It’s all of the fun
of the famous LIFE board game with the
“last year” story of Ben Wolf. This board game, based on the Chris Crutcher
book, Deadline, goes through Ben’s
life, and how he chooses to live his last year. The game will follow a path
similar to the game of LIFE, but with
different locations from various settings in the book. Just as the chronology
of the story would suggest, all players will begin by going to the doctor’s
visit area of the board. There will be various spaces throughout the doctor’s
visit area which complicate the forward movement of the players. For instance,
in the actual book, Ben Wolf makes his doctor promise not to tell his family,
or anyone, for that matter. There will be spaces on the board such as “Missed
your physical, go back 2 spaces” and “Confidentiality agreement was broken,
lose a turn”, because just moving through the board would be too easy. The
ending goal of the game is to attempt to get through the entire board, and get
your street named after Malcolm X. Ben works throughout the entire novel (among
other challenges) to get a street named after Malcolm X for a government
project. The goal of the board game is to receive all the letters (M, A, L, C,
O, L, M, and X) to name your street. After every other turn (every second
turn), the player will spin the spinner. If the player rolls a 1 or 3 then they
receive a letter. The game will continue until the first person can spell the
street name. As another rule, any player that receives a “lose a turn” or “go
back” spaces will not be allowed to spin for their turn.
The football team. Trying out for the football team is one
of Ben’s first events that he decides to do after figuring out about his
deadline. He is a senior in high school at 18 years old, and he has never
played football. Not for the team anyways. Cody Wolf, his brother, was always
the football stud. He was the football team’s starting quarter back. Ben was
always a cross country player, but he wants to try football as a new experience.
When questioned by the football coach as to why he decided to start football
now, he utters, “’I want a new experience’” (Crutcher 18). On the board game,
in the football section of the board, there will be spaces such as, “Game
winning touchdown! Roll again”, “Only weighs 123 pounds, lose a turn”, among
others.
After making it through the cruelty and judgment of a small
player trying out for football, the players will move into the Dallas Suzuki
section of the board. Dallas Suzuki is, by Ben Wolf’s terms, “…the single prey
in the crosshairs of my Cupid’s bow, and she doesn’t know it because she is
way, way out of my league” (Crutcher 2). Dallas Suzuki the most attractive girl
in the school, according to Ben Wolf, and it is on his bucket list to date her.
Ben doesn’t just get one date with her, he gets multiple. Getting Dallas is one
of the bravest endeavors that Ben embarks upon during the novel because he
thinks that he has no chance. But, hey, with only one year life, he doesn’t
have much to lose. As Ben says in the novel, “Beware the short terminal guy
with nothing to lose” (Crutcher). During this part of the game board, when each
player reaches a certain space, they will stop. They will have to spin a
spinner marked with the numbers 1 through 10 (the same as a traditional LIFE game spinner). If the player spins
a 7 or higher, then they get to go to homecoming with Dallas Suzuki and move
on. If the player misses the number, they will wait until their next turn to
spin again. If they do spin a 7 or higher, they may roll again as a normal
turn.
Other spaces on the board include: “Steal another player’s
letter” to steal another player’s letter, and “Mr. Lambeer has turned down your
idea, lose one letter”, to add to the challenges of the game as a parallel to
the challenging last year that Ben had. This game will extend the audience of
the book and attract people to want to play this game and then read the novel.
This will happen because people will get general knowledge of the characters,
situations, and events through the book and want to read the whole story of Ben’s
life. Going through the life of Ben Wolf through a fun, active game will draw
the reader into the story and will have to check out the book.
