Glitch, the whimsical game, reboots

Last November, I blogged the open beta of Glitch, a whimsical, beautiful, dreamlike browser-based game from Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, with help from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takehashi. Stewart and co took Glitch down after its initial test and did a substantial revision to it, which is now live. I've been playing the Glitch reboot today, and it's just so lovely I can't say enough nice things about it. It's one thing for a game to be fun, another for it to be fun and beautiful, but to be fun, beautiful and witty is something special.

Glitch is a web-based massively-multiplayer game which takes place inside the minds of eleven peculiarly imaginative Giants. You choose how to grow and shape the world: building and developing, learning new skills, collaborating or competing with everyone else in one enormous, ever-changing, persistent world.

What's different? For starters, it's all one big world. Which means everyone is playing the same game and anyone's actions have the ability to affect every other player in the game. It also involves very little war, moats, spaceships, wizards, mafiosos, or people with implausibly large muscles. Also: we have egg plants. Egg plants make it very different.

Glitch

• [yoshua]

  Anybody want to send me an invite?

  • [Keith Edwards]

    yoshua, send me an email address @KEdwardK on twitter

    • [Erueti Brown]

      yes please eru dot brown at gmail dot com thank you!

• [Paul Leonard]

  It was actually never “taken down”, it’s been operating in re-closed beta ever since the un-launch

  • [PXL]

    Yeah, the wording here isn’t very clear- I’ve been playing continuously since a year ago July, but the article makes it sound like it’s just now come back up. I don’t think it’s expected to go full-on public again till November, though- at least that’s the rumor.

• [aidaaan]

  some of this art in this looks like it’s heavily *inspired* by the work of AJ Fosik:

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajfosik

  • [bluest_one]

     Thanks for the link, worth checking out.

    To be fair to the Glitch people, it’s probably all inspired by the kaleidoscopic multiverse. ;)

• [ZikZak]

  I played this game for quite a while.  The art is beautiful, and the content is cute, for sure.  Fun to look at, great music, good aesthetics all around.

  But the gameplay is really uninspired.  Platforming, grinding, and acquiring ALL THE THINGS  are main activities, and the social aspect is basically a chat room.

  I feel like this game would have made a wonderful single-player platformer/adventure game that lasted like 10 hours.  But in MMO format, the charm of the art wears thin pretty quickly, and all you’re left with is less-than-compelling gameplay that keeps going and going.

  Here’s hoping the reboot keeps the good and fixes the bad!

  • [Cefeida]

    I wish I could disagree with you. After abandoning the game for six months, I c0me back and…well, it’s pretty, but I just can’t find anything to do. I’m not interested in building a house and decorating it. 

    Still, it’s worth checking out, as most games are- there are a lot of people playing who absolutely love it. The whimsy is certainly over 9000.

  • [Tore Sinding Bekkedal]

    This is my sentiment exactly. After you’ve grinded yourself into wealth, there’s… nothing.

  • [Barbara Ribling]

     There is more to Glitch than Grinding, Acquiring and Chat.  I am sorry that you did not add your own creativity to the game.  There are many player created activities as well as games and races, secrets to be discovered, etc.  I have been playing since Alpha and still have not done everything!

• [Laura McCann]

  This looks so awesome I would love an invite if anyone can spare one.

  • [PXL]

    Shoot me your email to [e-mail] and I’ll send you one.

• [kmoser]

  This is the anti-Zork.

  • [SoItBegins]

     You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all different.

• [Christopher French]

  I would love an invite as well

  • [Emile Haas]

    I have a few spare ones :-) just send me your email at [e-mail]

    • [Christopher French]

       Sent, thank you!

• [danno]

  This game looks great, I’d be grateful for an invite! sent to me-at-kidconcept.com

  • [PXL]

    Done! :)

• [squirrelbee]

  I’d love an invite if anyone’s got a spare!

  • [PXL]

    I’ve got one left- send me your email address to mechthulhu AT gmail DOT com and I’ll send it to you.

    • [squirrelbee]

       Thanks so much!

• [eobb]

  Anyone got an invite to spare? My email is [e-mail]

  • [JillK]

     Invite sent!

    • [eobb]

      Thanks so so much!!! :D

• [Erueti Brown]

  Please I’d love an invite to get amongst it if anyone is in a position to provide one eru dot brown at gmail dot com thank you ever so much in advance to anyone able to help :) 

• [Daniel McKenna]

  Send me an email @ danny8962@ gmail.com
  Be quick! I’m only giving out one invite.

• [moragami]

  Anyone have a spare invite? My email is [e-mail]

• [Betsy Dadabo]

  I’ve got you.  I also have a couple extra invites if anyone needs any.  Reply here with your email and I’ll send you some.

  • [Anton Oosthuizen]

     please!

    [e-mail]

• [dreamshade]

  I messed with the game a lot in the open beta, built some things, decided I’d hit a point where I’d had enough. It’s a very lovely little game, though I’m not fully sure what to do with myself after getting your skills built up unless I really like building a tower and decorating it. 

  If you do get into it, I strongly recommend that you just go exploring. You get experience points (or its equivalent anyway) by going into areas that you haven’t been before and picking up a certain white circle dropped there. Instead of being super serious about the game, just go bumming around and look at the landscapes. There’s a bit of relaxing zen in that.

  And watch out for splanks. >.>

• [Austin Burns]

  Damn you for reminding me that this game exists.

• [Anton Oosthuizen]

  i would love an invite!

  [e-mail]