Glitchspace is an incredibly unique puzzle-platformer akin to games like Portal with a style straight out of Tron.
Glitchspace
Developer: Space Budgie
Price: $12.99
MonsterVine was provided a PC code for review.
Previewed with an i5-4690k & GTX 970 with 16GB RAM.
The big element that makes Glitchspace so different from other games is the way that it uses basic programming to solve physical problems. As a programmer in training, most of the concepts were extremely familiar and basic to me but I do have concerns that they may be beyond the scope of the average gamer. In this virtual world you can modify the properties of red cubes by rotating, moving, or stretching them. Later on in the game you can tell these red blocks to make things bounce or spit out other cubes.
Glitchspace starts you off nice and easy, with basic commands such as “move forward” where you only have to input a single number, and eventually ramps up to modifying object collision, physics and vectors. What really grabbed me was how much the game felt like some programming challenges I’ve faced in the real world. Most of the puzzles in-game were simple, but in one way or another I had one hand tied behind my back and I had to get creative. Over half of the solutions that I came up with felt pretty hacky, and while it’s possible that I may have found an exploit or two, it’s far more likely that there are various different possible solutions, much like how programming works in real life. Each scenario presented a simple problem, which was to get from point A to point B, but the obstacles in your way, tools under your belt and restrictions placed on you were different from level to level.
The code that the player interacts with is all visual-based and is, for the most part well explained. Near the end of the game certain things become ambiguous and confusing, specifically the “Object ID” system was a nightmare. There was even one moment when I tried to get more info on a node and was told that there is no tutorial for this node, yet. But these issues are few and far between and most of the game’s puzzles were laughably easy with a few extremely difficult exceptions.
The obvious comparison to me, in terms of the size and scope of Glitchspace is the original Portal game. However, Glitchspace is different in a number of ways. Unlike Portal, the tools at your command only expand as you progress, with each level introducing a new way to manipulate the world around you. This prevents the puzzles themselves from feeling stale. Unfortunately, the game as a whole can become a little boring without a central narrative or any sense of purpose. I worry that it would have been extremely easy to leave the game behind forever had I become too frustrated at any point during my 3 hour programming venture.
Glitchspace is incredibly airtight. The graphical style of the game is incredibly crisp, clean and digital. Cubes that represent data are constantly flowing around the map, the color palette is a distinct purple, blue and white and everything in this digital world solidifies the feeling that you are in a computer. The music was no different and at one point the light electronic music began to sound ominous and mysterious. It’d be unfair of me to leave out how impressed I was with Glitchspace in a technological sense. Each level was separated by a portal that you have to go through but I never saw a single load screen or any pause in motion and the frame rate never skipped a beat.
The Final Word
Glitchspace is truly a one of a kind game that takes the best of games like Portal and puts its own spin on it. Some of the later systems can be a bit advanced for the average gamer, and the game could use some sort of a story, but ultimately this is a great game for programming and puzzle-lovers alike.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
