Glitch in the System

My recent lack of posting is due almost entirely to a game called Glitch. Pretty much every spare minute of my time has been taken up by dipping into this fascinating world. At first, I was overwhelmed and confused, but I am glad I stuck at it.

So what is Glitch?

I'm not sure I can explain it properly. To play, it feels like a platformer, but it also has resource gathering, character progression and items to buy and sell. On top of that, it has a buddy and auction system, turning it into a very social and friendly game. You get bonuses if you help people, rather than ignore them. You can trade goods between characters so that everyone can find what they need to complete their next challenge or build their next item.

The world is based, apparently, inside the dreams of some giants, and ranges from craggy mountains and caves to grassland, mudflats and dense temperate pine forests. There are islands with far more abstract areas located on them, all bright purples and yellows, populated with spice trees and bubble plants.

Character customisation is both cosmetic and skill-based. There are a huge range of clothes, hair, ears, skins and so on to allow you to craft your Glitch into your ideal protagonist. My Glitch, named Hyperdoodle, rocks a long old navy-style trenchcoat, a cargidan, some boots and bright blue-silver spikey hair.

Skills initially seem rather confusing. You have limited options to start with that all seem to revolve around picking fruit, making sandwiches, and befriending animals. It takes time to unlock the ability to train in, what I consider, the far more fun fields of mining, alchemy, meditation and teleportation. Every skill is useful, and you eventually have the chance to learn them all - the best thing is that you can study them while outside the game - which is good, because some take more than 24 hours to complete!

It really is a fun little game, and it is very hard to convey the epic scale of it here, I think you'll have to check it out for yourselves. A basic account is free to play, and for the moment at least, they offer a free month's upgrade to a subscriber account, which allows access to far more character parts and clothes. You can find the game here:

http://www.glitch.com/