asses.masses is a custom-made video game designed to be played on stage by a live audience. asses.masses is an epic narrative about the struggles of unemployed asses navigating the perils of a post-Industrial society in which they’ve been made redundant. asses.masses is a collaborative journey designed to be experienced in its totality, from beginning to end in one sitting, over 7+ hours and 10 episodes.
Labour, technophobia, donkeys, and sharing the load of revolution: asses.masses follows a community of pixelated asses in their quest to get their old farm and mining jobs back, despite the relentless industrialisation in their region.
Told across 10 episodes and through a wide range of game forms, including 2D RPG, Platformer, Rhythm Game, 3D Action Adventure, and many more**, the asses (and the live audience) must to work together to confront its growing division between those who, harbouring nostalgia for ‘the old ways’, reject technology and those who embrace technology as an adaptation for surviving the present.
Cheeky and political, it’s best described as Animal Farm meets Aesop’s Fables retold by Franz Kafka, Karl Marx, and Sonic the Hedgehog.