It is possible to “beat” the Steam summer sale Monster Game. You’ve just got to be willing to bend the rules.
100,000,000. That’s the level you’re going for in the seemingly endless clicking game. As players discovered when they reached it, that’s the end of the line. At that point, the game goes nuts, and you get a special Steam badge. Observe, courtesy of Tsazao:
However, as you probably know if you’ve played Monster Game, 100,000,000 is an absurdly high level. Inconceivably high, if you play the game the way it’s meant to be played. So, how have players been managing it? Why, with good old-fashioned, family-friendly teamwork.
Also cheating.
Many players took to using auto-play scripts and automaters like this one. Since Monster Game is mostly about clicking and using items to stay alive—to click faster, stronger, to a better tomorrow—automating the process wasn’t much of a challenge. However, that alone was not enough to guarantee a level 100,000,000 badge, or even get close to it.
On Reddit and Steam, players meticulously coordinated which servers they’d join. The main Steam group has nearly 24,000 members as well as strategy guides dedicated to achieving maximum efficiency and extremely convoluted tactics, leaderboards, and chat rooms (to make up for the fact that they’re not built into Monster Game). No stone was left un-turned. Even choice of Internet browser was factored in:
Players who reach max level go help players on other servers, ensuring that helping hands are in plentiful supply.
Only in the past couple days, however, have people started reaching 100,000,000 en masse. The wormhole strategy—which involves systematic, script-based deployment of the wormhole item over and over and over, causing people to gain tens of levels in the blink of an eye—has propelled players further than they ever thought they’d go. Now there are rumors of a new badge you can get for reaching 100,000,000 five times. That sounds an awful lot like a rumor someone would spread to keep people from skedaddling after busting through the level ceiling, though, so we’ll see.
It’s all pretty wild (and a little sketchy, depending on how you look at it), but the level 100,000,000 badge suggests that Valve saw their rules being bent into a monster-sized pretzel and decided to go along with it. There were allegedly three Valve developers in the first group that hit 100,000,000—all of them using player-made automation scripts. If true, that’s a few more gallons of fuel for the “Valve was cool with people gaming the system” fire.
The Steam summer sale ends in a couple days, so there’s not a whole lot of time left to play Monster Game. It will be interesting to see what’s left, if there are still any secrets lying undiscovered.
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