Chapter 14: The Last Journey - NOTES

o   See, Uncle Friendly’s not such a bad guy, he just didn’t want to give up on his world.

o   The springy fungus-like growths are the red trampoline platforms found in Kloro in Haoma. I’m not sure what they’re supposed to be, but they look like mushrooms to me.

o   The last “normal” street they’re on is Russula Involutii. Distant End and Uutiif were only accessible from here and I loved them so much I had this street as one of my permanent teleportation slots.

o   The sunset street Wonder finds on the other side of the door is Distant End, a late addition to the world of Glitch.

o   I’m not sure if it was designed this way, or if it’s because Distant End was a Seam Street, but you were never there with another Glitch. Everyone got their own Distant End and it made it feel incredibly lonely, but incredibly personal at the same time. I really loved that place.

o   The specifics of traveling from Distant End to Uutiif were artistically altered a bit, but the basics of it are pretty much how I described it. There really is the word “bye” written in the sky and you float up past it to reach Uutiif. Here's a snap, look closely. I read about this before I experienced it, but it was still remarkably sad to see that message. I think for that reason Uutiif represented the end of the game more than any other place.

o   I loved Uutiif so much I originally intended to spend the last moments before the shutdown there, but as most people remember there were a lot of server issues and I couldn’t get online in the last twenty minutes or so. Once I finally did I knew it would be ridiculously packed and probably run too slow to enjoy so I spent my last moments on my home street with Mr. Trinkets and Magic Rock, which is where I should have been anyway.

o   If you visited Uutiif you likely remember how full it was of stuff. People left all kinds of things there—at one point there was a tower of plates of beans—but mostly there were so many notes it was hard to see the ground in places. I loved that it became sort of a repository for goodbye notes. I left my own there too. Occasionally someone would come by and clean the place up, which I thought was rude. All those goodbyes were just gone, but Uutiif never stayed clean for long. The devs added the notes found on each street to the encyclopedia, so if you visit the Uutiif page you can see what people left there. There are like four copies of my notes because I kept thinking they were getting tossed out so I left multiple copies without realizing it. You can ignore those.

Standing on the Edge of a New Day

A short time after I started playing Glitch I came across a Note on the ground. It was something simple like "You're awesome!" or "Have a good day," but it kind of blew my mind. I didn't know you could write notes in the game, but suddenly that was my new goal: to learn how to write and leave notes and stories and anything I could think of for other people to find all around Ur.

This is the very first thing I ever wrote on a Note and left from someone to find. I misunderstood the 1000 character limit as a 1000 word limit, so I had to split it into three notes, but I was OK with that. I typed it up and left it on a ledge in Arisa Annex, and even took a picture. It was the beginning of my short-lived Glitch-Fic writing career. Enjoy.

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The wind whipped through the Glitch’s hair as he stood on the edge of the cliff. He could feel the sun on his face as he looked over the plains below. In the distance he saw pigs and chickens walking together while butterflies watched them from above. They walked freely in the cool air of the morning, but by midday he knew they would seek shelter in the shade of trees to avoid the sun’s rays.

“What a curious world this is that’s been given to us.”

He spoke the words softly to himself, though no one else was around to hear them even if he had shouted.

“It’s so simple in its beauty, and equally beautiful because of its simplicity; all things fit together just so.”

These were not new thoughts—he was oft given to musing on the wonders of his world—but that day felt different; that day he really felt these things. It was no longer an exercise in the observation of the interconnectedness of this land, but instead an emotion growing deep in his gut. It is one thing to know how the world works and a very different thing to understand, without knowing, why it works and why it must and that we are all responsible for making sure that it continues to do so.

“The pigs and the chickens, the trees and the soil, all the things that can exist or might exist or will exist are dependent on all the things that do exist; all the things that do exist are dependent on me.” These thoughts weighed on his mind, but only for a moment before that weight turned to air and the feeling of responsibility turned, in an instant, to elation. He could do anything! There was nothing at all that was beyond him in that instant. He might become this world’s greatest Creator, or its greatest Destroyer. He was a Giant in his own right with no destiny but the one he chose for himself. All he had to do was will it.

Standing at the edge of the cliff, all of those thoughts whipped around his head like the wind; all of those feelings rose in his heart like the sun. He smiled wide to himself.

On this morning, for just a brief second, all these things and more he held in his being as he looked out over his world.

