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Ben's Game is a video game about fighting cancer. It was conceptualised in 2003 by Ben Duskin—an 8 year old American boy in remission from leukemia—and was published by the Make-A-Wish Foundation in 2004.

Gameplay

thumb|right|Gameplay with the "Vamp monster" visible in the background

The gameplay can be described as a three-dimensional version of Asteroids, but instead of a ship, the player character is the child patient on a hoverboard. The left and right arrow keys spin the direction of the ship, the up arrow accelerates and the down brakes. There are 4 weapons available: Sword, Crossbow, Blaster and Missile, each of them having different types of projectiles. The player also has built-in ammo.

Ben's Game objective is to destroy all of the mutated cells.

Plot

With a child patient as the hero miniaturized to microscopic level adventuring inside the child's own body, the object is to destroy all cancer cells and to collect the seven shields against common side effects of chemotherapy. He remembered his oncologist telling him to think of chemotherapy as eating cancer cells. When Make-A-Wish first approached gaming companies - their requests to help create a cancer-fighting video game were denied. Make-a-Wish Executive Director Patricia Wilson was told that a video game would take upwards of US$1,000,000 and possibly years to create. and as of September 2009, Ben's Game has been downloaded over 300,000 times by people all over the world. Ben's Game is freeware, available for Mac and Windows systems, and is multilingual (with support for 9 languages.

Legacy

In 2007 another wish child, Jericho Rajninger, was inspired by Ben and Ben's Game and decided to use his wish to help other children as well. Jericho's wish, J.R. the Robot, delivers medication to children in the hospital.

References

  • Ben's Game Make-a-Wish