According to Glitch's site, "this is not something you've seen before." That's for sure! We tried out this unique MMO and got some details straight from Tiny Speck's president and co-founder.

The majority of my playtime was spent exploring, crafting, gaining achievements and finishing quests. Every action costs either energy or mood, and can award experience or materials. When a player's mood runs out, they acquire a penalty to experience gain. And if a character runs out of energy, they die (eek!) which sends them to Hell. After squishing some grapes as penance, they return to live with low mood and energy and a debuff to their stats... something to avoid at all costs!

Luckily, both energy and mood can be replenished through several ways. The easiest is by eating or drinking and, as in most games, easy-to-craft meals replenish much less than more difficult courses. A master of cheffery can craft wonderful meals that restore high amounts of energy and mood; but even eating raw ingredients helps in a pinch. Another way is to use the meditation skill, which awards small amounts of experience, mood and energy, but has a cap each game day (every real world four hours constitutes one game day). A great way to replenish is through quest completion, which often gives not only experience, mood and energy, but the in-game currency, currants.

Example of the items in Glitch. Don't ask me what's up with the hog-tied piggie, I'm just as disturbed by it as you are.

Currants opens up a huge source of player interaction through the in-game economy. Right now, players can trade with each other, or sell extra items on an auction house, and use the currants to purchase other items, including buying materials or food ingredients. Stewart said that the plan is to slowly turn economic control over to players... with some fail-safes to prevent a total economic collapse. For example, during my time playing I found a note on the ground by a player named Briar, who was role-playing as a tree-killing maniac who left tree-poison around to kill trees, thus limiting the ability to harvest. Given enough popularity, Briar's lumberjacks could potentially make finding trees for fruit, beans, or eggs (ha-ha, egg plant trees) a difficult task. While Tiny Speck likes the creativity, they also foresaw the problem, and are instituting a Tree Killer Guilt debuff to limit the amount of arboreal rage allowed in a specific time span. However, they also plan to add things like player billboards – if Briar wants to advertise for those who want to kill trees for their lumber, she could purchase a billboard space.

There are several other ideas down the line to increase player interaction and cooperation. Recently for example, quests were added that allow players to race against each other in certain challenges. Within a few months, Stewart said the team hopes to have group halls and castles incorporated – places built up through the blockmaking and engineering skills that can be expanded to provide a fun base of operations and recruit more members depending on the size. Unlike many games, everyone in Glitch plays on the same server in one giant world; so all players can pass by a giant group castle and knock on the door to ask about joining.

A typical "road" in Glitch. A street vendor, a shrine, piggies, chickens, some beryl ore, and quoins (for minimal exp or money).

This takes me back to the mechanics of the game again. Glitch is designed to be lo-fi game; unlike many MMOs, there aren't many area of effect spells affecting latency, so the game runs on Flash and performs pretty well across all stable internet connections. And while the game likely won't run on mobile devices, Stewart said there are tentative plans to allow exportation of Glitch avatars to third-party mini-games, so you can play against your friends with our own glitch acting out all the actions! These agreements with outside developers are one source of income – the other will be optional subscriptions that will give a stipend of credits allowing players options to customize their characters' appearance, or add items to their houses of halls (oh yes, there is player housing, and yes, you can visit your friends' houses!). These items won't ever be anything like faster skill times or energy packs however; Stewart flat-out said the concept of paying for advantages “feels gross to us. When I play game likes that... it never feels like you're getting a good deal.”

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