That Dragon, Cancer
Fair · Narrative · 2016
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $9.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 1.9h
- Value
- $5.26/hr
- Reviews
- 90% positive
Watch this gameOne alert when it is worth buying.
Minimum on the Steam store: 2 GB of memory, Video card with 512MB of VRAM, 5 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
An immersive, narrative videogame that retells Joel Green’s 4-year fight against cancer through about two hours of poetic, imaginative gameplay that explores themes of faith, hope and love.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
The value story
The lowest price on record is $5.99, set in November 2018. Its cuts run 30 percent off as a rule. There have been 14 in the 11 years tracked, about 15 weeks apart.
On value it sits in the top 8 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 68 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 91 percent. Among the games that feel like it, DISTRAINT 2 ($8.99, scores 67) beats it on value, while it beats The Beginner's Guide ($9.99, scores 59).
78 from critics against 90 percent from players, and the player number comes from people who own the game.
Of the 344 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 5 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written April 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 87 percent of the 776 reviews written there were positive, against 90 percent overall, and those are 57 percent of everything written about it.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating and runs 1.9 hours, about as long as a handheld game wants to be.
What players say
George Eliot once wrote that art's greatest gift is its power to enlarge our capacity for empathy. This game makes me grieve, however briefly, for a life I never lived and a loss I never suffered. It does not try to explain sorrow or turn tragedy into spectacle. Instead, it transforms one family's intensely private pain into something universal, allowing me to share in its weight.
10/10: The most emotionally powerful game I've ever played. That Dragon, Cancer is an autobiographical narrative game about Ryan and Amy Green and their son Joel during his battle with terminal cancer. It's the only game that's ever actually made me cry, and it's never sad for the sake of it - just honest and raw in a way only a real family's story could be. It's exactly as long as it needs to be, then it lets you...
Having lost my grandma to cancer, going through and reading all those cards made me truely realize how widespread cancer is. That feeling of watching someone you love slowley wither away from an illness that you can not do anything about except hope and pray is such a restricting feeling. I don't think I will ever play another game like this again. This will always have a special place in my heart.
Steam reviews, mixed to match its Steam ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
That Dragon, Cancer scores 64/100 on the BANG Score (fair value) as of Oct 2, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/419460/that-dragon-cancerReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 26, price as of Oct 1.
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