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Free All Monsters! is a game for children, families and even grown ups.
You'll use a Magical Monstervision Machine to look for invisible monsters living in the streets around you, then answer questions about the monsters to show your monster spotting skills, and set free your own monsters for other players to find.
To play Free All Monsters! you'll need a Magical Monstervision Machine, a Monster Spotter's Guide for the place you want to look for monsters, and some felt tip pens and paper.
Follow the picture clues on your Monster Spotter's Guide, and they will lead you to monsters that live in the streets around you.
Photos of players at Hide and Seek, London, and igfest, Bristol by Liz Milner, Paul Coulton and Andrew Wilson.
When you get close to a monster's lair, use the Magical Monstervision Machine to look for the monster.
When you see the monster, look at it very carefully.
On your Spotter's Guide you will find some questions about the monster, to test your monsterology skills.
First you have to answer a question to show that you have watched the monster carefully, then you have to add scientific knowledge by coming up with a new theory to answer a question such as “ Where does this monster go on holiday and what does it do there?”
Even though some monsters look very fierce and scary, they are really very old creatures who look after the places where they live, so they should never be captured or harmed, just watched.
Every monster that you find was set free by somebody else, and when you have finished looking for monsters you can set free some monsters of your own.
All you need to set free monsters is your imagination and some felt tip pens, paper and anything else you want to use to make a monster.
When you have set free your monster it can be made part of the game for other people to find using the Magical Monstervision Machine.
Where Do Monsters Live?
Monsters live outside, in the streets, squares and parks of the places where you go everyday or go to visit sometimes. The monsters live there all the time, in the cold and wind and rain as well as on warm sunny days.
The places where monsters live are the places where everyone should be able to go, not just real places, but places in their imaginations as well, and the job of the monsters is to guard those places, and make sure they are always open, free and welcoming for anyone who wants to go there.
Wherever you find a monster, it means that somebody cares about that place, and has set free a monster to live there and guard it.
Where Do Monsters Come From?
“No Gods, just Monsters!”
There haven't always been towns and cities, full of people hurrying to and fro to school or work.
Where now stand shops, factories and offices were once streams, woods and hillsides.
And every one of those places, even the loneliest tree standing by itself on the moors, had a monster to guard it.
The place belonged to the monster, and the monster belonged to the place.
So when towns and cities were built, the monsters had to stay, trapped under the tall buildings made of brick and stone and concrete.
And there they remained, for 200 years.
Until now.
Because the monsters have got very grumpy.
They are fed up of people walking on top of them, and they are really fed up of people squashing them under big, heavy cars.
They want to live on the streets in the places that belong to them, the places where they used to live, a long time ago.
Every time you play Free All Monsters!, whether you are using the Magical Monstervision Machine or setting free your own monsters for other people to find, you are helping to make a world that has monsters living in it again.
And that is a much better place for people to live in as well!
Children, families and grown ups have been setting free monsters in Manchester, in London at Sandpit and Hide and Seek, in Bristol at igfest, in Austin, and in Leeds at Pavilion gallery.
