The Infinite Jest Challenge

I actually finished this game several days ago, but have delayed posting it for two reasons:
1. I still can’t believe that I actually made a board game for this book – or any book. Horrors. 2. If one’s going to do a project like this, he or she should do a better job of it than I have. (After some deliberation, I decided that a doing a “second draft” was even worse than making it in the first place.)

My objective in creating the game was to convey both the general idea of the book (in a superficial sense) and the experience of reading it. I think that in these respects, it is a success. One could answer the question “So what’s that big book about?” just as easily after playing this game as I can at this point, having diligently read 700 pages of it.
“Uhh… some guys… at a tennis academy?… and a halfway house?… mostly. It’s sort of hard to explain…”
“Mmmm, okay.”

As far as conveying the experience of reading the book, I hate to give away the trick, but since I doubt that anyone will play ever play it, I might as well. The game is endless. Like Monopoly, but ACTUALLY endless. You can escape it by dying, but otherwise you can count on bouncing back and forth from narrative to narrative indefinitely. There are even footnotes to read that have nothing to do with the progression of the game at all – they just delay your progression around the board even further. Teehee! And in one page vs. 1079? I did it so much more succinctly than DFW!

Move by flipping a coin; “heads” moves one space, “tails” moves two.

See? Just one page!

Note the flesh-eating two-headed rabbit in Great Concavity. Inspired.