Though incredible medical breakthroughs are being made in the fight against cancer, tens of millions of people still confront the disease annually. Many of those affected — either directly or through a loved one — are children.
Daniel Zhang was one of those kids. When he was 9, his grandmother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and the experience “left a deep impact” on him, he told Nice News. At the time, he found it difficult to understand what she was going through, and why she seemed to be getting weaker from treatments that were supposed to get her well, for example.
It was that challenging personal experience, along with a passion for Pokemon and other card games, that led to Tumor Tactics: a multiplayer cancer education game that the now-17-year-old created with his friend Zachary Tou. “Our goal is to be able to alleviate some of that confusion, that stress, that helplessness that kids may feel when seeing their close loved ones go through this disease,” Zhang explained.
From left: Justin Sun, Daniel Zhang, Zachary Tou, and Julian Park.
As sophomores at their San Diego high school, the pair launched a school club called STEAMLabs (which has since become an international nonprofit), leading free science activities for elementary school students. It was during these events that Zhang and Tou started developing Tumor Tactics as juniors last August, first working off a Google Doc, and eventually recruiting a fellow high schooler to design graphics. They next reached out to manufacturers to produce different parts of the finished game, which the teens assembled into complete kits themselves.
Here’s how to play: Each person assumes the role of a doctor who is treating a patient with three tumors — skin, lung, and colon. Different cards represent real-world medical events, tactics, and interventions, and tumor strength is tracked through special tokens. The objective is to be the first player to cure all three tumors.
Zhang’s dad and Tou’s mom are both doctors, so they helped with the medical details along with their club advisor-slash-biology teacher. The idea, of course, is that the game isn’t just educational but truly engaging, delivered via a medium so many young people already enjoy — which in turn makes the information more memorable. “Zach and I loved playing card games,” said Zhang. “That’s how we met, through playing Pokemon growing up, or other games, like Exploding Kittens or UNO.”
So far, they’ve demonstrated the game to more than 1,000 young people at the San Diego County Fair, distributed over 225 decks to Scripps Health and Rady Children’s Hospital, and brought Tumor Tactics to 150 students at local elementary schools. During one event, the duo quizzed the kids on their cancer knowledge prior to and after playing, finding that about 37% were able to answer all the questions correctly beforehand, while around 91% could afterward.
But they also witnessed something more meaningful than just a rise in quiz scores. “Seeing them be able to feel comfortable opening up and maybe talking about something that they had, like, bottled up and not really ever had a chance to talk about with anyone else, with their friends — to be able to share that, and for us to be able to listen to their stories and see how much it even mirrored my own, it was really touching,” Zhang said. “That was honestly the best part.”
A printable version of the game is free to download on the Tumor Tactics website, and box sets can be purchased for $17.99 — 10% of which goes to the American Cancer Society, and 90% toward producing kits to donate to schools. Title I educators can request a kit for their school here.
Zhang and Tou are off to college next year, and Zhang said both will likely join the medical field, one day helping to save lives like their parents. And he said he hopes their game plays a role in putting white coats on other kids like them in the future, too: “It’s truly something that we’re really hopeful will inspire the next generation of doctors.”
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