A delve into the games that laid the foundations of my creative tenements.

I never knew I wanted to be a writer. I never once lent any credence of thought to the idea that I could write, nor how enjoyable the simple act of it was. I was left scrambling whenever I was tasked with the opportunity to express myself through any creative medium. The School I attended during my younger years presented only a mind-numbing quota for me to reach or a dogmatic task which constricted any creative exploration of oneself. I hated writing. Right up I unwittingly stumbled upon a series of games throughout the duration of my childhood which truly altered my perception of writing and the ability to express myself through it. And much akin to the written tasks of school, culinary undertakings seemed at once, an equally dull affair. We were tasked with following a recipe and were penalised for deviating in any degree from that which was printed upon the page. What was written was gospel, and I felt akin to the undercover satanist willing to heckle the choir. Yet little did I know that two games involving an animated character armed with a notebook and the creation and experimentation of a little known title called ‘Monster lab’ would prove to be the basis for which I found my own creative gospel.

Monster Lab is a largely forgotten title that seems to have been lost in the mire of other gimmick-chasing and a somewhat unappealing gameplay formula it held. It was part-Spore, part mini-game rush. And it seemed to pale in comparison to the much larger Spore franchise which it borrowed so heavily from. Thus, it became one of many titles that is consigned to the recess of memory, faintly recalled as a mere ‘oh that game? Remember it? Eh, kinda’. Yet for me its poignancy in forming my creative expression far outshines its innumerable flaws and undeniably repetitive gameplay loop. But just what is this gameplay loop? What does it involve? Well, it’s a blend of experimentation through the mini games, locating ingredients and turn-based combat, victory in which results in one acquiring more ingredients or progressing forth the story. Well, what little story the game has, it’s really not its focus. The player encounters a series of archetypal misfits who serve to provide exposition and teach them new techniques of crafting parts. Though the mini-games do possess a degree of enjoyment, they swiftly grow undeniably dull the more you engage with them, the less charm they seem to possess. Given my negative assessment and the overwhelming picture that surmises a rather mediocre product which is equal to its highly flawed elements, well, just what did I like so much about this? Why did I spend innumerable hours with this game and find myself returning to it for an almost yearly replay? Well it was not a craving to satiate my yearning for a definitive Halloween game (though this does work well to encapsulate that vibe) it was what it fostered within me.

During my childhood I frequently spent time cooking with or impatiently pleading for my dads cooking to be plated up before me. He was, and still is, a very experimental (yet caustic) home cook. He would forever be trying new recipes, to varying degrees of success, and leveraging his love for food to bring me plates consisting of all manner of the world’s cuisines. One week there would be homemade toffee, ice creams, pasta bakes, curries, homemade pastas and a ying yang tomato soup (named such for either being his most palatable or inedible dish, there was no middle ground. It was either edible, or a bowl of liquid punishment which I slurped down with grim resolve). He always experimented, finding what works and what doesn’t and all the while, encouraging me to do the same when I cooked with him. I loved those times. Being together with my dad and living out the fantasy of any energetic child. That of course being the space to be granted free reign and create as much mess as you wanted! There was never a repercussion for failure, nor was I ever scolded for spills, eating the cake mix, or sneaking so many strawberries that there no longer was enough to make the ice cream. It was experimentation, and it was exactly what I craved.

School, or at least my experience of school, operated on a logical basis that was antithetical of my dad’s. Here, every mistake was scrutinised, experimentation was condemned and expression elicited only a dismayed sigh from the teacher. I felt suffocated, finding instead that I could only express myself when I was encouraged by my dad. And though this desire for experimentation was first fostered by him, its enduring nature within me was solidified by the elements that are sighted in Monster Lab. Akin to my time spent cooking with my dad, I spent my time in Monster Lab creating various atrocities formed of lumbering begrimed legs, insectoid torsos, bat-wing arms and vampiric visages. And much like my time in dad’s kitchen, Monster Lab encouraged expression, experimentation and failure in said process, without any of the repercussions. I was freed, and so, my mind began to run wild.

