Many years ago I subscribed to a Youtube channel. On this channel, a person calling himself āMalefactā played various games, as Letās Players tend to do. The first game, and the one that led me to Malefactās channel, was Tower of the Sorcerer, an obscure puzzle-rpg hybrid game. Iād found myself watching this LP after being pointed there from the CaravelNet forums, as Tower of the Sorcerer had inspired Caravelās DROD RPG, a spin off of the puzzle game series Deadly Rooms of Death.
Several Tower of the Sorcerer videos came out, but then the uploads stopped. Now, this was back in 2008, so the concept of spotty update schedules wasnāt that bizarre. And after a few months, Malefact returned. Tower of the Sorcerer was not continued immediately, but instead he played Assassin Blue, which was one of those freeware platforming games that existed back then. Once that was completed, he uploaded his first video of The Way.
The Way played by Malefact is an episodic RPG Maker 2000 game, about a man named Rhue, and his quest to find his lost love, Serena. Sort of. It gets... complicated. Episode One went by in 11 videos, and once that was complete, Malefact continued his Tower of the Sorcerer LP. It didnāt go to completion from there, as he played Episode Two of The Way between the fourth and final areas of Tower of the Sorcerer. Games were being played, and videos were occurring daily. But Tower of the Sorcerer was finished, and Episode ThreeĀ of The Way began.
The videos continued, alternating between episodes of The Way and other games. Specifically Sylvan Tale, a Zelda-eqse game, and Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, a weird point and click adventure game that was really weird. But again, I digress. Soon, Episode Five of The Way was completed. Only one part remained. After proving he could jump anything in CAN YOU JUMP IT?, Malefact moved onto Operation Neptune, an educational game from the time when those were good. He posted a single video for it, then vanished.
This was in 2009, which isnāt a year I really remember much of. Can anyone name an actual world event from 2009? By then the economy had already fallen over, and we had Obama. Anyhow, sometime in 2010 a World of Goo video appeared, but mostly, the vanishing continued. During this time, I eventually downloaded the sixth and final episode of The Way, and played through it to the āmainā ending. The story gets rather confusing and mind-screwy as it approaches itās conclusion, and I doubt the other endings would provide much clarity. But you do find Serena. Sort of. Anyway, I am digressing once again.
Two years later, Malefact unvanished. With a Minecraft video, no less. Back in 2011 Minecraft was a big thing, not just a pile of broken dreams and broken promises. But this didnāt herald a sudden change of channel direction - soon Malefact was uploading videos for Resonance, a pointy clicky adventure, and Valhalla and The Lords of Infinity, a kind of odd top down puzzle/adventure game. The LP of Episode Six of The Way followed soon after. Would it finally be finished?
No. Would I even be asking if it was? After video 150 of The Way, Malefact vanished once again. That was in 2013. Skip ahead five years, and now itās 2018. In that time I completed my degree, got a full time job, started contributing code to Deadly Rooms of Death, and I started I blog that I mostly use to complain about Hearthstone. In this time, I had also come to accept the fact that Malefact would not return. Such is the nature of the internet - content creators come and go, and sometimes they go without finishing things. Five years. Thatās quite a while.
So why I am I writing about a Letās Player who stopped Letās Playing five years ago? Well, I never unsubscribed from Malefactās channel. I have so few subscriptions it hardly mattered. So Iād see his Youtube avatar, sometimes daily (since raocow puts out three videos a day). And yesterday I noticed that it had changed. And I didnāt really know how to react, so I wrote a whole Tumblr post to try and work through it all. Iām not expecting any more activity, really. Iāve mostly moved on. But maybe something unexpected will happen. Something that might be positive. And that would nice.
Ultimately, Iāve written a whole lot because of one small change. Itās not a case that someone needs to note this down, lest it be forgotten. Malefactās channel is still there. But now itās slightly different once again. Sometimes, things arenāt as finished as they seem.
