Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Meeting in the Game Room
2. Ichigo and the Start of Unfair
3. Mapletown and Who Gets Credit
4. Marx Dov and the Cracks
5. Loss and the Years Apart
6. Play Continues and What Work Costs
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked this up because friends who never touch game books kept pressing it on me. They said it was about work and friendship more than consoles, and they were right. I play a little, mostly old platformers, and I came for the design talk. I stayed because Sam and Sadie felt like people I had known, bright and prickly and unable to say sorry cleanly. I read it across three nights and kept thinking about one office scene the next morning.

Sam Masur and Sadie Green meet as kids in a hospital game room in Los Angeles. Sam is stuck there after a car crash that shattered his foot and killed his mother. He is angry, bored, and in pain. Sadie visits her sister and volunteers to play with sick kids for community service credit. She brings games. Sam sees at once that she actually plays, rather than pretending to be nice. They bond over Nintendo and talk like equals. When Sadie admits she was getting service hours for the visits, Sam cuts her off cold. That early cut sets the pattern for thirty years. Closeness, then a sharp break over who used whom.

They meet again in college. Sam is at Harvard, living with Marx Watanabe, his roommate and steady friend. Sadie is at MIT, studying game design and fighting to be taken as a maker rather than a girl who plays. She has built a small game with train cars and clever loops. Sam plays it in her dorm room, sees the spark, and pushes her to finish. They build Ichigo together in a cramped room full of soda cans and notes. Ichigo stars a lost child in a storm sea who must guide small helpers home. It is simple, sad, and warm. It becomes a hit.

Meeting in the Game Room

The hospital chapters do a lot of quiet work. Sam is eleven and trapped in a body that will need many surgeries. His grandparents hover. His foot throbs. He learns to hide pain to avoid pity. Sadie is smart and blunt and lonely in a different way. She has a sister with cancer scares and parents who fight about care. Games give both a place where rules are clear and effort pays.

Zevin writes their early sessions with concrete detail. They argue about Mario levels and trade tips. Sam teaches Sadie how to watch an opponent. Sadie teaches Sam how to think about levels as feelings. A social worker notes the visits. When the service sheet comes out, Sam feels tricked. He tells Sadie never to come back. She leaves. They do not speak for years.

I liked how unwashed this is. No big speech about healing through play. Just two kids who found a shared language and then broke it over pride. It made their adult reunion feel loaded. When they see each other in Boston years later, the old hurt is still there under the jokes.

Sam damage is physical and lasting. His foot never heals right. He walks with pain, takes pills, has operations that fail, and later uses a cane when tired. He hates being seen as fragile, so he overworks and snaps when Marx or Sadie fuss. Sadie carries her own scars, less visible. She wants credit for her ideas in rooms full of men. She dates Dov Mizrahi, her older professor, who praises her then takes over. That tie will sour her view of power for years.

Short chapters here help. Some are two pages. Some run longer. The rhythm feels like save points.

Ichigo and the Start of Unfair

Ichigo begins as a student project and turns into a company. Sam and Sadie finish it with Marx help. Marx has no coding skill but has money sense, warmth, and a gift for making teams function. He finds a small publisher, talks through contracts, brings food when crunch hits, and keeps Sam and Sadie from killing each other. The three form Unfair Games in Los Angeles with a tiny office and big hopes.

Ichigo sells because it feels kind. Players guide Ichigo, a small kid lost at sea, by solving soft puzzles and building shelters. There is no gore, no timer screaming at you. Critics love the art and the music. Money comes in. With it comes pressure. Who owns what. Whose name goes first. Sadie wrote much of the design. Sam tuned play and pushed the ending. Marx smoothed the deal. All three need the win for different reasons. Sam needs proof his body does not limit him. Sadie needs proof she can lead. Marx needs proof he is more than a rich friend funding others.

The office scenes rang true to me. Whiteboards full of maps. Fights about difficulty. Late night tests where a level that felt clever at noon feels cruel at 2 a.m. Sadie pushes for a sadder ending where loss stays loss. Sam pushes for hope where effort saves the child. They compromise and both feel half cheated. That is creative partnership in one image.