I found myself sketching designs of monsters I wanted to create, compiling bibliographies consisting of the ingredients which yielded a positive effect for the part I was aiming to create and the best aesthetic for each of my hideous Frankenstein creations. I had outlined designs for resurrected divers who now grew mollusc-esque limbs from their time spent in the watery depths, Vampires who had been left to rot in the mires of their castles and thus their legs became clay-like in nature, their arms became merged with the trees that acted as spectators, overlooking their muddied graves, essentially it was a lot of dead things coming back to life. Before I knew it I was spending more hours outside of the game, planning what to do within the game. The extension of the game into the outside world and thus the possibilities of expression presented far more allure than the actual undertaking. Conceptualising and redrawing my creations, finding the most effective parts in certain combat scenarios and locating the ingredients in-game all fed back to that which I felt was lost within the confines of school. Creative expression.

This notion of expression, as it pertains to the game at least, inevitably faded with time. My yearly replays of the game became bi-yearly, then the gap grew wider and eventually it was consigned to the annals of my memory. Gathering dust as a mere antiquated component of my childhood. Until recent revisitation I thought that it was merely a facet of my mind, a project I had imagined. This notion was furthered by the total absence of discourse surrounding the game in the modern era we find ourselves in now. With so many Youtube retrospectives appearing, centred around the games we played years ago and now reflect upon. We’re all getting older and it seems making retrospectives is becoming the new, ‘let’s start a podcast’. Yet still I saw no discourse surrounding Monster Lab. Yet the experimentation it had fostered had not been lost, rather, it still lived on in me, fuelling me with more ferocity than ever. For those of you reading this through my blog, you may have noticed that there is a food and recipes page. This very page, and my whole act and love of cooking and the expression it provides was initially a thought that was imbued by this game. All these years later, the same mentality I held whilst approaching new recipes and finding those perfect combinations still pertains to my cookery. The retention of this and the ability to recall such fondness through failure, creative yearning and most importantly, creating as a retort to a system I found to be stifling rather than encouraging is the epicentre of my expressive endeavours. 

For such an overlooked game as Monster Lab, the lessons it has taught me, far outshine the game itself. I have recently returned to the title, and the gameplay only seems to sour further when viewed through my present, admittedly more cynical viewpoint. When devoid of the childhood whimsy, my jaded adult mind resulted in me growing tired of the minigames, the continual interruptions to gameplay and the tedium of the animations which occurred throughout the turn-based combat. Though despite all of these negative elements,  a smile remained firmly held upon my face. I recalled the joy of cooking with my dad, of seeing his own culinary triumphs, experiments and failures along with my own. The game reminds me of the one who imbued this creative desire within me, the one who told me to continue on in spite of the system which told me that I was unworthy of pursuing my passions. All of these memories were evoked as my lumbering bat-winged behemoth with a pumpkin for a head was triumphantly beating its chest after the thirtieth encounter it had effortlessly surmounted. It was this image that reminded me of the message I held onto in my mind, that first we must create or overcome that which is ugly in order to perfect our craft, thus allowing us to birth that which we deem beautiful. Yet through our failures and triumphs during the creative process, for us all who stuck with it, it is the enduring passion which remains our driving factor to continue onward, to express ourselves in spite of the issues we face and to decode those issues within us. And though, more often than not, only we may see the beauty in the result of our undertaking, that alone makes it worthwhile.

Yet cookery is not my sole form of expression. For as you are reading this, you must be aware that I love the act of writing. Every second spent placing ink upon the proverbial page is, to me, an instance of joy. Though, akin to the act of experimentation, I found no love for literature in school. Rather, I happened upon it when a little title named Scribblenauts came along. Released all the way back in 2009, when I was 9 years old, it was something that broke all the rules of writing that I had come to think were inseparable from the medium. Throughout the game and its sequel, Super Scribblenauts (2010) you take control of the protagonist, Maxwell. He’s a silent, oddly dressed character, armed only with a notebook and pen. Yet it is the simplicity of his weaponry that births such endless possibilities for expression, puzzle solving and incomparable and obtuse resolutions to absurd problems. The gameplay revolves largely around two forms of missions, puzzle and action. These two types provide endless possibilities for the player to explore, with the only solidified rule being the restrictions of one’s imagination, oh and no alcohol, Maxwell’s a straight-edge kinda guy

