THINK OF THE CHILDREN

DEVELOPER JAMMED UP STUDIOS • P RICE $ 10 thinkofthechildrengame.com

content warning: accidental child death and child abuse

Think of the Children’s very first level name put me all the way on edge. “Are we at the tutorial yet?” No. Kids. There’s. A. Loading. Screen. The very second level saw two of my children drown, one get run over, another taken by child protective services and I have no idea what happened to the rest. I played it again and was horrified to realise that, while I’d been at the barbecue, one child had eaten poisoned berries and another was staring at their corpse. Then they were all dead again. I knew what I needed. A loving partner, playing co-op. “OK,” said Ken, “I’ll flip burgers and you do everything else.”

We laughed because he’s actually a very engaged parent and always happy to muck in with housework. Unexpectedly, however, we failed another six or so times, with the game rating who was the better parent; always me. As another child drowned in the pool, I wondered if he was remembering the time he nearly let Nick wander off the end of a pier. I was. (OK, it wasn’t that bad. I’m a bit of a nervous mum, generally.) Luckily, we recruited our younger, real life child to be actually quite a competent third dad and our unconventional family survived a barbecue at the park with only one child dying horribly.

Before we started saving our children from sharks at the “Are we at the Beach yet?” level, we got a cutscene which reveals we were actually “playing” the evidence in a trial against us. I do like absurd humour, and Think of the Children perfectly represents the stressed out hysteria that is parenting, but people do actually lose their children in pools and on busy roads. I wonder if the kids could simply have been naughty and destructive instead, though this would have been a different game. I left both having enjoyed the experience and feeling uncomfortable. Play if you will enjoy it, avoid it if you won’t.