o
This chapter is another reason I took some liberties
with the layout of the tower. The Rook Museum and Room 23 are not actually
accessible from the same entrance.
o
I loved Room 23 and the concept of the ghosts
around Ur when I played the game so I really wanted to work them in somehow. In
the very early idea stages I knew Wonder would need some mysterious “guru” to
give him/her guidance on what to do, but I wasn’t sure who. I actually asked on
the forums and got a wide range of answers, but I had already sort of settled
on Gwendolyn. It helps that Room 23 already felt super mysterious.
o
I came to the conclusion very early on about how
I wanted this story to end. This kind of turned into a metaphor for the actual
closing of Glitch, which wasn’t really my intention, but it happens. I spent so
much time on the forums after the shutdown reading posts about “how can we
start Glitch back up?” or “why didn’t this work,” or “I feel like Tiny Speck
didn’t really try everything to make Glitch work,” and it started to bother me.
I feel like it was extremely obvious that the people behind the game loved it
as much as the players did. If they didn’t why would they still be on the
forums posting things or putting together art books and soundtracks; why would
they have released any of the multitude of updates that they released before
the very end just so we could see what they were working on? People that don’t
care about their work don’t go out of their way to show it off or preserve it.
Sometimes what a few people love isn’t sustainable as a business, and that
sucks, but it’s the reality of the world at large and the gaming industry in
particular. I know everyone grieves in their own way (some of us write lengthy
fan-fics) but Glitch was so loved that it deserves a dignified send-off and the
developers deserve to be praised for their work, not berated for “not trying
hard enough.” I believe if there was something else to be done they would have
done it, and if they did shut down without exploring every option that’s none
of my business. I played for free and I loved it, but things sometimes
end. I don’t want it to start back up
and I don’t want to play a recreation of it somewhere else. It could never be
the same. I would rather remember Glitch as this one amazing game that showed
up for a little while in my life and then was gone before I could really
appreciate it. I realize that the people complaining are not the majority and
for every negative post I read there were a hundred positive ones, but
sometimes those negative ones stick in your mind more clearly. So for everyone
who talked about how much they loved the game and tried to preserve it in your
own way (I loved seeing all of the crafty creations that people made) I thank
you for being an example of how to say goodbye to something you love.
o
The Notice the Unnoticeable quest was one of my
favorite quests in Glitch. I loved it for its abstract parameters and the
underlying sadness in such a happy, silly world. The first time I found a
Phantom Glitch it literally made me jump because I wasn’t expecting
it and I didn’t notice it at first. I made it my mission to find all of them
and receive my Faded Heart. Eventually I did and I wrote a short
horror story around it that I’ll post on this blog as well. The Faded Heart was
one of my favorite mementos and one of the few things I kept with my after the
shutdown announcement. I liked it so much that I sewed a real one out of felt
for myself. Once I decided to use Gwendolyn as Wonder’s guide I got the idea
that if the Phantom Glitchen could give you a Faded Heart, Gwendolyn’s must be
much more powerful so I invented the Crystal Heart to match her.
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