“Today will be a good day.”

The Half-Forgotten Ones

I've mentioned several other places in this blog how much I enjoyed the "Notice the Unnoticeable" Quest which revolved around finding seven Phantom Glitchen throughout Ur. The goal was simple to understand, but difficult to accomplish and the purpose was extremely open to interpretation. It was near Halloween in real-life and Zilloween in-game when I decided to make this quest my top priority and I devised a story to go along with it. As I found my Phantom Glitchen I made a note of exactly where I found them, and wrote these short journal entries as Notes in the game. I plotted a course through those locations and on Zilloween I retraced my steps leaving these Notes on the spots where I found my Phantom Glitchen. I doubt if anyone ever read all of the entries or even looked for them, but creating games like this to amuse yourself was half the fun of Glitch.

Without further ado, here in its entirety, is my Glitch horror story "The Half-Forgotten Ones."

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Entry 1 – Northwest Passage

I’m starting this journal because I don’t know what else I can do.

I’ve been having these dreams, I suppose you could call them bad dreams, but I wouldn’t call them nightmares, they’re just… sad, I guess.

In my dreams they call to me, these long forgotten ones. Something happened—I don’t know what, but something—and now they need me, they need my help. They won’t leave me alone!

I’m starting out immediately. I’ve got to find them. It’s the only way I can think to make the dreams stop and get some peace.

I’ll keep a record of my travels and what I find, just in case someone else might need this someday.

*****

Entry 2 – Simpele Slip

I found one! One of the forgotten ones—what you might call a ghost, though they’ve never called themselves that—was here, right here on this spot.

I was beginning to wonder if my search was nothing more than a fool’s errand; thinking I had gone crazy and all those dreams were just in my head. Now I know I’m not crazy because I saw one and it saw me.

As I approached slowly it turned its sad eyes and looked at me without feeling or emotion of any kind. I could feel it pull me closer, but as I reached out a hand to touch the floating figure it closed its eyes and vanished.

Now I know my quest is not in vain. Now my resolve is strengthened.

I must find the others.

*****

Entry 3 – Follybottom Stritt

It feels like it’s been ages, but I finally found another one.

This time I happened upon him unexpectedly. My searching had been fruitless for a long while and I was beginning to settle in for the night when a flicker on the edge of my vision caught my eye. When I turned to investigate I was confronted with another of the forgotten ones, shining silver and thin as mist. He was similar, but not exactly the same as the one I had seen before. In this way I knew they were two separate entities. Determined not to do anything to drive this second one away I stood stock still and waited for a sign.

The Forgotten One stared through me with those black, emotionless eyes and uttered one syllable before evaporating into the night air.

Please…

*****

Entry 4 – Thicket

When I said before that it spoke to me that was a misrepresentation of what actually happened. I say only that it spoke because I can’t really convey the truth. It’s more like the words reverberated in my bones and moved up through my spine to rest in my skull, where they were translated in the back of my mind. It is an altogether unsettling feeling to say the least.

This time I was prepared for my encounter, though it was no less disquieting for that. As I walked through the grove I felt a chill suddenly engulf me like a great wave and quickly fill the surrounding area. Immediately I knew what this meant, but I was still brought up short when the ghostly pale figure appeared before me. It seemed to float on the currents of cold, otherworldly air.

I stood still as I had last time hoping this Forgotten One would speak to me as well. I was not disappointed. Before fading away it left me with a single message.

Please, help me…

*****

Entry 5 – Firdaus Finds

I am determined now. My path is clear and my decision to pursue this quest was the right one.

After my last encounter the dreams became more insistent. They call to me more urgently, but for what purpose I’m still not sure. All I know for certain is that I must find them.

I was following a feeling—an urging really—it led me into the dark and that’s where I found the next one. Hidden in the shadows, it watched me with those unblinking eyes as I approached. Slowly I walked up to it and felt the cold envelope me. Floating before me it sent another message before dematerializing.

I… I’m fading…

*****

Entry 6 – Amerran Huddles

The pull is becoming stronger. Even while I’m awake I feel the Forgotten Ones calling to me. It’s like a breath on the back of my neck constantly. I am still not quite sure what they want from me, but I know I’m getting closer. Each encounter seems to bring me just to the brink of understanding.

It was dark when I found it this time, but the Forgotten One seemed brighter. It shimmered around the edges while everything else around me dimmed. I began to touch on the hint of something at the corners of my mind, but before I could grasp it it was gone and replaced with a new message.

