There were a lot of puns I could go with for a title for this blog. "Seven Year Glitch". "SonuvaGlitch". "Glitch Perfect". "You can never be too thin or too Glitch". And so on.
In my last blog I talked about how the future was small, and this time I'll talk about how well small can work. I'm going to talk about the beta of Glitch.
BUST OUT YOUR BROWSERS!
So what is Glitch? Well it's a browser based MMO, where you kill no orcs, blow up no spaceships, and face no world-threatening evil that needs to be defeated.
Well, that's more what it's not than what it is...
So what is Glitch? Well, it's a 2-D game with a little bit of a platformer in it. It's got deep crafting systems. It's got player housing. It's got exploration. It's got a whole lot of achievements. It's got a design esthetic best described as "Saturday morning cartoon meets magic mushroom".
It's really difficult to describe is what it is.
I'll touch on a few of the mechanics then (excuse me if it's a bit hand-wavey at times)...
Your glitch (character) has two stats and two currencies. The stats are mood and energy. These go up and down during the day (each game day is 4 hours long) as you perform activites. Usually doing something productive will reduce energy. Eating or drinking will usually increase energy. If you run out of energy, you die and go to Hell (don't worry, it's temporary). Mood controls how well you perform activities. I'm not sure what happens if you zero out mood, but I'd assume it involves putting on an album by the Cure.
The two currencies are imagination and, appropriately, currents. Currents are more of a standard in-game money, used to purchase items from vendors or the auction house. Imagination is used to purchase upgrades to your glitch and your house. Most activities provide some small amount of imagination gain, but both currencies are rewards for accomplishing quests and achievements.
So what sort of "activities" does one expend energy on and gain imagination for?
Now we're back to the "magic mushroom" thing I mentioned earlier. If you happen across a pig in your travels, you can expend a couple energy to pet it, and gain a little mood and imagination. Then you expend a little more energy to nibble the pig, gaining mood, imagination, and some meat. The meat can be sold or eaten...gaining 10 energy back! You can water, pet, and harvest a bubble tree for bubbles, and then transmogrify the bubbles into other kinds of bubbles. You can squeeze chickens for grain! You can chop the grain into flour. Add a little salt and you can fry it into a bun. Add some meat and you can chop up a sandwich, which will add mood and energy! You can meditate, scoop up jellisacs, use guano to fertilize those seeds you planted, you can brush foxes...I could go on and on!
Now we're back to the "it's really difficult to describe what it is" thing I mentioned earlier.
So yes, it's weird.
WHERE'S THE MMO?
"That's an MMO? It sounds like a kid's game on goofballs!" On the surface, yeah it kinda does. But there's actually a lot of good and interesting game design going on behind the hydrocephalic and hallucinogenic glitches.
The game's skills are learned in real time, similarly to EVE Online. You pick a skill and anywhere from 15 minutes to 12 hours later, you learn it and can pick a new one. Unless you upgrade your mind though, you'll start learning 'em slower and slower. Upgrades are purchased with imagination.
The skills are broken out as follows... Animal: increases the benefits from interacting with animals and allows keeping a herd of your own. Growing: increases the benfits from interacting with plants, allows growing your own crops. Gathering: increases harvests of some goodies, allows conversions into specific types (convert allspice into one of a dozen spices, or cherries into any other fruit). Cooking: allow the preparation of all kinds of foods and drinks to replenish mood/energy and provide buffs. Alchemy: breaking down things into elemental parts, also distilling of hooch (used in making cocktails via cooking)! Intellectual: meditation (regeneration of mood/energy), teleportation, writing. Industrial: mining, furniture making, tool repair.
They all link together to provide a very deep array of skills used to play and to make things used in play.
I haven't gotten very deeply into character housing, but you have a customizable space, ready for you to kit out with whatever cosmetic and functional gear you want. You can expand your yard to put down crop gardens. You can keep a herd. You can have your own industrial equipment to further your quest to take over the market for furniture creation.
The systems themselves are simple, but the connections are deep. That helps create a degree of compelling game play.
But one of the big keys is this: the game isn't limited by the maps and streets you have. The players can get together and create more game space. There are a series of quests for the Street Spirit, and once they are all completed, the players will decide on the attributes of the new street, and all those who partook in the creation will receive the rewards.
The players have played together, the community has grown, and the game itself has literally grown. A fascinating new dynamic.
Talk about player created content!
EVER HAVE A GLITCH YOU JUST CAN'T SCRATCH?
So is it fun?
Yeah, it kinda is. It's sure as hell not the hardcore, unforgiving, shotgun-to-the-head PvE of The Secret World or the lore-based quest grinding of LotRO, or PvP FPS of PlanetSide 2 (although Glitch does have some PvP racing mini-games!), but it's an entertaining, low-stress gaming experience.
It's free. It runs on a browser (in Flash though, so no joy for us iPad owners!). It's different. It's certainly clever as hell in its writing.
I suggest you might want to give it a look...MMOs don't always have to be a megabuck enterprise. They can be small and smart and different.
Of course, when the 25th rolls around and Guild Wars 2 launches I'll be off like a shot, but that's hardly the fault of Glitch!
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