Room - Board Game

In order to promote the novel Room by Emma Donoghue, a board game of the book could be created. The board game would be similar in nature to the game, Candy Land, in the sense that it’s a path that people have to follow to escape from Room. It would include setbacks, and things that will let you skip ahead, just like in the traditional game. For example, “Old Nick is angry because you aren’t appreciative of him, move back three spaces.” Or, “Someone hears you scream and calls the police, you’re found, proceed to the end.” Those will be written on cards, and if they land on spaces that say “draw” they would draw a card. The game would have 2-6 players, the pieces that they would move along would be things from inside Room. There will be six pieces, including, Remote, Eggsnake, Rug, Plant, Bed, and TV.                            

            The cards and other words will be typed in a font resembling child’s handwriting, like on the front cover of Room. The pieces come from objects inside Room, that Jack makes seem real, and are capitalized throughout the book, like it’s a name. The cards will be based off of events that happened throughout the book that made Old Nick mad, or happy. ““I don’t think you appreciate how good you’ve got it here,” says Old Nick.” (Donoghue 69) One of the cards could be based on the escape, when Jack gets caught by Old Nick, “He’s got me under his arm, he’s carrying me back to the truck …” (Donoghue 141) Or another card could be, “you tried to scare Old Nick into telling you the code to the door, and he refused, he doesn’t bring food for a week, move back six spaces.” Like in Room when Ma is telling Jack about when she threatened him so he would tell her the code. “When he came back the next night, he said, number one, nothing would ever make him tell me the code. And number two, if I ever tried a stunt like that again, he’d go away and I’d get hungrier and hungrier till I died.” (Donoghue 97) These cards will all come from things that happened throughout the book, based on the escape, and the setbacks Ma and Jack faced, along with the things they did right, to send them forward. 

The board game would draw in previous readers of Room, and maybe make them want to reread it, because of the connections with the book. It could also attract new people that haven’t read Room yet, and get them interested in reading the book. On the instructions inside the game, a short explanation of the book would be on it, to draw new readers in, and to give some background on the game, like the explanation on the backside of the book. This could draw attention because I don’t think it’s been done before, they have SpongeBob monopoly and things like that, but nothing based on young adult and adult books.

It will be sold in book stores, along with copies of Room and also in games stores, and other places that would normally sell board games such as, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. These stores will attract more readers by putting the game out there, a lot of people go to those stores and it will be another way to draw in customers. Deals could be made with the game and the book, for example, buy the game, get the book half price. This would get more people who want the game to buy the book because it’ll be cheaper.