I no longer remember with confidence how Ghost Master entered my life. I have conflicting memories of it. On one hand, I have a memory of seeing it near the checkout aisle of (of all places) a Menards. On the other hand, I sorta just remember it existing one day on the vanity in my sister's bedroom, the way Calvin & Hobbes inexplicably entered my life through a phantom collection on the bathroom counter. I think what happened was that my mother saw the Ghost Master box at the store and got it for my sister (who, while she hadn't yet evolved into her current form as a comfortably eccentric goth aunt, has always had a taste for the spooky). The Menards memory must just be a later encounter with a game I'd already met. Though, let's not underplay how weird that is: Menards is a place you go to to buy 2x4s, spackle, and pool noodles - not obscure British computer games about commanding ghosts to haunt the living.

I generally did not get along with my sister as a kid. We're cool now as adults, but for the longest time, she had no time or patience for me. This is for a number of reasons that I won't get into here, but it's important to note this for its consequence - a decent amount of my childhood was spent chasing after my sister, trying to get her into my interests. By way of example - at some point, once pigs develop wings, my sister owes me a game of Pokémon Cards.

I mention this because Ghost Master represents one of those rare childhood bonding experiences I was able to share with her.

Ghost Master is a strange, strange game. This probably represents why it was marketed as a "Sims" killer, despite the games being worlds apart - Ghost Master isn't an easy game to really sell people on. It's a real-time strategy game, but it's used for puzzling specifically. But the tone is super campy, only there's a lot of references to traditional mythology mixed in with its horror movie referenced... and there's a shout-out to "Impossible Mission" on the Commodore 64, why not...

In other words, it was the perfect game for us. There's a lot to be said for something that doesn't fall neatly into any sort of lone genre, that kind of has a cavalier approach at what it is and will do whatever it wants in the conveyance of that idea. The hook for my sister and me was the idea that you're orchestrating a ghost haunting - I mean, the intro video does a pretty great job communicating the game's tone and high concept. But there is soooo much more going on that kept us there, and still keeps us coming back after all these years.

For one, the presentation. Ross Mullan does an INCREDIBLE job as the narrator, commanding a ton of presence and adding so much character to the game's myriad silly proceedings. I actually think the cast does a phenomenal job all-around, with so many fun takes and voices. I cannot possibly convey how much joy I get out of some of these line reads. SUCH PREMEDITATED INDIGNITY MUST BE REPAID IN WRATHFUL SPITE. can't do much without electricity, dude. MY ACCURSED HUSBAND BURIED ME HERE IN THE DARKNESS. curse the progeny of monkeys, they who weave the waves, and cast their fellow beings into the deep, their tendrils swathed in stone. A MURDER OF CROWS; ANOINT THE WICKER MAN A TASTE OF BLOOD. make like linda blair and set his head a-spinnin'! I'D READ YOU YOUR RIGHTS, SCUMBAG, BUT YA AIN'T GOT ANY! went and got myself shot. but hey! i'm a professional. IT'S, LIKE, TOTALLY OUT THERE, AND I'M, LIKE, IN A MIRROR, Y'KNOW? betcha never seen a trickster with gams like these, huh? AH, HELLO! I LUCKY, AND THEES LUCKY'S BEEPING TABLE. oh! ah! to be seen! i had forgotten what it was like. such a... tiiiiingly feeeeling. STORMTALON, PRINCE AMONG ELEMENTALS, ANSWERS YOUR CALL OF THUNDER <dramatic inhale> AND LIGHTNING.

You might've noticed from some of those quotes as well, but man, the writing in this game is top notch. There's a ridiculous amount of artistry to how efficiently the game communicates its ideas. Like, to break it down, you have Brigit, the ghost bride. Here is how she introduces herself. This is essentially all information you receive for this character. Yet you learn her whole thing here: she was jilted, her fiancé was a compulsive womanizer, she went crazy and killed herself via electrocution, she's compelled in the afterlife to punish cheaters. Not only this, but it's presented in such a vivid way between the voice and the evocative writing. The mind easily constructs the events that conspired to bring about this spectral, wailing, charred husk of a woman. Every character, every scenario, is written or described like this.

This is without even getting into the game's Fetter system! Summoned Ghosts must be bound to specific Fetters - objects or places that hold a specific affinity. Some are obvious, like locations or elements. But then you get into really specific stuff: "Emotional", "Violence", and "Murder". An Emotional Fetter is a thing that instills or has instilled within it strong emotional responses; a Violence Fetter has caused violence; a Murder Fetter has killed or is a corpse. On occasion, the game will assign seemingly-random objects these qualities, which tells a ridiculous amount of stories. It is never relevant to the gameplay, for example, why the stump in "Summoners Not Included" is a Violence/Murder Fetter, but one wonders what happened there. Likewise for "Weird Séance", which features both a bicycle as a Murder Fetter and a couch as a Violence/Emotional Fetter. Considering the level takes place in a frat house, the implications seem horrible - yet that's what makes them so fascinating.

Since I mentioned Brigit, the most legitimate issue with the game - and the main thing that always holds me back from unilaterally recommending it to the world - is how obtuse its systems can be. Ghost Master has brilliant design, but its systems aren't always able to keep up. There are pathing issues with the mortal AI that makes herding them around imperfect. You can use the exact skills you're supposed to to get whoever where they're supposed to go. Sometimes it'll work like a charm, sometimes you'll be at it for quite some time. My sister swears she can recruit Brigit in like 5 minutes, but I've almost always taken the better part of an hour flailing around trying to get her. Her mission, "Phantom of the Operating Room", is always the lowlight of replays for me, but "Deadfellas" and "Facepacks and Broomsticks" can drag on for similar reasons, much as I love those missions for other reasons.

But when it's firing on all cylinders, the game really comes together. I talked about this with my friends on this Designing For video, but "Spooky Hollow" is a legitimately great time, all the systems really coming together there. When not bogged down on specific objectives and just speedrunning, there's a great cadence to bigger maps - stuff like "Weird Séance" and "Unusual Suspects". Once you know what you're doing, the puzzle maps - "The Calamityville Horror", "The Blair Wisp Project", "Ghostbreakers", etc - have kind of a neat cadence to them, switching it up and relying on a more careful type of resource management. And "Class of Spook 'Em High", for as simple as it is, makes for a great puzzle capstone, really building up the tension as the narrator gradually counts down the timer.

For me, the bottom line has always been the sheer amount of potential the game held. I always felt like there was way, way, way more to this game than existed just within the scope of the game disc. The ideas and how it communicates them, the writing, the acting, the mechanics, the worldbuilding... so much of it, and how effectively it does a lot of that, has mesmerized me over the years. For the longest time, the simple act of thinking about Ghost Master could send me on an obsessive deep dive into the internet, into what fledgeling community existed for the game, trying to scrounge up whatever information I could. I fully attribute my own appreciation for the macabre and for concise worldbuilding, as well as in part my appreciation for irreverence and world myth studies, to how Ghost Master approached damn near everything it set out to do.

And, like I said, it was something I could share with my sister. I dunno that she ever got as deep into obsessing over the game as I did, but I can quote something out of context from the game - even one of the gibberish lines spoken by Mortals - and trust that she'll get what I'm saying. There are very few things in this world where I feel I really got in deep on it, and it's nice to be able to share that with someone else. Especially if it's something that helps you get closer to someone.

...

...SO. I'M UP ON THIS ROOF...