How a Video Game Helped Me Process My Grief

In a genre built around sweetness and ease, one “cozy” video game did something far greater: It put me back together after I lost Mary.

Mary was not only my then-boyfriend’s mother, but she also became an important maternal figure when my own family life felt unstable. I accompanied her on weekly grocery store runs that included stops at Marshall’s and Dollar Tree, where I’d watch her study the prices of everything from spices to bath products. When she saw me marveling at her meticulousness, she would share wise tidbits about how she looked for deals.

Our trips often ended with a late-afternoon stop at a Vietnamese restaurant, where she treated me to a warm bowl of beef pho. She’d share what she was excited to make for dinner; I was, of course, welcome to join. In these seemingly mundane afternoons, I felt cared for without the rush of obligations. Mary stopped time for me.

Last November, Mary left behind a world of loved ones after living with cancer for 14 months. From her living room to emergency stays in the hospital, I spent almost every single day of her fight by her side. Yet in my loneliest hours, I agonize over whether I fully cherished our last months together. Did I hug her enough, and did I tell her enough how much she means to me? These questions haunted me in the months afterward.

To move on, I began seeking grief rituals. I attended other public funerals, spoke to death doulas, and sought advice from nondenominational chaplains. I subscribed to self-help newsletters that cover how our modern society lives with religion and spirituality. But all of it felt nebulous, and I remained unmoored from my purpose. Without taking care of Mary, without being her figurative child, who was I?

Funny enough, it wasn’t religion that rescued me; it was Pokémon Pokopia. On the surface, it is a new social simulation game featuring the iconic Japanese creatures who first took the world by storm in 1996. I first heard of its arrival on social media through gamers who raved that it was going to be the best game of the year. I grew up on Pokémon titles, so I recognized it as a distraction from my personal reckoning with abandonment.

But what began as a spur-of-the-moment decision to try what 4 million other gamers were playing turned into a transformative journey exploring what I want my life to mean when it feels as if I have been left behind.

Pokopia falls in the “cozy” game genre, beloved for its warm colors, gentle atmospheres, and easy missions. Released in March, Pokopia stars Ditto, an amorphous purple blob Pokémon that uses its transformative abilities to imitate its human trainer and rebuild a curious post-apocalyptic world devoid of human beings and Pokémon. Ditto first awakens in a cave, and as the story unfolds, the creature looks out at a once-grassy environment of parched earth and litter. It meets the first Pokémon, the hydrophilic Squirtle that teaches Ditto how to spray water across the thirsty soil to bring it back to life; it is also the only other semblance of a survivor in this barren land.

From here the story gains momentum: As Ditto, your mission is to get the environment back to habitable levels and bring back Pokémon creatures that are presumably hiding. Gradually, the unfinished railroad tracks and cracked concrete steps of a staircase stop looking like signs of a catastrophe but rather fixable problems.

I wasn’t alone in trying to find meaning after a loss or trauma. Scholars have explored a variety of constructs around the meaning of life. Psychologists Login S. George and Crystal L. Park articulate a three-part framework in their 2010 article, grounded in comprehension, purpose, and mattering, as a basis for assessing our judgments and feelings as we find meaning after loss.

At first, meaning seemed absent. I sat glued to my Nintendo Switch for three hours on my first day of play. I came up for air only when my console told me that I was low on battery. Yet I did not feel depleted; I had finished restoring the first environment in the Pokopia world to verdant levels with lush berry trees and waterfalls.

As I built new habitats, I met new Pokémon. A Charmander emerged among tall grass. A Cubone spawned from a gravesite surrounded by wildflowers. Every new Pokémon that resurfaced charmed me with their excitement to be back home, scampering across the grass to greet other familiar faces. In my mind, I thanked these creatures for turning to me. Without Ditto’s help—my help—a world of Pokemon creatures ceases to exist, fated to disappear alongside humanity.

After a Pokémon spawns in its revived habitat, it awakens with some surprise. “Huh?” “What?” Some of them startle and put up their defenses in front of Ditto, who then coaxes them into the reality that they are back in a safe, familiar home. Often this realization gives them relief. “Wow, you did all of this? Thank you!”

Some of the Pokémon seem more wistful. They hold on to items or articles of clothing that their trainer used to wear, like the oversized Tangrowth (a large Pokémon with thick, shaggy vines that cover its entire body) that wears a pair of glasses much too small for him that gamers can infer are its trainer’s. Other creatures comment on Ditto’s human-like appearance (“You look like your human!”). These private conversations between Pokémon affirm that Ditto, who is also piecing together where its own trainer has gone, is doing something meaningful.

In 2023, game scholars Karam Eum and Young Yim Doh explored how bereaved adults shaped a meaning-making experience by playing video games with narratives that focus on loss and grief. Subjects spent a week playing two different video games and kept a diary where they shared specific game scenes that were particularly meaningful. While the games did evoke sad memories, participants also recalled positive memories in their pre- and post-loss lives, be it a funny conversation or a serendipitous moment shared with close ones who are still alive.

In the real world, the player behind the console, I, too, wonder where my beloved human has gone. I see Mary in the pink rose bouquets at grocery stores, and I smell her in the fragrant bone broth that wafts from the next-door apartment unit. In some of these most visceral disruptions, I feel my loss painfully.

But even in these heaviest of days, I surrender to the ordinary surprises that come up: a call from an old neighbor asking if I can help make meals for a family in need, or a stray cat mewing at my window to open the building’s front gate. I am startled out of a detached state, and I am moved to help, the way I got to help Mary.

I associate Mary now with the colorful berry trees in Pokopia. When I come across one that needs tending, I remember how easy it is to water it with my Squirtle-like powers. When I clear a path from blocks of beach sand to make way for a new house for my aquatic Pokémon, I think of Mary’s selfless endeavors to nourish and comfort all of her friends and family.

Despite its sad undertones, Pokopia is full of positive quests, eager to help gamers imbue its universe with the belief that it is worth building a positive world in memory of those who shaped us. Even though our loved ones may “mysteriously” leave us behind, we recreate happiness, redefine ourselves, and choose who and what we live for, even if they do not come back.

It’s curious to me that bereavement can feel so isolating, although it is a human experience universally experienced. It helps to have a video game that reminds me of the actual truth. When I start to catch myself drifting into deeper ends of grief, I have something to divert my attention: I wonder how my Ditto is doing? I pick up my Switch 2 that sits at the foot of my bed, and I make a new home for my Pokémon the way Mary had done for me.