My love for literature and expression through words, did not initially stem from Scribblenauts. For as long as I can recall, my mum had always read to me and encouraged me to read. Though this passion inevitably faded in my teen years where I was enraptured with gaming and footie, it was my form of escape in my childhood. When a controller was not in my hands, I had a pencil and when it wasn’t a pencil it was a book. I recall journeying through the land of Avantia with Tom in the children’s book series Beast Quest, or visualising the juxtaposing miasma of Chris Riddell’s Beyond the Deepwoods and Twig’s journey from the comfort of his home and out into the cruelty of the deepwoods. The worlds of fantasy within these pages rarely left my mind. I could smell the fauna, see the fantastical beasts and relate wholly to the trepidation Twig felt as I eventually had to grow up and enter my own battlefield that is high school. The world of literature was my escape, yet the act of writing was always something that seemed dogmatic and dulling to my senses. Again, the return of the dreaded ‘S’ word makes its comeback, for school was something that restricted my written expression and distilled the idea that writing was a formal and measured medium, devoid of spontaneity and creativity. It wasn’t until I loaded Scribblenauts into my Nintendo DS that I found a rekindling of that child-like whimsy which accompanied the visions conjured by my mum’s reading of these novels.

As I took control of Maxwell and began to solve the game’s various puzzles, I found myself going about them in the most rudimentary manner. If a puzzle required me to fly I would simply type into the notebook ‘jetpack’ and fly up to retrieve the ‘starite’ (the game’s reward for solving a puzzle). Eventually I got tired of this and put the game aside. That was until I realised its possibility. One day, as I was writing a short story about some nonsensical character overcoming a problem, I noticed that I was writing something akin to the premise of a Scribblenauts level. I immediately placed down my pencil and hurried over to my DS, booting up the game and entering into a level. What greeted me was the very tapestry I had always longed for. It was a space where one’s dreams and characters could be fully realised without the limitations of dealing with the undertaking in life itself. It was freedom.

It was the absolute removal of all bounds pertaining to literature which allowed me to appreciate the absurdity of the situations Maxwell found himself in and the equally absurd solutions that provided a means of resolution or escape. The limitless canvas upon which my child-like mind could find solace, expression and unbound freedom in realising my visions. What I could not draw could now be written and animated within the game. I could bend the creations to act in accordance with my will, a thought which was only further bolstered by the simple addition made in the sequel. The addition of adjectives. Now I found that I could have gold-plated jetpacks, a bullet-proof pegasus and a time machine in every shade of the rainbow. The notion of merely willing into being that which was unobtainable in life could now be customised to better suit one’s vision. The expression of myself and my love for summoning up curious imagery and realising it through my wording was deepened to such an extent where I began envisioning new objects, combinations and answers to puzzles that had long eluded me. And though I was drawn to its sister series, Drawn to Life, by the same developer, Fifth Cell, I found that the bounds of Scribblenauts which allowed you to spawn anything, far more liberating as opposed to drawn to life. The premise of which encouraged a more  focused expression. For a sword is still a sword and functions the same despite your aesthetic input.

The instrumentality of Scribblenauts has led me to where I am today. Having only recently come to terms with my enduring passion for literature and finding creative fulfilment through the analysis and dissection of my thoughts pertaining to media and literature I hold dear. Then I would not be reflecting upon this journey I have undergone, without Scribblenauts first detailing how one can overcome the bounds placed upon literature in order to realise your creative vision. It allowed me to untangle the complex and absurd thoughts I had and stumble upon new terms that I still recall today a la, the necronomicon (leading to me finding H.P Lovecraft’s works) and an odd term that I have retained in the form of a ‘nuckelavee’ which is essentially a man-horse, skinwalker-esque, hybrid being. I still have no idea why I remember that. Yet the decoding of these terms and seeing them visualised in the form of a game led to me recalling them with far greater ease than the parrot-style renditions of terms that was enforced in school, all of which now allude me entirely. It was a game that taught me the value of autodidactic learning and kindled within me a desire to pursue writing throughout my teen years and on into my adulthood. The page is a place I return to when my thoughts grow chaotic or when life seems to pass by in flecks of recollection as opposed to a memory of each day. It is a place where I can pause, record and return to in order to find expression without judgement. I no longer cringe at my own thoughts, no longer do I limit the bounds of my mind. It led me to realise that which we envision is limited solely by the boundlessness of our imagination and conscious thoughts. Scribblenauts taught me that the most complex object within the universe resides right within our skull, it merely takes some time to come to terms with and even longer to make peace with and understand your own mind. 

