Ben's Game

Ben's Game is a video game about fighting cancer.

The game was conceptualised by Ben Duskin—an 8 year old American boy in remission from Leukemia. When interviewed by Make-A-Wish, he asked to design a video game to help other children endure cancer treatments. He remembered his oncologist telling him to visualize chemotherapy eating cancer cells and came up with the idea to create a video game. Eric Johnston, a software engineer from LucasArts created the game. It is freeware, available in Mac and PC formats, multilingual (9 languages) and can be downloaded on-line. Duskin and Johnston were awarded the "Unsung Hero of Compassion" by the Dalai Lama on 6 November 2005. Ben got cancer twice.

Theme
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. Each shield is guarded by a "monster" -- an incarnation of one of those side effects.

Three health levels serve as ammunition in the game:
 * Health that the child gets from the hospital.
 * Ammo the child gets from the pharmacy.
 * The attitude the child gets from home.

The object of the game is to destroy all mutated cells and to collect the seven shields that provide protection from common side effects of chemotherapy. Each shield is guarded by a “monster”.