Success also brings Dov back into Sadie life as a rival voice. Dov teaches game theory and likes control. He tells Sadie she is talented but raw, then offers to mentor her while taking public credit in small ways. Sadie both wants his approval and hates needing it. Sam sees Dov as a threat and mocks him, which does not help. Marx tries to keep peace and mostly absorbs stress without complaint.

If there is a drag here, it is the business talk. Contracts and advances slow the middle of this section. I skimmed one meeting scene. But the payoff is worth it. Unfair feels real when it finally has a door with its name on it.

Mapletown and Who Gets Credit

Mapletown is the game that makes Sadie name. After Ichigo, the team needs a follow up. Sadie pitches a cozy town builder where players shape a small port, place houses and docks, befriend neighbors, and shape seasons. No combat. Just care and planning. Sam thinks it is soft and worries it will bore players. Marx trusts Sadie and funds a prototype. Testers love it. Mapletown becomes huge, bigger than Ichigo, with fans building whole towns and sharing maps by mail and early forums.

Fame splits the pair. Press calls Mapletown Sadie game and Ichigo Sam game, which is neat and false. Both built both. Sadie does interviews where she explains systems with pride. Sam gives quotes that sound flat and jealous. Inside the office, credit fights turn petty. Who fixed the dock AI. Who named the winter festival. Who stayed late to fix the save bug that wiped towns. Small facts become weapons.

Sadie starts a second project with Dov input, a darker art game about mazes and power. Sam hates it on sight, partly because Dov touched it. Sadie hears hate for Dov, not critique of the game, and stops listening. They shout in front of staff. Marx closes the door and takes each to lunch separately, translating. He tells Sam to say plain work notes without jibes. He tells Sadie that Sam fear of being left behind drives the edge in his voice. It helps for a week.

The Mapletown fan mail chapters are sweet and sad. Kids write that the game helped them through moves and divorces. One older player builds his late wife town from memory. Sadie answers letters by hand at first, then cannot keep up. Sam never answers. He reads them at night and feels both proud and erased. That mix felt honest to me. Creative work gives you reach and takes your name at once.

My gripe in this stretch is repetition. There are three or four fights with the same shape. Sam slights, Sadie flares, Marx mends. The beats land, but the fourth time I wanted someone to change tactics sooner. Zevin seems aware of it, because the next turn breaks the loop hard.

Marx Dov and the Cracks

Marx is the glue and the book knows it. Marx Watanabe is half Japanese, half Korean, tall and kind, good with money and people. He loves Sam like a brother and loves Sadie like family. He dates Anna, has a child, keeps the office humane with snacks and clear pay. He also produces. He books sound stages, hires testers, fights publishers for fair cuts. Without Marx, Unfair would be two geniuses shouting in a garage.

Dov is the opposite pole. Dov Mizrahi is brilliant, older, used to rooms where his word ends debate. He mentors Sadie, sleeps with her, then treats her ideas as joint property. He is not a cartoon villain. He funds her early tools, opens doors, defends her to chairs who dismiss young women. But he needs to be the smartest man in the room. When Sadie outgrows him, he punishes with cold reviews and quiet blocks. Sadie keeps going back for approval long after love ends, which hurt to read because I have watched friends do the same with bosses.

Sam health cracks open here too. His foot worsens. He hides pills, cancels checkups, codes standing to prove he can. A fall on office stairs forces surgery. He wakes mean from anesthesia and tells Marx he is fine when he is not. Sadie visits with soup and a build to test. Sam critiques the build from bed and she throws the printout. Love, but no softness.

The trio tries a big swing. Both Sides, a wild west revenge game with two leads and split paths, meant to prove Unfair can do scope. Production is hell. Staff quit. Money thins. Dov leaks doubts to press. Marx borrows against his own share to make payroll. Sam and Sadie crunch through pain and pride and ship a game that reviews well but sells below hope. The office keeps lights on because Mapletown still sells maps and plush Ichigo dolls. No one says thank you for that. They just fight about the next thing.

I thought these chapters were the strongest on work. Zevin shows how care becomes control, how help becomes debt, how a kind producer like Marx can burn out from translating two proud friends. It is not preachy. It is just office life with high stakes and tired eyes.