Please… Keep searching.

*****

Entry 7 – Dobak Fathom

I haven’t slept since my last encounter; the dreams won’t let me. Whatever is happening, it’s getting close. I’m no longer searching, I’m being lead. There’s an invisible force guiding me and it’s becoming almost unbearable. It’s like there are voices in the wind telling me where to go, but no one else hears it.

They brought me into the deep places of the world, down away from the sun and breeze. It was here that I found the next Forgotten One waiting, lurking in the shadows. They don’t sneak up on me anymore. I could see the glow around this one like it was a lantern left for me in the dark.

This time in my fervor I couldn’t hold back. I rushed at it. If patience had only gotten me more questions then I would force a confrontation, but even in my crazed state I should have realized a ghost cannot be forced or threatened. It vanished as I ran through it leaving me chilled to the bone. One last message burned in my mind.

Search for me...

*****

Entry 8  – Megna Burrow

This is it. This is the end. I can feel it. I have been brought to the depths of the world, but for what purpose I still can’t say. The only thing I know for sure is I won’t leave this place again. I was a fool for trusting so blindly in these things, but how do you deny something when it is already inside your mind, inside your soul?! Oh well, it doesn’t matter now.

I leave this last entry in hopes that whoever comes after me might heed my tale as a warning. Do not make the same mistakes I did. Don’t let them in.

The end is coming swiftly now. I can see them in the distance, seven Forgotten Ones with the same dead eyes and blank expressions. They speak no message, but simply wait for me to join them as I know I must.

With this last writing I will head towards their pale glow and the blackness surrounding them to find my end at last, but no rest. Before I go I leave you with a message of my own.

I’m fading… Please, don’t search for me…

End of Days

This is a copy of the notes I left all around Ur when the shutdown was announced. I wrote it not really thinking about character count and ended up having to split it into four notes. I left sets of them everywhere (several sets in Uutiif unintentionally). I got a few kind words about them, which was nice, but I was mostly glad to see how many other people had the same idea and just covered the ground with farewell notes. If you were one of those people who got upset about us "littering" I'm not sorry. It meant a lot to a lot of players and I know it meant a lot to the devs.

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Life is a funny thing. When you first experience it everything is exciting and new and wonderful. After a while that feeling tends to fade and things just are. Life becomes routine, and while sometimes still wonderful, true discovery is harder to come by. At the end of life everything is precious. Nothing is mundane; everything is nostalgic. Every action has meaning; every word has value. As Glitchen, we have never truly experienced this end-of-life revelation and it … is … terrifying.

I am what most would still consider a young Glitchen—only about two years old—but at this point what does it matter? The end comes for us all and it’s funny to me that we should be sad over this event, and not angry at the time we’ve wasted in a world doomed to die. It’s funny, but not surprising, and not stupid because time spent in Ur was never wasted. Sadness and regret are the only emotions that make sense. We mourn the world, not as it was or will be in the end, but as it could have been if only we’d had more time. We mourn, not for the friends we lose, but the friends we could have made. We mourn for all the possible versions of ourselves that we will never become.

I don’t know what will happen to us in the end, I’m not sure if the Giants themselves know, but I have my beliefs and I choose believe that this is not truly the end. There may be no more Glitchen to walk the world and there may not even be a world to walk, but things that have been imagined cannot truly be lost. I believe we will live on, in other ways and new imaginations. The Giants will create more worlds and perhaps we will be lucky enough to visit those too. We will remember and be remembered in some form or fashion and maybe someday in another life our stories will be legend.

These are sad times as we count down to our final days and think on what we might have done, but I know my fellow Glitchen and this will also be a time of celebration. We celebrate the amazing things we accomplished in the brief time given to us and more importantly we celebrate the Glitchen and Giants who made those things possible. We celebrate each other and in doing so we reaffirm the message that whatever happens to us, this world meant something and will continue to mean something until the end of imagination.

