I just wanna say , this was an interactive experiance that change my selfish outlook on life .

Be brave to love, when you still get the chance

I am just in awe. This game was so good. I just loved experiencing the events the Greens went through and I'm so glad I was able to feel the same pain they did. Joel was an adorable and special baby boy. His parents loved and cared for him so deeply. This game shows the trials and tests of faith that God put them through. As a Christian, I know it would be hard to trust God in a time like this. Even though I don't know the Greens, I love Joel so much. Ryan, Amy, if you're reading this, thank you. Thank you so much for making this game possible. I wanted to cry so many times. I still do even after had finished. Joel can't wait for you to meet him again in heaven. :) 11/10 best game!

As many others I cried through parts of the game. I have to children that are below 5 years of age and I hope that I will never experienced what Ryan and Amy went through. My only critisism of the game is that as a non-believer the last half of the game kind of left me cold. But overall I think this is a strong example to show people when they say that games isn't Art. Would recommend everyone to play it.

While I appreciate that the struggle the creators/parents felt was real, this dealt so completely with their religious struggle that I was unable to connect with it on an emotional level. Since it's less of a game and more of a movie with interruptions, it meant that completing it felt like a chore rather than a learning experience or a game.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm so unless you're very religious, this game will not be for you. Its layout is counterintuitive and leaves you searching for how to get out of actions/areas and unsure of what to do next. I bought the game because I heard the podcast on Radiolab, but I think I connected more to that show than this game.

I don't usually go in for reviewing games here, but having seen the Kotaku article about some of the things being written here about this game, I'll bite. I became a father eleven months ago. My partner, the mother of our daughter, saw me reading about 'That Dragon, Cancer' last month and asked what it was about. When I told her, she looked stunned and asked: 'Why would anyone want to play that?' I had no answer for her, but just knew that I did want to play it. Now that I have, I think I know why, and why I recommend it.

The death of a loved one is painful and traumatic. We cope with it as best we can; which is to say we utterly fail to cope with it, but try to go on living. I hope never to experience what the Greens went through, watching their son Joel dying, but admire their strength and courage in facing that experience and trying to make something positive of it. For me, the revulsion people feel about the notion of 'playing' this 'game' (I'll admit the words really don't fit) is a shamefully cowardly response - at the end of the day, we can hit Quit, and nothing has changed in our livess. The Greens lived this and did their best to process and communicate it. That's what art is all about, and shying away from it just because it makes us uncomfortable is symptomatic only of our own weakness, our insistence on an artificial safe-zone.

As a card-carrying atheist, I'm on a polar extreme away from the faith the Greens have, but I still found every moment of this episodic narrative driven audio-visual experience utterly relatable and overwhelmingly human. That's no mean feat, and speaks volumes of the honesty, the sheer soul-bearing earnestness that's gone into this harrowing project. I'll grant that the visuals may not be to everyone's tastes, the thematic examination of faith may be too cerebral for some, and the fundamentally morbid subject matter (but no - this is a celebration of a life, along with all the agony of its too-soon death) will put many off; but accusations of profiteering from their son's death can only sit somewhere on a spectrum between flat-out trolling and plain ignorance. If you sit somewhere toward the latter end, I urge you to play the game and experience it. It won't be much fun, but it will be worthwhile. As for the trolls, I hope they find some happiness on their own.

As a police officer not too many things can make me cry these days. I heard the movie UP was supposed to be a tear jerker but it really didn't phase me. That Dragon, Cancer... well, this game is a different story. Simply put, this is the most emotional game I've ever played. I knew the game was only around 2 hours long, and I originally had plans to play another game I recently got immediately after finishing this one, but by the time I finished this game the only thing I wanted to do was pick up my baby boy and hold him tight.

I imagine this game will be more powerful for those who have kids, and I imagine it may even be TOO powerful for those who have had kids with terminal illness or have otherwise lost their children at a young age.

In this game you essentially get a glimpse of what a real family went through with their son, from finding a tumor to hearing the news that chemotherapy had failed and that their son would die within months. You feel for the parents as they experience a wide range of emotions from sadness, anger, despair, doubt, hope, peace and faith.

Yes, the game has strong religious messages within, but I don't feel this should detract from the game even if you aren't a believer, because this is the real life story of a real family and what they went through, and that includes their faith, their doubts, etc. Regardless of whether you believe in God or not, you can still relate to these parents' grief and come away with something.

As a cessationistic Christian, I appreciated the fact that this wasn't some implausible story of a boy being miraculously healed or even raised from the dead. It showed that the parents desperately wished for those things to occur and prayed for them to occur and hoped that they would occur, but ultimately rested in God's wisdom and that He does all things for His glory with the joyful reminder that one day they will see their child again in Heaven.

That Dragon, Cancer is an experience I cannot recommend highly enough; not as a gamer, but as a human being.

I'll leave the story for you to explore for yourself. The trailer should give you the right amount of information to know what's going on. With that said, the vulnerability and honesty presented in this game is more abundant than any work, game or otherwise, that I've ever encountered. There are no pulled punches, and yet the end result (for me, at least) is a feeling of hope, not despair.

The sound carries most of the narrative weight, allowing those involved in the story to tell it from their hearts, with the abstract graphics removing any risk of distracting by the false facial expressions and out-of-place animations so common in games, and instead focusing on broad strokes of color and texture.

This game carries such a powerful story and presents it so well that I consider it a must-play. I believe that you will, too.

(EDIT: Since I've had to delete more than a few comments from readers that misread the opening line: I do not mean for you to infer that gamers are not human beings. Rather, the scope of this game encompasses broader themes than can be tackled solely from a gamer's perspective. I wished to specify that this game, unlike most others, does not thrive on its mechanics or graphics, but on the human connection it creates through the gameplay.)

What an amazing story.

I streamed this and one of the team members stopped in and gave me some motivation to continue my streams.

ANYWAYS-

The reason I bought this game was to

1. Support the family,

and

2. My mom is going through treatments herself. She was recently diagnosed with Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer (Stage IV meaning it's spread to an organ, that organ being her liver.) It's breast cancer returning back from 2012! It sucks, guys, that's for sure.

I definitely recommend this game, hands down. Incredible story line, funny, adorable, saddening, makes you rethink life and the things you SHOULD be grateful for, but you are not as grateful as you should be.