ten-year-old brooks and his fearless eight-year-old brother, axel, are thrown into an impossible new reality when a powerful and mysterious alien named sario turns earth into a real-life video game. with every adult on the planet, including the rest of their family, kidnapped and locked away in monster-filled castles, the boys must master the bizarre new rules to survive. they'll have to jump over lava rivers, battle strange creatures for food, and consume magical coins just to stay hydrated, all while trying to become the heroes their family needs.but as they venture deeper into the game, they realize nothing is what it seems. the world itself is glitchy and unstable, the monsters are often comically flawed, and their all-powerful captor seems more annoyed than truly evil. with a mysterious time limit counting down to their family's permanent deletion, brooks and axel must do more than just play the game, they have to uncover the secret behind its broken design. to save their world, they'll have to figure out the one cheat code the game's creator never intended them to find. author note: litrpg and gamelit are without a doubt my favorite kinds of books. at this point, i've read hundreds of them. my kids often catch me in the middle of one of my favorites and ask if they can read it too. far too often, my answer has to be "no." not because the stories aren't good, but because they weren't written with a younger audience in mind. that's why i wrote video game planet. i wanted to create something that captured the same excitement, wonder, and tension that i love about the genre, but in a way that my own kids (and kids like them) could enjoy. i didn't want to water it down into something "kiddie," but i did want to make it accessible. of course, writing for a younger audience meant leaving out some of the grit and darker edges that are common in litrpg. but there are other ways to tell the story in the genre that feels authentic. a crumbling world, genuine struggles, the weight of choices, and the thrill of discovery, all of these can resonate deeply without leaning on extreme violence or content that excludes younger readers. at its heart, this is a story for my kids, and for anyone who's ever wished they could step inside the games they love.