Just what the heck is Glitch, anyway? It’s a good question, and after spending a few hours with the game I can’t say I’m entirely sure. It’s definitely a strange experience — you’ll be doing everything from milking butterflies to standing in line and … waiting — but whether or not it’s a good one I’m not yet sure.
Just what the heck is Glitch, anyway? It’s a good question, and after spending a few hours with the game I can’t say I’m entirely sure. It’s definitely a strange experience — you’ll be doing everything from milking butterflies to standing in line and … waiting — but whether or not it’s a good one I’m not yet sure.
Glitch is probably best described as an open world, one you navigate as if you were playing a 2D platformer. The world consists of a series of small areas linked together by a sprawling map, and you can move from one place to the next by finding signposts. There’s also a subway system, but you have to have the proper papers in order to ride, which I don’t have just yet.
As for what you’ll be doing in this strange virtual world, well it varies. At first Glitch feels much like a standard social game. You have quests, given to you by a book reading rock with glasses, and initially they’re pretty standard stuff. Go pet some pigs, or dig some dirt, or water some trees. You harvest resources from these quests, which will both improve your mood and replenish your energy.
But then things get strange, and not just because you can milk butterflies, but only after you massage them with lotion. Some of the quests will temporarily transport you to new locations. In one such instance I was shrunk down to the size of a dustball and had to find a shiny bit of metal hiding behind some cake. Another time I was transported to a dreamscape of the helpful bookworm rock, which consisted of nothing but a giant tree and a whole lot of white space.
Glitch is certainly determined to make its world as strange as possible. At one point I had to literally wait in line for some bureaucratic lizards to help me get some sort of identification card, and when they finally called my name they simply passed me back and forth between various office drones. It felt like I was on the phone with the cable company. And in the background you could see lizards playing FarmVille instead of working.
But while a lot of care went into making this bizarre world, the gameplay feels quite tame by comparison. The platforming and resource harvesting both feel quite simplistic, and, at least early on, it doesn’t really feel like there’s much to do other than simply walking around and seeing all of the strange things the developers at Tiny Speck have crammed into the game. The early quests, too, aren’t particularly compelling.
The game does give you quite a few options when it comes to customizing your character, though, with lots of clothing to purchase and facial features to choose from. You’ll even get to purchase (and presumably customize) a home later on, but only after you have the requisite paperwork, of course.
Glitch will certainly grab you with its unique look and weird world, but whether it’s enough to keep you playing remains to be seen. Stay tuned to Gamezebo as we continue to play the game for our full review in the near future.
