Taskmaker

The world of Taskmaker is a world of 30×30 pixel blocks. Everything in the world is represented by these black-and-white blocks: grass, trees, water, walls, cities, people, monsters, items. Some blocks you can walk over, like the roads and items. Some you bump into, like walls, and people. Some you can walk through, but you can’t see through, like trees and curtains. Some you can see through but not walk through, like glass walls. Some seem to be one thing, but turn out to be another: a wall may turn out to be a secret passage. The ontology of Taskmaker is extremely simple: all objects are the same size and you can interact with them all in a limited number of ways, but this allows for a surprisingly complex and varied gameplay environment. On your various tasks (“made” for you, as the title suggests, by the “Taskmaker”) you explore quaint seaside villages, monster-infested silver mines, a sunken manor house full of secret passages, and a rebel outpost protected by a maze of forcefields. The modularity also allows for an amazing sandbox mode, that I will get to later.

Most of the objects in the world are represented in consistent ways. Taskmaker is essentially a top-down rpg, except that people and monsters are depicted from the front. In only 30×30 pixels it would be extremely difficult to distinguish between an orc, a goblin and a kobold if all you could see was the top of their heads. If understood realistically this would imply that all the people in the game were walking around while lying on their backs, but you quickly get used to the schematic layout and it begins to seem immersive and natural (I maintain that one of the reasons that virtual reality never took off is that we’re simply good enough at creating immersive experiences out of even simple, 2D representations).

The one exception to all this is your avatar in the game. You are the only object in the game represented in something like an isometric perspective. This was a very interesting decision on the part of the designers. On the one hand, it renders your character much more generic than all the other creatures and people in the game—no facial features are visible, just the top of a head, some shoulders, some foreshortened legs. You might think this violation of the representative logic of the game would break the illusion and seem incoherent, but somehow it doesn’t. Maybe the fact that your perspective on your character is different is, in fact, realistic; after all, we do see ourselves in a way that is totally unlike any other person or thing in the world. My experience of my own body is categorically different from my experience of other people’s. For instance, unlike everyone else in the world, I have no head (read Douglas Harding’s essay “On Having No Head” to have your mind blown); furthermore, as with many rpgs of this era, you are literally the center of the world—your character remains in a fixed position at the center of the screen while the world moves around you as you walk around. Taskmaker is a deeply solipsistic game, in this regard. Your own consciousness and uniqueness as an experiencing subject of the world are emphasized. Other characters are literally two-dimensional caricatures and you are the only creature with any depth.

You might think this violation of the representative logic of the game would break the illusion and seem incoherent, but somehow it doesn’t. Maybe the fact that your perspective on your character is different is, in fact, realistic; after all, we do see ourselves in a way that is totally unlike any other person or thing in the world.

Spoiler Alert!

In the penultimate mission of the game you must find and kill the Head Rebel of Dripstone, a community in the mountains who oppose the Taskmaker’s authority. The Taskmaker has demanded that you bring back the Head Rebel’s head, and when you finally track down your quarry, you find that he is just a head, with no body—albeit, a head that is extremely good at fighting. If you are Douglas Harding’s solipsistic headless man, the Head Rebel is your opposite. He is an acknowledgement that other people also experience the world from the perspective of their own heads—that each person is the center of his or her own universe—and therefore he must die.

It is after this mission that you realize the Taskmaker’s true intentions. After delivering the head you realize that the Head Rebel was right and that the Taksmaker has been using you in his evil plots. He has always rewarded you handsomely for completing his tasks, but this time he gives you ‘drugs’, and tells you to kill one man in his floating prison. This mission has none of the complexity, traps and monsters that all your previous missions have had. This is a simple moral choice. Do I kill the Other? I see this as a Fight Club-like moment in the game. It’s not really about the Taskmaker at all, it’s always been about you—you are the center of the world and everything is contingent on your actions and experience.

his mission has none of the complexity, traps and monsters that all your previous missions have had. This is a simple moral choice. Do I kill the Other?

Quotes from Thoreau on the walls - a hint that you should disobey the Taskmaker?

The correct choice here is to kill the Taskmaker instead of the prisoner, thereby liberating all the peoples of the land. Despite the reality of solipsism, one must nevertheless act morally towards others. But here’s the kicker: once you kill the Taskmaker you get access to a Master menu that is essentially a game-editor. All of those blocks of which the world is made—walls, items, scenery, people, monsters—are available to you to place and modify however you wish. By rejecting the selfishness inherent in a solipsistic world-view, you become omnipotent. Turns out the world really is just a projection of your imagination, and it’s awesome!