Chapter 2: Unanswered Questions - NOTES

o   I really have always been curious about the origin of the names of streets and regions. Some of them almost make sense, but none of them really do. At least not to me.

o   When the world ended there was crap EVERYWHERE. People (myself included) just abandoned their belongings where ever they happened to be. I did this several weeks ahead of time hoping that it might be useful for someone else, but that doesn’t change the fact that the ground was littered with stuff. I guess this is good for Wonder since he/she didn’t know what anything was and Koro wasn’t really much help.

o   The food in Glitch never seemed to age or spoil. That always struck me as funny that I could be carrying around a stew or a cheese plate or some sort of smoothie for weeks and it would be just as good then as it was when I made it. I just imagine there are plates and perfectly prepared meals lying around everywhere for Wonder to find and eat, as well as always-cool drink concoctions to quench her/his thirst. That’s good because though I never mention it, Wonder does still need to take care of him/herself.

o   Here’s a tiny little look into Koro’s sad life. She was cast out by her Rook family, but no Glitch would associate with her so she basically lived a life of solitude watching the Glitchen and wishing to be a part of their community of creativity and fun. As a result she has a sort of idea about things in their world, but no real experience.

o   Wonder sometimes does things that seem irrational and has a lot of knee-jerk reactions. It happens because she/he’s still so new to the world and life in general that he/she hasn’t had time to learn how to deal with and process emotions properly. She/he’s kind of a baby that can walk and talk. At least that’s how I rationalized these outbursts.

o   And here Wonder has touched what players will recognize as a Visiting Stone, which are apparently still operational.

Epilogue: The End of Ur - NOTES

o   This really was Wonder’s story, but Wonder wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without Koro and I wanted to give her some closure as well. The world ended and they all moved on or ceased to exist depending on your own beliefs, but in the end Koro felt accepted and at home which is all she ever wanted.

Chapter 13: A Failed Conspiracy - NOTES

o   I feel like I presented the Vendors and Street Spirits as sort of dumb and one dimensional. I don’t think they really are, but they’re Vendors, they don’t even have their own names so they don’t put that much effort into shaping the world around them. Uncle Friendly is the only Vendor with enough ambition to take charge.

o   I considered developing Magic Rock’s plan into a full blown overthrow, but it wasn’t necessary and I wanted Wonder to knock Uncle Friendly down a peg or two him/herself instead.

o   For a giant slug creature Uncle Friendly is unnervingly good at sneaking up on people.

Prologue: The End of Ur - NOTES

o   This is pretty much how I saw things happening when the real “Awakening” was announced. People panicked and cried. I prepared for the end of the world in the best way that I could think of; I gave away all of my possessions except for a single bag of odds and ends of little practical use, but a lot of sentimental value. Then I traveled all over Ur. I had already gotten most of the exploration badges so I was determined to explore all of the new regions of Ur as well. I’m glad I did because some of the new regions ended up being my favorites.

o   I wasn’t around for much of the actual end of Glitch. We went out with some friends that night and got home about an hour before the servers reset. Originally I had wanted to spend the last minutes in Uutiif, but I wasn’t able to log on. I kept trying right up until the end and somehow I miraculously got on the server after the shutdown. I was on my home street, where I always left my Glitch when I logged off, and I was happy to be there with Mr. Trinkets and Magic Rock instead of off somewhere else for eternity.

o   The idea for this story came from the last paragraph floating around in my head. I just started wondering, ‘What if some Glitch woke up just as the world was ending and everything wasn’t really gone?’ Eventually I sort of fleshed out the idea and started writing this story, but even when I posted this first section I hadn’t completely decided how to end it so it was a little scary to start something without knowing if I would finish it. In the end I let my own feelings on the game dictate how it should play out and a lot of what I wrote--especially the stuff concerning the end of the world and trying to save it--relates directly to my feelings on the end of the game and people wanting to restart it or recreate it somewhere else.

Chapter 12: The Forest at Night - NOTES

o   The Teleportation Script took Wonder to FlurryPiles in Drifa

o   Drifa and Nottis were two of my absolute favorite regions in Ur. It’s a shame that they weren’t released until the game was almost over because the scenery and terrain was beautiful.

o   I love the Half-Forgotten Glitchen and wanted to bring one in to help out with the quest. I figured if anyone would be left behind it would be them.

o   Ur is a very unique place, geographically speaking. The map of the world suggests that it’s laid out very much like a normal planet, but the streets connecting one region to the next would suggest otherwise. I also read on the forums that there was an idea to reimagine the map as a series of nodes floating around a central point. For all of these reasons it’s difficult to map a route in a way that makes sense. Downhill seemed the best guess for Wonder’s general direction.

o   The street where Wonder stops to admire the forest at night is Luminous Night in Drifa. It really is a wonderful street.

o   Once Wonder woke up a Piggy I had to have her/him name it. I loved naming animals around Ur as long as they weren’t already named (unless it was a dumb name that was just a series of random letters or numbers). I kept four Piggies on my street named after the Ninja Turtles and a Butterfly named Master Splinter until they all died. Then one day I returned to my street to find a new piggy named “Plopmaker Gift.” I loved it so much I kept the name.

