Browser game · literary · hosted on the web
See more bananafish.
Salinger’s short story as a tiny arcade game.
What this is
A short story at arcade scale.
J. D. Salinger’s 1948 short story, remade as a tiny arcade game. Where the studio’s other literary games retell whole novels, this one takes the opposite bet: match a short story’s length with a game you can finish in one sitting.
The invitation is the story’s own image: see more bananafish.
The playable game lives at perfect-day-for-bananafish.netlify.app. This page is its home in the Brand New Colors portfolio.
Behind the game
Small source, small game.
The three literary games in this portfolio scale with their sources. Two novels became full retellings; a short story became an arcade game. Matching a game’s size to its subject’s size is one of the studio’s working rules, and this is its clearest demonstration.
An arcade frame also does something faithful to Salinger here: it lets an odd, bright surface carry weight without announcing it.
Who it welcomes
Made for the people who’d get it.
- Salinger readers, especially anyone who knows Nine Stories.
- Players with five minutes and a taste for small, strange things.
A Brand New Colors game. Source text: “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” by J. D. Salinger (1948).
Related games
More worlds like this one.
Go see for yourself.
The game is free to open in your browser. If it isn’t for you, close the tab.