story simultaneously being told as a side-scrolling adventure game and a bed time story.

The last thing I’ll touch on in terms of the game’s story is how it deals with faith and religion. I want to avoid spoiling the game, but one of the characters becomes over enamored with God and miracles leading up to the game’s conclusion. Of course, this is a very believable scenario – desperate times lead to desperate measures, and all that. However, I will say that this is the one moment where the writing falls flat. It feels over-exaggerated and melodramatic. I don’t know how much of this is fictional, but it’s the one part of the game that didn’t feel 100% authentic, at least for me. Others may feel differently about it.

The one other criticism I have is that the “core” of the game can be a little awkward to play. It’s unclear where you can and can’t go, which is denoted only by the appearance and disappearance of a white cursor on the screen. Now, this may be because of my own incompetence, but this lead to a few of the game’s sequences feeling a bit awkward to move around, and added unnecessary minutes to the game as I attempted to figure out what it was I was supposed to be doing. This, however, is a small complaint about what is otherwise a brilliant game.

Everything in That Dragon, Cancer just comes together exceptionally well. The music, the art style, the story, the voice acting, the writing – all of it. The game may be brief, but despite its run time, there’s a lot here to soak in and think about. This isn’t only a result of the story, but also of how the story is told. Games like The Stanley Parable and Gone Home opened the floodgates for the success of first person, story driven “walking simulators” (a term I use begrudgingly). And while That Dragon, Cancer doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel, it does breathe what feels like fresh life into a genre that threatened to strangle itself through its own stagnation and lack of originality.