COMPLETE: The Master

[kjorteo]

The Master is a short little romp wherein you climb a very long staircase to beseech the Master's wisdom.

I went into this expecting a short relaxing walking sim, and perhaps some artsy design where the journey itself makes you think and that is the Master's wisdom. Was I right? ... Sort of.

Players can leave signs that other players can read, and most have them have ruined the mountain with tasteless graffiti. I was briefly discouraged, but I wanted to press on; I was still curious what was at the top, and the scenery is nice enough if you tune out all the shitposting. Every player gets one sign, and I used mine to leave some positive encouragement, in case anyone else needed it. I fully expect other players to surround that signpost with "or eat a dick lol" type addendums within the week, but whatever. I can only control my end of things, and I did my part to make what I could better. Maybe someone else out there will appreciate it. If they do, it was worth it.

Oddly, the signs ruined my contemplative experience so hard that they wrapped around the other side and it somehow became contemplative again. I could go full on English class lost up my own rear here if I'm not careful, but...

This was a journey that everyone undertakes, and each person has one message they can impart to everyone else. Most people are lost in their own shallow culture and wasted theirs on "lol penis." Too much of this, and the journey itself starts to feel not even worth it anymore. I chose to respond with something heartfelt and encouraging, in hopes that someone else would see it and be inspired to keep going. I can't control everyone else, but I wanted to make my small contribution to the world a positive one.

This is a metaphor about life.

And that is the Master's wisdom.

For all the toxic sludge I just waded through, I feel oddly good about all this. For 99 cents (and not even that, because this was birthday-gifted to me,) I got a thought-provoking experience, some pretty screenshots, and a neat philosophical discussion about life and memes with my friends whom I was talking to while playing this. In that sense, The Master is a good, worthwhile investment.

Comments

[xaq_the_aereon]

That's surprisingly deep for a staircase simulator. Huh.

[renegadefolkhero]

There's something really fascinating about games that take on a life of their own outside the developer's intended experience. Sometimes a game becomes more, but I think more often the result is bittersweet.

Moirai is a similar example. I was looking it up to share a link and learned the game has since been shut down because of hackers. Since my own write-up was so brief and spoiler-free as to be worthless, I now have a new level of appreciation for Let's Play.

[kjorteo]

I can't think of many other examples I've played of players turning it into a different, unintended, yet still good experience. Probably because I tend to shun most things that involve other players. I'd have passed on this one had I known I'd be looking at their edgy shitposting, but I'm glad I didn't because I'm glad I had this experience.

Belated edit: "I can't think of many other examples I've played of players turning [a game] into a different, unintended, yet still good experience," said the veteran of the ZZT community.

[renegadefolkhero]

Reflecting on it, I'm really thinking of instances where mods have given a game a new life, and that's not comparable to the griefing you describe in the Master. Other games that allow players to leave public messages generally add limitations or features to prevent abuse (Dark Souls allows messages to be rated positive or negative, Nier: Automata doesn't allow free-form text, No Man's Sky limits comm pods to 1 per planet, etc.).

Apparently the developers didn't anticipate shitposters vandalizing their game. Should they have? This 99c game certainly offers a lot of meat for conversation.

[kjorteo]

The Master limits you to one sign per player, with a fairly strict character limit (two lines, and my "act with love/and sincerity" was pretty close to full on both of them.) Then again, with this being such a lightning-fast and short 99c game, that's really all the room the shitposters needed.

This game starts with a sort of faux navel-gazing front of a premise (climb a mountain and ask the Master for his wisdom!) which gets you expecting a "the true wisdom is the friends we made along the way" message. That gets you looking around as you climb because you're expecting the message to jump out at you from somewhere. Instead, all you see is griefing and graffiti (grieffiti, if you will.) And then... somehow it all buffer underflows and breaks through to the other side, where pondering the nature of whatever subset of humanity sees fit to vandalize a harmless 99c stair climber somehow becomes legitimately contemplative again.

I don't think that was the developers' intended point, because there is actual in-game wisdom when you reach the top. It somehow accidentally(?) ties in, though. The Master himself gave me a saying that could have come from a fortune cookie, but was eerily apropos for my experience: "If the teacher is not respected, and the student not cared for, Confusion will arise, however clever one is."

And then there was a section below it to rate the wisdom from 1 to 5 stars. "Comment, rate, and subscribe to my zen," one of my friends quipped.