Menu
Year of the Cicadas is nominated for a Serious Games Showcase & Challenge 2025 award. Serious Games Showcase & Challenge is an annual competition held at the I/ITSEC training and simulation conference in Orlando. The game – which we developed for Kimberly Hieftje, PhD, and the XRPeds team at Yale School of Medicine – is a finalist for Best General Audience Serious Game.
Year of the Cicadas aims to help people talk more openly about loss and grief.
Year of the Cicadas follows Kim’s story after the loss of her six-year-old son Cody in 2004. It is a VR game in which players move through and interact with scenes from that period while Kim narrates about how she experienced these moments. The purpose of the game is to help people talk more openly with someone who has lost a loved one.
Year of the Cicadas is a full game, built with the same iterative development philosophy we use for prototyping. Development started with rough versions of the scenes, which were refined with the help of artists and the team at XRPeds in further iterations. The project is funded in part by a 2023 Unity for Humanity grant.
You can read the full list of 2025 finalists on the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge website.