That Dragon, Cancer Download PC

Developer: Numinous Games

Release date: 2016

Platform: Windows (PC)

Genre: Adventure

Version: 1.0

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Download That Dragon, Cancer Free for PC Torrent

That Dragon, Cancer is a video game created by Ryan and Amy Green, Josh Larson, and a small team under the name Numinous Games. The autobiographical game is based on the Greens' experience of raising their son Joel, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer at twelve months old, and though only given a short time to live, continued to survive for four more years before eventually succumbing to the cancer in March 2014. The game is designed to have the player experience the low and high moments of this period in the style of a point-and-click adventure game, using the medium's interactivity and immersion to relate the tale in ways that a film cannot. It was initially developed to relate Ryan and Amy's personal experience with Joel when they were uncertain of his health, but following his death, they reworked much of the game to memorialize and personalize their time and interactions with Joel for the player. Alongside the game, a documentary, Thank You for Playing, documenting both the last few years of Joel's life and the development of the game, was aired in 2016.

That Dragon, Cancer was initially aimed for release as a time-limited exclusive for the Ouya, whose makers helped to fund the game's development. With expanded funding and a larger scope to the game, the developers engaged in a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, in association with Ouya, to secure additional funds to complete the game and assuring simultaneous release on other platforms including Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. The game was released on January 12, 2016 for these systems, on what would have been Joel's seventh birthday. An iOS version was released in October 2016. The game was praised for being a raw autobiographical experience from the parents' view, making the player deal with the difficult emotions and the strength of the Greens' faith.

Background

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That Dragon, Cancer bore out from experiences that Ryan and Amy Green had after their third child Joel was diagnosed with an atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor at twelve months of age, around November 2010. The doctors had only given the child about four months to live, but despite developing seven additional tumors, Joel continued to live for four more years. Joel's condition left him mentally underdeveloped, being unable to speak even by age 2, and he required additional parental care and supervision, alongside numerous visits to doctors and hospitals for palliative care and chemotherapy treatment. In early 2014, Joel's condition worsened, and the Greens temporarily moved from Colorado to San Francisco to take part in an experimental drug trial. The new drug failed to relieve any of the new symptoms. Ryan and Amy, following the advice of the hospice, decided to take him off his feeding tube, and he died on March 13, 2014 at the age of five.

Gameplay

That Dragon, Cancer is played as an exploration game from both third- and first-person perspective through a number of abstracted scenes based on the Greens' experience with raising Joel from learning of his condition through his death. The player takes the role of Joel's parents, Ryan and Amy, in fourteen small vignettes that capture some of the emotional moments they had to face during Joel's life expressed as interactive art. The player is able to interact with the characters and make certain choices, similar to those that the Greens had to face. For example, the first scene is where the parents have learned of their child's diagnosis, having the player consider their new responsibilities for caring for the child while reflecting on the "absurdity and sterility" of the hospital setting. The game includes some fantasizing and imaginative reconstructions of some of the real moments the Greens experienced, such as a wagon ride in a hospital being envisioned as a colorful racing game. Alongside the interactivity, the game includes narration from both Ryan, Amy, and other family members, as well as recordings such as voicemails that they had made during their time with Joel. Among the scenes include cards, letters, and other mementos of support for the Greens, sent in by people that had experienced similar losses in their life.

Reception

That Dragon, Cancer was highly praised by reviewers on its release, with many favorably commenting on the overwhelming emotional difficulty presented that forces the player to experience and understand what the Greens had gone through with Joel. Sam Machkevoch of Ars Technica noted that while other games have tried to elicit similar emotions from its players, That Dragon, Cancer was unique in its approach for being "so frank, so nakedly autobiographical, and so imbued with its creators' spiritual identities". Cassandra Khaw for Ars Technica believed that while some of the vignettes were not as powerful as others, That Dragon, Cancer made effective use of the video game medium, as by forcing the player to interact instead of remaining an observer, the game "compels us to shoulder some of the creators’ grief and to embrace the legacy of Joel’s short life". Lucy O'Brien for IGN summarized her review of the game as "imperfect, but unforgettable".

In March 2016, Ryan Green, speaking for his team, commented that the game has only sold about 14,000 copies, based on Steam Spy data, and they have yet to recover their development funds for the game. Ryan noted that many Let's Play videos, gathering more than a million views, of That Dragon, Cancer had simply played through the game without commenting on it or providing viewers with links and information about the game, giving viewers no incentive to purchase the title once they had seen it in its entirety. Numinous Games used YouTube's ContentID system to flag and take down some of these videos, leading some players to complain. Ryan admitted this was not the best approach towards addressing the issue. Ryan felt that they would be satisfied if these viewers had left small tips on Numinous Games' website in lieu of purchasing the game, so that Numinous could continue to develop more titles.