Chapter 11: Things Aren't Always What They Seem - NOTES

o   Wonder’s admission to making a huge mistake about Koro is a thinly veiled Arrested Development reference, just because I thought it was funny.

o   I’ve presented Uncle Friendly as kind of a bastard here. I apologize to any Uncle Friendly fans, but I needed a bad guy and I never particularly liked Uncle Friendly. He gave me a sort of sleazy feeling. Something you need to keep in mind, though, is I never really wrote him as a “bad guy.” He’s not evil; he’s just got a bit of a power trip going. He really is doing what he feels is right to defend and restore Ur. His goals are noble, but his means and demeanor leave something to be desired.

o   The thing he shoves into Wonder’s had is an Imbued Teleportation Script.

Chapter 10: Room 23 - NOTES

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 musicblock Gwendolyn give Wonder is the Musicblock GNG, of course.

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.

Chapter 9: Inside the Tower - NOTES

o   I didn’t really interact that much with Uncle Friendly in the game, but I got the impression that he was kind of pompous and if they Vendors and Street Spirits needed a leader I imagined he would be the one to do it. It helps that he’s one of the only named Vendors in Ur.

o   I also assumed the Vendors were much more organized than the Glitchen and would probably make plans for an emergency situation like the world only partly ending.

o   The whole Wine of the Dead idea was another abandoned plot point. I originally wanted to have Wonder purposefully die and explore Naraka to bring back the Wine of the Dead, but it felt unnecessary. I also considered bringing Hell’s Bartender into the scene, but he got axed when I didn’t end up using the Wine of the Dead at all.

o   I took some liberties with the layout of the tower. The Mezzanine isn’t actually connected to the rooms accessible by the main entrance at all, but there were several areas marked “Under Construction” in the actual tower, so I used them to my advantage to make getting around the tower easier.

o   The Interrogation Room is an actual area that was under development in the game at one time. According to the devs it was a room where misbehaving Glitchen would be taken and interrogated and persuaded to behave or else. Here is a screenshot and a video.

o   All of the rooms in the Mezzanine are real rooms in the tower. The Hall of Records, as far as I know, was never accessible. The Hall of Rejected Concepts was a room added shortly before the shutdown to showcase ideas that were considered for the game, but ultimately were never implemented for one reason or another.

o   The log with a face and arms lying on the floor of the Rook Museum is, of course, Greeterbot Sentry G-42.

o   If you never experienced the Rook Museum quest, or would like to relive it, here is the video I used for most of my research while writing this chapter. It’s got the entire quest from the beginning, but the actual museum bit starts around 1:40.

o   I knew from the very beginning that Wonder would freak out when she/he learned about the Rook and I knew I wanted that to happen after visiting the Rook Museum. It wasn’t until I was watching the video and listening to the audio for all of the exhibits that I got the idea to intersperse their dialogue with the voice over. It was a total last-minute idea, but I think it worked well to end the chapter.

Chapter 8: An Unexpected Gathering - NOTES

o   The background for this blog is an edited snap from Semper Valere in Balzare, one of the regions they travel through in this chapter. The original snap was taken by Chemisie and you can find it here. I loved these forest regions even though there wasn’t much to actually do there besides collect quoins. The views were amazing.

o   I spent quite a bit of time in the Firebog regions during my time in Ur. I went on a crystal making binge for a bit so I got to know Chakra Phool pretty well. After the shut down announcement my full Firefly Jar was one of the few personal items I kept with me.

o   Magic Rock is right; fireflies are a bunch of show-offs.

o   Jethimadh Tower always drew me to it because it was so different than the rest of the mostly natural world. I know the devs had a lot of plans for it still, but it will always be mostly a mystery. I always thought if there were answers about the world to be had, they would be contained in some locked room in Jethimadh Tower. It was always my plan to bring Wonder there.

o   I’m not sure if a Glitch could really hold a Rook in a bag, but again, I took some artistic license.

o   There’s another Purple reference in Uncle Friendly’s speech.

o   I had also thought about expanding Helga’s part beyond this brief mention, but I decided not to try to throw too many characters into the mix.

o   If Magic Rock and Uncle Friendly’s exchange seems a little cold it’s because I imagined they had some mutual dislike of each other from dealings in the past, but they knew they needed to put that aside, at least for the moment.

o   In the first version of this part the party actually came upon the gathering of Vendors and Uncle Friendly in a dead end street in Chakra Phool and then convinced them to follow the party to the tower. I decided to change it, because frankly that made no sense. If the Vendors were going to get together they would probably choose a landmark, not some random side street.

