Bay 12 Games Forum

About Glitch

What is Glitch?
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.
 
Why is it called Glitch?
"Glitch" is both the name of the game and its fundamental concept: the yin and the yang, the fundamental force, the alpha and omega, the path, the way, and most of all: the happy accidents of unfettered creativity. In Glitch, things don't always make sense at first. But that's where the fun starts.

What does it look like?
We comb the internet every single day looking for fresh and original visual styles. The look varies as you travel around the world, from psychedelia to surrealism, Japanese cutesie to hypersaturated pixel art, classic cartoon to contemporary mixed media. We love awesome illustration and animation and part of our mission is to find the best of the best and bring it to a wider audience.

How much does it cost?
Glitch is free to play. Some game items (like fabulous clothing and accessories for your avatar, and teleportation tokens) are purchasable, but none of these items impact your game play. To be good at Glitch—you actually have to be good at Glitch. Premium accounts are also available by subscription, allowing players access to additional avatar customization as well as monthly stipends of credits, teleportation tokens, and ballot votes.

Can I play with my friends?
Of course. In fact, there are lots of things in the game that are much more awesome if they're done with friends. We make it easy for you to find them. And since it is all one big world, there are no worries about who is on what server.


What technology does it use?
(Heh. Nerd.) The game client is Flash (though someday there will be other clients) and the server is built in a fairly new and different way for a game: the back end (java at the lowest level, with game logic scripted in Javascript) is designed for maximum flexibility and ease of deployment. That means we'll be able to push new content — new items, new places, new characters — on a daily basis. It also means that we have lots of APIs with which the game can be expanded and extended.

What are the system requirements?
A web browser with Flash installed, on pretty much any computer purchased in the last few years.

Who is making Glitch?
Glitch is a product of all these fine people at Tiny Speck, Inc. Find out more on the Tiny Speck site.

Can I help make Glitch?
Yes, we're hiring. Come help us make Glitch. We're looking for the best of the best to pitch in. Check our jobs page to see if we're in need of your talents.