Playing for keeps

Video games aren't supposed to be too serious, and when they are, they are supposed to be about firearms, war and regime change - the big things of the world.

So it is easy to be sceptical about an indie game that takes the player to an intensive care unit with a young son, and leaves them there, fighting for survival, with only human will and faith .

That Dragon, Cancer, a game rapidly gathering pace and respect in the indie scene, might still be early in its development, but it has the makings of something unusual and interesting.

A first-person, point-and-click adventure set in a hospital, it weaves poetry, a simple visual style and a piano soundtrack to create an intimate and unsettling window into developer Ryan Green's personal life.

Playing as Green, in the first of a mooted six-scene story, you not only tend to the needs of your sick young son but are also nudged towards reflection on the absurdity and sterility of the clinical setting.

Deciding to create a video game about cancer - particularly while that story is still unfolding in real life - is no small matter. When asked about the reasoning, or indeed wisdom, of bringing these things together, Green calmly underlined that this is what creative people have always done when faced with the insurmountable - create.

For Green, video games offer an unique opportunity: ''They can do something that no other medium can. You can create this world and ask the player to live in it and love what you have created."

Green's sentiments are echoed by fellow developer on the project, Josh Larson.

''I think video games have the potential to examine different parts of the human experience. Our interest is to explore deeper themes about grace and hope in the face of death. Video games seem like a unique opportunity to do that because the player has an element of free will or agency and then you as the creator also have a certain amount of sovereignty," Larson said.

The game's message is of hope in dark places and the response has been overwhelmingly positive so far , not least because this is very much Green's life we are playing. His generosity in sharing it creates a space that grants the player authority to ask personal questions.

As Green puts it: ''More than anything, they identify in their own way - everyone has been touched by cancer.

''Joel's not dead yet. I don't know how the game will end, whether Joel will live or die or whether I won't let the player know that.

"I'm aware that I don't want to be glib or offer platitudes, so it's this strange place of trying to be honest and trying to be faithful."

I'm looking forward to seeing how the game develops in the long journey towards release and find myself praying with Green for his son, both in the game and in real life. - ©The Telegraph