This is a story of a boy and a girl who meet and bond at a young age while playing Mario. But the story begins much further than that, after they’ve gone their own way for a while, and don’t know one another anymore, for some, unknown reason. It’s also about those people making video games. More so, actually, about why they make them. They also get in each other’s way; wether it is a love triangle, quintessential communication problems hinging on insecurities, or life throwing curve balls.

It is also a book with a much stronger later half than first, in my opinion. If you’re hoping it’s about the industry or the granularity of making a video game, you will be disappointed. But it does do a good job of rooting why they make the game into an emotional framework and then complicating it with the messiness of being human, and not white cis male identities. While the book is weak at its dramatic plot beats, more-or-less, it does use them to its advantage in the later half. The immensely trite love triangle era germinates. And because the formula of the current context occurs, then there is backstory of why one of them is the way they are; trauma tied to aforementioned identity component—the fruition does work. I’m not sure it’s the best way to get there. But I can look back at my least favourite parts and know why it is there and what it’s doing.

For millennial gamers that have that aspect as something tied to their super-identity, like me, I think this will be a cathartic experience. It manages to replicate the feeling of playing a game that moves you, staying with you forever. Why X game does this and what it evokes. What X game means to the creator. As a tabletop role-playing game designer who grew up wanting to play games like the ones in this book: slightly different, narratively focused and personal games, this really landed for me, ultimately.

In some ways it feels inspired by Halt and Catch Fire. Or I’m projecting that onto the text, I really don’t know. In that show, it’s about a trio of characters, just like here—two of whom are best friends—who chart an alternate history of a tech company that never was, and it turns into a game company and an internet company. But the heart of that show is the characters, and the main plot beats of the show are in this book, as well as the attempt at showing the confluence of many things that go into creative endeavours, business endeavours, and the relationship dynamics between friends. So, If you’ve watched the best show no one watched, and you’re wondering if this is like that, I feel comfortable saying you would probably like this book.

I haven’t read fiction about this kind of thing before, so I really love it for that. It’s a bit messy, somewhat inelegant until the final third, but it’s got plenty of heart and does a good job of showing it.