Sky: Children of the Light adds new visual experience with Dear Van Gogh | Jenova Chen exclusive interview

Thatgamecompany announced “Dear Van Gogh” as a new interactive experience within its blockbuster game Sky: Children of the Light.

The experience is based on the legendary artist’s most influential works and relationships, all rendered in a painterly world. (See the video here).

Dear Van Gogh brings players into the life of Vincent van Gogh through an interactive journey shaped by his paintings, his struggles, and the people closest to him.

“We’re currently working on a very, very interesting project, creating the digital world of Vincent Van Gogh,” said Jenova Chen, CEO and creative director for Thatgamecompany, in an interview with me.

Chen showed me an image of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and the team is working on visualizations of the work.

“We’re inventing a new way to paint the world into paintings, and so you can technically still navigate inside a painting, like playing a game,” Chen said.

Visualizing a Van Gogh painting on a smartphone. Source: Thatgamecompany “Some stories are so universal that they must be experienced, not just observed, and Van Gogh’s is one of them,” said Chen. “Most people remember Van Gogh as the tortured artist who suffered alone. That loneliness was a big part of who he was, so honoring his story meant integrating that into this experience.”

I interviewed Chen about the experience of creating the Van Gogh work and how it could spread beyond the gaming experience.

Chen, “But we also wanted to shine light on the devoted family whose quiet sacrifice and unwavering support helped carry him forward without recognition. This is the side of the story most people don’t know. What moves us most about Van Gogh’s legacy is that behind his extraordinary art was extraordinary human devotion and resilience, but also the question that his works keep asking across the centuries: what makes his art endure? At Thatgamecompany, we have always believed that games can carry the same emotional truth as other classic artistic media. This interactive Van Gogh experience is our tribute to the love and devotion behind Vincent van Gogh and his family.”

Jenova Chen visits a Van Gogh museum. Source: Thatgamecompany Players will step into a living canvas in Dear Van Gogh, where art, emotion and human connection intertwine. Embark on a journey to bring Van Gogh’s masterpieces into the light, traveling inside his paintings to witness his earliest uncertainties, his Paris awakening, and the fragile beauty of his final years.

At the heart of this experience are the letters between Van Gogh and his brother Theo, a decades-long exchange of doubt, wonder and unfailing devotion that make Van Gogh’s art possible in the first place.

Through them, players discover the full depth of that bond: Vincent’s lifelong struggles, Theo’s steadfast belief, and a correspondence that became one of history’s most remarkable artistic records.

Guided by Theo’s wife, Johanna, players become quiet witnesses to a life shaped as much by that invisible support as by Van Gogh’s own restless vision. Through her, players learn how the birth of her son inspired Vincent into a new era of painting, along with her tireless work to promote Van Gogh’s paintings after his tragic death at age 37.

Blending exploration and emotional storytelling, Dear Van Gogh invites players to feel the weight and warmth of that family bond, to discover that art, at its most basic, rarely endures alone. Players can explore 3D recreations of some of Van Gogh’s most iconic works of art in-game, each brought to life in his distinctive bold, swirling brushstroke style, evocative of the Post-Impressionism style he helped popularize.

Dear Van Gogh will be available on July 17, 2026 through the Sky: Children of the Light game app on iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam.

Sky: Children of the Light released as a free-to-play iOS game in 2019, receiving critical and
commercial acclaim. Sky later expanded to Android, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam, hitting 300 million downloads as of 2026.

Bringing to life the world of Van Gogh. Source: Thatgamecompany Thatgamecompany is the visionary studio behind the critically acclaimed award-winning titles Flow, Flower, Journey, and Sky: Children of the Light. Since its founding in 2006, Thatgamecompany has been committed to developing broadly accessible, artistic, emotional, and enriching experiences that inspire human connection between all ages and cultures. The studio’s work is now featured in the Smithsonian permanent collection and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, along with countless awards and nominations from industry groups.

Led by co-founder and creative director Jenova Chen, thatgamecompany is currently supporting its latest title, Sky: Children of the Light, which broke the Guinness World Record for “most users in a concert-themed virtual world” and achieved over 300 million downloads since its launch in 2019. That’s why Chen can afford to work on this kind of technology project.

Jenova Chen is CEO of Thatgamecompany. Source: Thatgamecompany I interviewed Chen about what he thought was moving about Van Gogh’s work and how the team is putting it together.

Vincent Van Gogh’s brother was Theo, an art dealer, and he sponsored the entire life cost for Van Gogh, Chen said. Van Gogh eventually killed himself, shooting himself in a wheat field filled with crows. The player in the game tries to help Van Gogh, and the player is a mailman who delivers a letter between the brothers. Those letters were very touching, Chen said.

“Van Gogh, in his entire life, his painting was never getting the recognition, but in our game we can gather up to 10,000 players in the same location,” Chen said. “So we’re thinking about creating a gallery filled with thousands of people, and they can leave their messages for Van Gogh, and you will take Vincent to go through the gallery and see what the real people are saying about his art.”

There will also be a gallery themed by Starry Night, one of his famous paintings. Chen also noted that Theo died of grief about six months after Vincent died. Theo’s wife, Johanna “Jo” Van Gogh-Bonger, held onto the paintings, and it took her 20 years to socialize them to art galleries so they could be shown in Amsterdam.

The Van Gogh family: Vincent (left), Theo and Johanna. The player gets to experience what it would be like if Van Gogh’s work was famous, and the player write something for the Vincent that is still living today in everybody’s heart, Chen said.

“With all of the UGC of the players, we can take Vincent and go through the gallery and let him to see what people are saying about him,” Van Gogh said.

Unlike past games from Thatgamecompany, this is a story that has words, as it’s based on the real letters between the brothers. Chen wants to figure out a way to take the digital Van Gogh exhibits and take them to the real world. He hasn’t figured that out yet. After all, it might be hard to get whole families looking at an exhibit on just one family member’s smartphone.

Overall, the images were very cool, like one of an almond blossom tree, and another windmill in Paris, when Van Gogh first learned impressionistic painting.

“Eventually we will have a gallery of all his most famous paintings,” Chen said.

Chen wants to do a show that is like the concert that Aurora held in sky for a stadium of around 65,000 people, all floating in the air over the stadium, with audio emotes and colorful clothes.

The Van Gogh project has been under way for around nine months. The work is all original , with the paintings, the tech, and the story.

“It’s basically an indie game, and probably a bigger production than we did on Journey,” Chen said.

What was interesting to me was that Chen was trying to figure out how to break through the video game wall, and move Van Gogh from the virtual world of his game to the physical world.

It might be possible to do a broader experience on a PlayStation and make use of its cross-media bar, where you could launch a portal into the Van Gogh experiences. You could try to show the experiences in movie theaters, but many of them around the world are shutting down.

The question sticks in Chen’s mind. How do you reach the people who will never pick up a game controller? How do you express to them the feeling you get from games, or to appreciate the art of games?

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