What Gabrielle Zevin’s Novel Gets Right About Gaming as Art

Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Tomorrow) isn’t really a love story—not in the way you might expect. It’s a novel about two childhood friends, Sam and Sadie, who find connection, escape, and eventually heartbreak through the act of making video games. Over three decades, they build pixelated worlds, fall apart, and try again. And at the center of it all is this quiet insistence: that games matter. That they mean something.

What struck me wasn’t just the emotional complexity or the way it captured creative ambition. It was how deeply true it felt to the experience of growing up alongside games. As someone who spent childhood summers obsessively naming Sims or escaping into Animal Crossing, I saw myself in Sadie’s hunger for invention and Sam’s longing for control over something—anything. Zevin understands what few literary novels do: that games aren’t just fun. They’re art. And they’re personal.

The book doesn’t argue that gaming can be art; it shows it. Through the fictional games Sam and Sadie design, from Solution to EmilyBlaster, Zevin explores narrative, mechanics, and even grief through interactivity. And as a player, I’ve felt that, too. The aching stillness of Journey. The emotional gut-punch of Life is Strange. The quiet rebellion of building joy in Stardew Valley’s gentle grind.

Some stories are told with words. Others are told in pixels, player choices, and beautifully timed silence. Zevin reminds us that just because a story is playable doesn’t mean it’s less profound.

The Fictional as a Mirror

One of the most compelling parts of the novel is Ichigo, the game Sam and Sadie pour their hearts into—a puzzle platformer that plays like a meditation on loneliness and rebirth. It’s a fictional game, but if you’ve ever played Celeste or Gris, you’ll recognize the emotional DNA. Games like these don’t rely on dialogue or high-budget cinematics. They use color palettes, sound design, and level architecture to guide the player through a story that’s felt more than told.

In Tomorrow, we’re never given a complete description of how to play Ichigo, and that’s the point. The characters experience the game emotionally before they experience it mechanically. That’s what makes it art. That’s what makes it real.

Memory on Loop: Why We Replay

There’s a line in the book that says, “There is no more intimate act than play…” It’s a reminder that gaming is relational. It’s about communication—between creator and player, player and character, player and self.

Replayability isn’t just about achievement. Sometimes, we return to games because we’re not done feeling them. I’ve played Life is Strange three times now, and I still tense up when the storm rolls in. I still cry at the photo wall. It’s not about the endings. It’s about the act of being in that world again, reshaping it, rediscovering it.

Games allow us to return, revise, redo. Much like Sam and Sadie’s fractured partnership, they offer a second chance. And a third. And a fiftieth.

Games Are Grief Stories, Too

Zevin doesn’t shy away from loss. The characters in Tomorrow mourn, often silently, and often through their work. Sadie buries herself in game design after tragedy. Sam retreats into code when his body betrays him. And what they create becomes a mirror for what they can’t say out loud.

This, too, is true in gaming.

Spiritfarer, a gentle indie game about ferrying spirits to the afterlife, helped me process the death of a loved one more than any self-help book ever could. That Dragon, Cancer is another example. It is a brutally honest look at childhood illness that’s almost too painful to play. But that’s what makes it powerful. It’s not just storytelling. It’s grief, coded.

The Argument Against “Just a Game”

There’s this tired old phrase people still toss around: “It’s just a game.”

But if you’ve read Tomorrow—if you’ve played Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Night in the Woods, or even something as abstract as Inside—you know that’s not true. Games don’t just entertain; they immerse. They pull you in, demanding presence, action, choice, and feeling.

Zevin’s novel is literary proof of that. And it’s quietly revolutionary in how it reframes our understanding of play—not as childish, but as meaningful. As something worth taking seriously. As something worth loving.

Final Thoughts

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow made me feel understood in a way I didn’t expect from a novel about game designers. It reminded me that the pixelated spaces I spent my life exploring weren’t wasted time. They were art galleries, therapy sessions, friendship simulators, and portals to becoming more myself.

If that’s not art, I don’t know what is.