Super Cool New Dominican Game Lets You Convert Heretics, Collect the Summa

Prepare to get distracted from your work for a little while.

A few Dominican friars in priestly formation at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington D.C. have created a browser video game called Passiontide: The Game. In the style of video games from the early 1990s, it’s super cool!

The rules are simple: Maneuver your Domininan friar to collect candles and copies of the Summa, and jump on the scary Albigensians to convert them. But be careful! You have to avoid holes, hot lava, and running into one of the heretics. Keep moving forward until you reach the church at the end.

And the controls are easy: use the right and left arrows on your keyboard to move back and forth, and use the up arrow to jump. That’s it!

You can play the game in your browser (nothing to download) right here!

The one-level game was created to help promote a Passiontide service put on by the Dominicans at a parish in Washington D.C. on March 12th. You can find out more about the beautiful service here, and RSVP here.

The game was the brainchild of Dominicans Fr. Thomas More Garrett and Br. Athanasius Murphy, a student brother preparing for priestly ordination. A few Dominican brothers did the technical development, and brother who is a former RCA recording artist drew from Dominican chant melodies to compose the background music for the game.

It’s tons of fun and only takes a few minutes to get through the level, so give it a play!