Glitch!

Yesterday Tobold posted about a 'non-violent' MMO that had just launched named Glitch. He made reference to A Tale in the Desert which is a game I recall briefly trying and liking but not really playing for some reason. At any rate, I figured I'd give it a go and see what it was like. I went to the website and applied for an account which seemed a little weird. More than a day later I got an email with a link to create the account. I'm not sure why they're throttling account creation so hard but I logged on this evening regardless.

The first thing that jumped out at me is there's no client. It's contained entirely within a web browser window, and it's very slick. I've definitely experienced worse controls in a 'real' game client.

Gameplay itself feels a lot like a Facebook game. I have an energy bar and I spend energy as I go things in the world. It's not entirely clear what the ultimate goal is but so far there has been a steady stream of quests showing me how different things work. Mostly I'm just gathering random stuff from things I can interact with. (Squeeze a chicken? Get some grain! Nibble a pig? Get some meat! (It doesn't say the meat is bacon but we all know it is. And hence I am spending a lot of time tracking down pigs and nibbling on them!)

The game has a research/skill tree that works a lot like Eve. Start a skill researching and after X amount of time it will finish. You don't need to be logged in to the game for the research to function. It looks like you can change the skill you're researching without even going into the game itself as there's a webpage with the tech tree. (My hope is this page doesn't require Flash and that I can therefore learn skills while at work.) Unfortunately it seems they didn't learn from Eve when it comes to skills that reduce the cost of other skills... I'm currently learning the skill 'Better Learning 1' which reduces the cost of all other skills by 2%. It only takes 30 minutes to learn so it's going to pay itself off in 25 hours. Especially when that 25 hours can tick down while I'm not in the game it seems like an absolute must have. It even has a minor secondary effect! (Though the way they word it, the minor effect is the main ability and the 2% cost reduction is the tacked on part...) It's also a pre-requisite for teleportation, penpersonship, and bureaucratic arts. I don't know what those do, but teleportation sounds awesome so it's all the more reason to grab this skill.

Whoever wrote the quests has a quirky sense of humour. My current quest is called 'Happy Endings For All!' and it entails getting some butterfly lotion and then massaging 7 different butterflies. (You can gather milk from butterflies but only if you massage them first...)

I don't know if this game will be a keeper or not but not needing to install a client and having numbers to make bigger is certainly enough to get me started. Running out of energy may drive me away, but we'll see.

And as an added bonus, when you exit the game the following message pops up... "WAIT! You were just about to win the game!"