Chapter 7: A Quest! - NOTES

o   I’m a fan of fantasy books and RPG games so one of my main goals was to get this rag-tag party together. Of course this party is unlike any party I’ve ever read about or played in a game.

o   I had a deep fascination with the Ancestral Lands in the game. Even though they turned out to be mostly featureless and barren criss-crossing streets I still wondered what it was about them that caused such a strong reaction in Glitchen. Having Wonder visit the Ancestral Lands was another discarded plot point. At first I wanted to put the object of a quest somewhere out there,  but then later the idea evolved into having Wonder seek out Juju Grandma for guidance or some other reason. In the end I decided against it. The Ancestral Lands have their own story about the end of their world; it wasn’t necessary to tie it into this one.

o   I expect Magic Rock would be the most upset at the thought of the rocks losing their voices.

o   Bubble Trees were crazy. Just read their conversations.

o   So, this exchange takes place on Maaku Mills in Tahli. I know there are no Paper Trees there; I don’t believe there are any paper trees anywhere in Tahli, but having Wonder sit under a Paper Tree paints a much nicer picture than having Wonder sit under a Bean Tree or an Egg Plant. Plus I loved the Paper Trees, so I took some artistic license.

o   I’m pretty sure I had another Purple reference ready for this section, but it felt out of place so it got cut.

o   Every party needs a quest or else it’s just a group of friends hanging out, which rarely makes for a compelling story.

Chapter 6: Rook Attack - NOTES

o   I figured if anyone besides the inexperienced Wonder would give a good Rook a chance it would be Magic Rock. He’s a smart guy and he knows that if Koro hadn’t pecked the imagination out of the last Glitch in Ur yet then there must be more to her story.

o   I knew early on how I wanted Wonder to find out about the Rook, and it wasn’t from Magic Rock or Mr. Trinkets outing Koro, so this was a little trickier to write. How do you introduce sworn enemies and convince one that the other’s not a threat without actually discussing the age-long conflict? I guess this chapter is how I did it, but I’m sure it could have been handled better.

o   I had to work in a brief reference to Tiny Speck, the company behind Glitch. It’s not super subtle, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Chapter 5: Inventory - NOTES

o   It always struck me as funny that your butler was never in your house. Generally butlers tidy up inside, but in Glitch they wait forever outside. That’s why, even when the house was his, I never had Mr. Trinkets go inside.

o   I always wondered about Magic Rock’s instantaneous teleportation abilities. He’s always there. You can’t escape him.

o   Unlike the fictitious Sebastian my house was incredibly messy. The “dreadfully cluttered with no sense of style line” is directed at myself entirely. I loved the idea of creating this awesome house with multiple floors and great decorations, but in the end I just wasn’t suited to it. I was always out in the world and really used my house as a glorified storage closet. Up until the announcement that Glitch was closing my house was a single level with only the starting furniture and stuff left EVERYWHERE. I had crap all over my table and floor and when I couldn’t fit anything else I just piled it outside. I’m a bit of a video game hoarder, I guess. I did keep a chicken named Alohomora in the back yard just to mix things up. Once the shutdown was announced I got rid of it all, either by donating it or just dropping it somewhere in Ur. Even my furniture got put away. In the end I left a bare, one-room house with starry wallpaper and a few trees in the backyard.

o   I liked fitting the wardrobe into the house in a way that Glitchen might have actually experienced it, rather than as just an interface on the website. Again, I purposely avoided describing what Wonder is wearing (if anything).

o   The collecting of bags and equipment is just a technicality. I didn’t want a lack of items to be a plot point later on, so I figured it would be better to explain how Wonder gained an expanded inventory and lots of foodstuffs ahead of time. Mostly just me being nitpicky about the realities of carrying supplies.

o   The specific mention of bringing along a toolbox was another side bit that got left out. I was planning to actually have Magic Rock teach Wonder how to use some of the tools later on, but it just kind of got lost in the story.

o   Firedog was my first ever Cubimal. He was a Firebog Street Spirit Cubimal. He was one of the few items I kept with me after the shutdown was announced.

o   The second Purple reference. Mr. Trinkets turned into a bit of a pusher in this story.

