When James's father died, he did what any of us would do in the throes of grief: he sought comfort. He went looking for it in the expected places – friends, family – but he found it somewhere unexpected: in the video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. "Dad had always loved games. He gave me his NES when he got the SNES, and my formative memories were playing Mario Kart 64 with him, my uncle, and my little sister. Shortly after my father passed, the Wii added some N64 games to its catalogue that I had loved to play growing up, and that started the journey I needed to take to forgive him," says James. "I had felt abandoned by him – when I was right at the shifting point of puberty, about to learn how to drive, he just wasn't there. "Majora's Mask was always one of my favourites; I had the strategy guide and would read it to my dad in the truck when I would go with him to work during the summer.

Thinking about your mortality can be overwhelming, and that was before the pandemic amplified things. Most places don't allow in-person funerals, forcing loved ones to say goodbye through screens--or worse, not at all. This pushes us to be innovative with how we process loss and grief, and more than a few of us are turning to video games as a safe space for this. Gamers have played a multitude of video games to process death over the years. Indie publishers and mainstream powerhouses are helping gamers with titles such as Spiritfarer, Hades, Death and Taxes, Stardew Valley, Final Fantasy Online, and Animal Crossing.

In "Spiritfarer," your ship evolves over time as you build different structures on top of one another like eclectic towers. Some of these are temporary homes for the spirits you gather, and others are stations for cooking, harvesting, gardening and more. Each character wrestles with something. A lion couple, for example, struggles to find happiness together when one of them is unfaithful. Others, like Stanley, a talking and walking mushroom with childlike traits, just wants to be cared for, so I made him his favorite meal: french fries.