Sadie's older sister, Alice, is being treated for childhood leukemia, while Sam is undergoing multiple surgeries on his foot, which was crushed in the car crash that killed his mother.

Having become selectively mute since the crash, Sam spends all his time playing Nintendo Entertainment System in the game room.

Nurses encourage Sadie to play with him; having someone to share games with causes Sam to begin speaking again and the pair become best friends.

Sadie impulsively asks Sam to playtest a video game she programmed for a software design class and he agrees.

Sam and Marx play the game and are impressed to discover it to be a simulation that tricks the player into believing they are building mundane factory parts when in fact they are manufacturing equipment for the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Sam and Sadie conceptualize Ichigo, an adventure game about a child lost at sea who must find their way back home.

Struggling to develop a graphics engine, Sam encourages Sadie to ask Dov for his own, and the two resume their affair.

Sadie dumps Dov due to his escalating controlling behavior and moves to Los Angeles with Sam and Marx to establish Unfair as a corporate entity and produce a contractually obligated Ichigo sequel.

Marx pressures Sam into forestalling an Ichigo 3 in favor of working on Sadie's dream project, an elaborate RPG called Both Sides that takes place between alternate realities.

Having already planned development for an expansion pack for Master of the Revels, Sadie produces it from home, programming in a likeness of Marx who recites soliloquies from Macbeth, his favorite play.

After giving birth, Sadie suffers from postpartum depression, but finds solace in an Oregon Trail-themed MMORPG where she befriends a variety of characters in the guise of a humble pioneer and single mother.

Playing the game in seclusion over the course of three years, Sadie finally comes to terms with Marx's death and her role as a mother.

Sadie confronts Sam, who admits he programmed the entire game for her using the Mapleworld engine, knowing she would be drawn to it and that it would be a way for them to heal together.

Sadie forgives Sam and the two reunite, selling the rights to make Ichigo 3 to a third-party developer so they don't have to dwell on the past.

[7] In a review for The Washington Post, Ron Charles wrote favorably of the book's moral complexity, and related its Shakespearean title to the generative possibilities inherent in gameplay.

[14] NPR's Maureen Corrigan praised the "big, beautifully written" book for placing a non-romantic relationship at its center, and for taking on the issue of cultural appropriation.

[15] In contrast, Sam Brooks gave a negative review writing for The Spinoff, describing the characters as "barely distinct from anybody who has a vague interest in gaming" by the time the novel ends, and criticizing the game industry setting as "an unshapely tote bag, unsuited to carry anything that Zevin has bunged into it.