Chapter 4: New Friends - NOTES

o   Teleportation in Glitch always seemed painful to me. There were little jokes about not reappearing in the right order or winding up somewhere completely different than you meant to, but I know there was never any real danger. I kind of wish there was some inherent risk to teleporting, like in the Harry Potter universe. Transporting your molecules across vast distances and then rebuilding yourself is a tricky business with lots of ways it might go wrong. Plus, have you considered that if you break yourself apart into individual particles and then rebuild them somewhere else are you even still the same person? Think about it. None of this every stopped me from teleporting, mind you, but it’s something to consider.

o   This home street was completely invented for this story. There are a million home streets in this style, but I didn’t base the one Wonder visits on any particular person’s home street.

o   I also considered putting a tower on this home street and letting Wonder explore that, but I had to decide whether I wanted to write a story about a Glitch and their quest using references from the game, or I wanted to cram as many game references in as possible and then try to fit a story around that. I chose to focus on the story and leave out the extras. We all remember towers anyway.

o   From the beginning when I was piecing together the parts of this story I knew that I wanted to include Magic Rock and my butler, Mr. Trinkets, in Wonder’s party. Everyone needs a Magic Rock, he knows just about everything! The problem was that opinion on Magic Rock was split. Despite being incredibly helpful he is still a bit of a mystery so I invented some aspects of his history to fit the story.

o   Honestly I couldn’t tell you where I got the name Maurice. I just thought it would be funny to give Magic Rock a normal name, and while “Maurice” isn’t an especially normal name it is a lot more normal than “Magic Rock.” As soon as I wrote it I decided I would never refer to him as Maurice again in the story.

o   I loved the idea of the butlers being these weird golem-like creatures made from bits and pieces of things. Mr. Trinkets is 100% based on my butler from the game. Fun Fact: The name Mr. Trinkets comes from an expansive D&D campaign my wife and I played with some friends. It was the first time we had ever played and Mr. Trinkets was our pack-mule and party mascot. He even killed a goblin once when he got startled in a cave. We all still remember him fondly.

o   One of the saddest things about Glitch closing was all of the players describing saying goodbye to their butlers. A lot of players became incredibly attached to these things that were basically just there to make managing the social aspects easier. It’s a testament to the amount of emotional investment opportunities Tiny Speck created when they designed different aspects of the game. It’s one of the reasons people were so attached in the first place. I’m glad in the end I stayed on my home street with the real Mr. Trinkets to keep him company.

o   The whole Purple Flower thing was a running joke that kind of got left by the way-side. I just loved the subtle (and not-so subtle) drug and alcohol references in Glitch. It looked and felt at most times like a family friendly game, but there was such an undercurrent of degenerate behavior that it always made me laugh when it popped up in-game. I never messed around with No-No Powder, but I was well acquainted with Purple. I kept several plots of it on my own home street. Incidentally, if you want to relive your wild days of Purple use without the consequences just click this link to give your web browser a little Purple flavor. I bookmarked the URL and keep it as its own button on my browser. Now you can always feel like you’re high on Purple wherever you go on the web!

o   The use of “ma’amsir” was suggested by Kshandra during the whole “gender neutral” discussion on the forums. It’s a funny word that stuck in my mind so I worked it in.

o   I sort of loved the idea of an “Odd Couple”-like pairing of Magic Rock and Mr. Trinkets. You might even consider it a bromance, if there were such a thing in Ur.

o   I heard about people leaving notes similar to this one for their own butlers. It broke my heart a little bit so I wanted to include the same sentiment in my story.

o   The Glitch, Sebastian, was also entirely made up by me. I pulled the name out of thin air and I didn’t find a single actual Glitch named Sebastian so I made him the owner of the house Wonder was visiting.