If Scribblenauts taught me of creativity’s infinite nature, then minecraft taught me that in order to realise that vision, we must persevere through the process. Such perseverance was not mandatory in the aforementioned titles as one’s vision was personified within a spontaneous resolve, whereas Minecraft demands perseverance. To build that which is held within your mind necessitates the placing of one block at a time, each acting in accordance to comprise the structure you wish to complete. As opposed to Scribblenauts, in which the Lovecraftian Shoggoth could be imagined and thus simultaneously written and birthed in mere seconds, Minecraft acted as an antithetical to this instant yield of the creative loop as seen in these titles. Even the tedium of Monster Lab’s minigames pale in comparison to the undertaking one must resign themselves to if they wish to complete a vast structure within the game’s sandbox.

I was always one to lose interest in the various projects I undertook. If it took longer than five minutes to travel from my mind and manifest itself in reality, then I was tuned out. I yearned for that dionesian release as opposed to the measured resolve I was yet to learn, or see the value of. Granted, I was young and my mind was one which tended to flit from one interest to another with ceaseless pace, though this mentality has been carried on into adult life, to both positive and negative effect. I find it hard to retain that mindful focus it takes to give life to projects of such grand undertakings, though the instant release of poetry has always felt tailored made for me. Yet I have been trained, tasked even, by the nature of Minecraft to learn and retain this desire to pursue my vision and see it through to its greatest possible iteration. I hold my creative undertakings to a singular standard that is my own, forgoing metrics of comparison to others in order to simply better the work with each project I do. And thus I found the value in simply doing, rather than overcoming the hurdle of comparison to those already established within the field I am creating within.

Had I not first built those meagre hovels, eventually envisioning larger towns and finally cities of my own creation, then the value of enduring the varied pace of the process and the self-questioning that it inevitably brings, would not have been retained within my mind. Thankfully, the measured pacing of Minecraft assured me that with each new block placed, I was one step closer to the completion of my goal. As this translates to my own life, it is something I intend to retain, yet I often find myself flitting once again. Though I now find myself irked when I leave a project to fester, be it in the form of an unedited photo, an unwritten (yet fully planned) essay or simply an unclean surface. Then I return to the notion of taking it one block at a time. With each mundanity that I overcome, then I shall be one step closer to realising my vision. I had to forgo the muscle that spurred on my creativity whilst I was younger and instead resort to the acceptance of remaining measured in my processes. Adult life has taught me that time is indeed a resource to covet, and that if one wishes to retain their creative soul, then creating each day, no matter what shape it takes, is vital to retaining the creative desire within you.

It is so easy to consign yourself to simply fall in line, to abide by the rules of a classroom, or wallow in the mire of self doubt as opposed to simply pursuing your creative urges in order to give life to your vision. Had it not been for the lessons learned during my time with these titles,that I cling on to so dearly, then I would also be one to wholly forgo my creative soul and relinquish, or rather, ignore the itch to express. Yet with perseverance, spontaneity, abidance to the rules only oneself sets for yourself and the expectation to fail and learn with experimentation. I hold on to these as my pillars that support the fragility of the creative drive. Never shall I relinquish these as my tenements to remaining true to both myself and my vision. Failure has become an expectation in all that I do, whether it be told to me or simply something I assume of my own abilities. Though to create in spite of my self doubt, in spite of time and its ceaseless pace is the miraculous endurance that creativity holds within us all. I believe everyone possesses a facet of creativity, it just takes a little digging to locate where in our minds it lies. And once you find it, care for it, nurture that facet of your mind and watch it blossom and lead your thoughts to places you never once knew nor could ever imagine.