Loss and the Years Apart

Tragedy hits in a way I will not spoil in full detail, but the shape matters. A violent attack tied to a troubled fan and a stalker thread ends with Marx dead. He dies protecting others, doing the steady thing he always did. The loss hollows the book for a hundred pages, which feels right. Grief here is not clean. Sam shuts down. Sadie blames Sam control and Dov noise and herself for not seeing signs. Unfair pauses. Lawyers call. The office plants in the lobby wilt.

Sam and Sadie split. Not with one fight but with cold distance. Sam makes a solo project, a Master of Revels style theater game where players shape Shakespeare scenes with friends online. It is clever and lonely. Testers say it feels empty. Sadie teaches, consults, raises a child with shifting help, and builds small experimental levels she refuses to sell. They email on birthdays. They do not make anything together.

Zevin tracks time in game launches and hardware shifts, which I liked. Floppy to disc to download. Arcade to home to phone. Sam foot gets worse then steadier after he finally accepts limits and uses support without shame. Sadie learns to ask for credit in writing before work starts, a hard skill Dov never taught. Both date others with mixed luck. Both miss Marx daily. A scene where Sam keeps Marx old office chair and cannot throw it out hit me more than the funeral scene.

The years apart also clarify love. Sam loved Sadie since youth but rarely said it straight. Sadie loved Sam but feared that naming it would turn art into couple property and invite Dov style control. They try once as lovers and it fails fast, too much history in bed with them. What lasts is stranger and sturdier. A bond that is not romance and not siblinghood but a third thing built from shared worlds. The book defends that third thing without apology.

Pacing sags a little here. Two solo project chapters read slow after the shock. I wanted the split to be fifty pages shorter. But the slowness mirrors grief, so I forgave it by the end.

Play Continues and What Work Costs

They find their way back to the same table, not the same roles. Sadie brings a prototype about trains and towns that recalls Ichigo and Mapletown without copying them. Sam brings engine fixes and a calmer temper. They agree on paper first. Credit splits, pay bands, hours, no crunch past eight, Marx name on the door as founder forever. A young tester asks why rules feel stiff for artists. Sadie says stiff rules keep friends friends.

The final act moves through Pioneers, their Oregon Trail like trek game about hard choices on a road west, and late ports of Mapletown that let fans visit each other towns. Old fans return with kids. A Mapletown wedding happens inside the game. Sam cries and pretends it is allergies. Sadie lets him pretend. They ship, patch, argue about boats, and ship again. The loop is still the loop, but kinder.

The closing image that stayed with me is simple. Sam and Sadie testing a level side by side, passing one controller back and forth, dying and respawning and laughing. Tomorrow and tomorrow. The title comes from Macbeth speech about days creeping on, but Zevin flips it into gamer hope. Another life. Another run. Try again with what you learned.

Is it flawless. No. The middle repeats one fight shape, Dov sometimes reads as a thesis rather than a man, and two late game descriptions run long on systems for non players. A pure lit reader may skim the Both Sides build logs. A pure gamer may want more code and less love triangle feint. I also wanted more of Anna and Marx child after the loss, more than brief updates. The book centers Sam and Sadie so hard that others blur at the edges.

Still, the whole holds. It treats games as art without hype, shows disability without sainthood, shows a woman fighting for credit without turning her into a symbol, and shows a kind man as load bearing rather than boring. Sam foot pain, Sadie fight for name, Marx care, Dov control, Ichigo sea, Mapletown docks. Those pieces lock. I finished it admiring how Zevin made thirty years feel like one long co op session where players sometimes drop connection but keep the save file.

FAQ

Are Ichigo and Mapletown real video games?

No. Ichigo, Mapletown, and Both Sides are fictional games made for the novel. Zevin built them to show design choices, sequels, and fan worlds.

What is Sam disability in the story?

Sam was hurt in a car crash as a child and lives with foot damage and long pain. He has many surgeries, uses a cane at times, and hides how much it limits him.

What time span does Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow cover?

It follows Sam Masur and Sadie Green from a hospital game room to running Unfair Games with Marx. It covers thirty years of work, love, fights, and loss.