Chapter 3: Alone Again - NOTES

o   I didn’t name any of the chapters when I wrote them, I just have a Word doc divided by horizontal divider lines. It wasn’t until I put them into the blog that I titled them. I sort of hated this chapter title when I wrote it, but I didn’t really have any better ideas. Now that Koro’s story is more fleshed out in my mind and in the rest of the story it feels like a better title to me.

o   Speaking of titles, none of these are supposed to be copied from or referencing any other work. I did, more than once, have to talk myself out of using a Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit chapter title, though.

o   This is a very dramatic scene for Koro, and she’s a very dramatic bird. One might even say overly dramatic. Her declaration that she’ll wait there for Wonder until she dies seems ridiculous, but that’s exactly the kind of thing that could happen in Ur. In fact it did happen all the time. People would go AFK and come back to find themselves in Hell constantly. Of course death for a Rook might not just mean a quick trip to Hell.

Chapter 1: First Steps - NOTES

o   Before I started posting this story I got on the Glitch forums and asked people’s opinions on doing a single gender version of the story vs. doing two different versions or trying some gender neutral alternative. My thinking was that gender and sex don’t play a role in Glitch at all so I wanted this character to embody that and for readers to be able to put themselves in Wonder’s shoes. The debate got a little bigger than I intended but there were a lot of good points made. In the end I realized there were no perfect solutions so I decided to do two different versions because it seemed less confusing than using completely unfamiliar gender neutral pronouns.

o   I also purposely left Wonder’s physical description as vague as possible for the same reason. I never actually say what Wonder looks like or what clothes he/she is wearing so that readers would fill in the blanks on their own. Incidentally Wonder is intended to be naked in the beginning until she/he finds clothes later in the story.

o   I had a lot of fun writing this part of the story. Probably the most fun because it was entirely light and comical and I knew things would get serious later on. I tried to channel some of the ridiculousness that Tiny Speck was so good at including in the game. Mostly I just tried to imagine what it would be like to find yourself fully formed with some idea of what life was about, but without the benefit of Magic Rock’s guidance in the early stages of our lives. Wonder didn’t get a tutorial before he/she woke up.

o   If you look at the tags at the bottom of the posts I tried to include the prominent regions and streets included in each chapter, even if they’re not named in the text. I never stated it, but Wonder woke up in Middle Valley Clearing, in Groddle Forest. I chose this because I’m fairly certain it’s where my Glitch woke up. I know for a fact it was Groddle Forest, but it may have been another street near Middle Valley Clearing, like Groddle Forest Junction or Pasha’sPlace.

o   There would certainly be plenty of things for Wonder to be curious about upon waking up. I chose to have Wonder focus on a Musicblock first because it seems to me like such an iconic item from Glitch that it’s instantly recognizable to any player, even noobs like me. Which Musicblock is it? I don’t know, umm… how about BB-4?

o   As soon as I started this story I knew I wanted to build a company around Wonder and I knew it would include a Rook. I love the look of ravens, crows and other black birds, and I was always intrigued by the idea of the Rook. I figured a Glitch who didn’t know anything about the world would have no reason not to befriend a Rook as long as it wasn’t trying to kill him.

o   Koro mentions that her name is not really a name, but more of a rank. This was a concept of the Rook social structure that I never fleshed out in the story because it didn’t really matter. “Koro,” as you probably realized, is an anagram of “Rook.” Almost nothing is known about the Rook so I started thinking about how their society might develop. They seem like a very single-minded, militaristic society so I thought maybe they wouldn’t have names because individuality is shunned (which is why they hate the Glitchen), so I imagined they would be identified solely by their ranks. Again, not being very creative, each rank would be an anagram of “Rook” with “Koro” being the lowest rank and “Rook” being the highest. Koro-the-character’s values didn’t align with the rest of the Rook so they cast her out and she remained at the lowest level her entire life and was never given another name.

o   So I know the bit with Koro naming Wonder is maybe a little cheesey, but I got stuck on the name Wonder really early on and I wanted to work it in. Cheesey as it is it also fits the character. It also put me in mind of Wander from Shadow of the Colossus, another hero traveling a strangely empty world looking for answers. Also, by some miraculous coincidence, there wasn’t an actual Glitch avatar named Wonder. There were several that used the word “wonder” in some form in their name, but none just named “Wonder.” That was a big plus because I didn’t want there to be any confusion on whether this was an original character or someone else’s avatar.

o   Every Glitch knows that jumping is an essential and enjoyable part of life. I used to jump endlessly for no reason. It’s so much more fun that just walking from place to place.