FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Year of the Cicadas: A Virtual Reality Narrative-based Experience about Parental Grief, Memory, and Finding Meaning
NEW HAVEN, CT – June 2, 2025 – Dr. Kimberly Hieftje and Dr. Asher Marks, co-producers of Year of the Cicadas and co-directors of XRPediatrics at Yale University announce the upcoming release of Year of the Cicadas, a narrative-driven virtual reality (VR) experience that explores the evolving journey of parental grief, resilience, and meaning-making over time. Developed by game company, PreviewLabs, the experience will be available on Meta Quest 2 and 3, as well as Steam, later this summer or early fall.
Year of the Cicadas intimately portrays Dr. Hieftje’s experience of grief following the sudden passing of her six-year-old son, Cody, in 2004. This profound loss occurred during the emergence of Brood X cicadas, a phenomenon that recurs every 17 years, symbolizing the cyclical and enduring nature of grief.
Through thoughtfully crafted narrative scenes, players are immersed in emotionally resonant moments, such as confronting the quiet devastation of packing up a child’s belongings at a hospital, feeling the bittersweet presence of absence during holiday celebrations, and being fully immersed in the chorus of cicadas at a graveyard. The narrative spans the cicadas' initial emergence in 2004 and their re-emergence 17 years later, reflecting on how grief persists and evolves over time. The VR experience uses ambisonic and spatial audio from real cicada emergences to create an immersive reflection of a moment in time and space.
Dr. Hieftje shares, “When the cicadas emerged in 2004, I spent almost every day with them at my son’s gravesite. Their collective song was loud, eerie, and unworldly – it was like they were there for me, grieving with me.”
As a pediatric oncologist who frequently works with seriously ill children and their families, Dr. Asher Marks sees this VR experience as a valuable tool for medical education. “Medical training often overlooks the emotional depth needed to fully support grieving families,” he explains. “‘Year of the Cicadas’ offers a rare opportunity for clinicians and caregivers to deeply empathize with the complexities of parental grief, enhancing their ability to provide meaningful care.”
Artistic collaborations significantly enrich the experience, including insights from periodical cicadas expert. Dr. Gene Kritsky, watercolor-inspired visuals by 3D artist Melle Bartl at Flathead Studios, and an original musical score by Dr. Andrew Schartmann from the New England Conservatory. The audio design is a central part of the experience—blending ambisonic field recordings of cicadas with haunting, layered compositions that reflect the emotional arc of the story. He intricately weaves cicada sounds into the musical landscape.
Dr. Schartmann reflects, “At times, the cicadas rise to the surface, vivid and insistent. At others, they vanish into the undergrowth of the texture, no more than a shimmer in the air. But they never truly leave. I wasn’t trying to mimic cicadas so much as conjure them—not as insects, but as memories, as ghosts, as echoes of something ineffable.”
The team’s goal of creating Year of the Cicadas is to help others better understand the unique, invisible and often taboo process of parental grief. While this initial release offers a powerful starting point, the team is seeking additional funding to expand the experience with a new community-focused feature and greater access to the game as a web-based option. This future version will allow people to personalize and release a digital cicada in honor of a child who has died, each one joining a larger, shared space where names and memories can be seen, heard, and honored collectively.
People interested in receiving updates about the game’s release, supporting the project, or exploring collaboration opportunities can find more information at yearofthecicadas.com.
In the opening scene, the player can interact directly with the Brood X cicadas at the graveyard while being full immersed in ambisonic audio of the cicadas. The player listens to the narrator reflect on the time early after Cody’s death and her emotional experience about sitting with the cicadas at his gravesite.
In this scene, the player slowly pushes a hospital red wagon with Cody’s belongings down the hallway as they leave for the last time. The narrator reflects on leaving the support of hospital staff only to be bombarded with well-meaning – but often isolating – words from friends, family, and even strangers such as “you are young, you can have more children” and “at least you have another child”.
In this scene, the player decorates a Christmas tree with personal digitized ornaments either created by Cody before his death or given to the narrator as gifts in remembrance of her son. The player can also place a train track and train around the bottom of the tree. While decorating the tree, the narrator talks about the bittersweetness of the holidays – the difficulty of both missing her child while revisiting happy memories of their holidays together.