Why Doesn't Linden Lab Send Out E-Mail Like This?

Location: Basking in Glory

Received from Tiny Speck, the creators of Glitch. Rod Humble, you should pay attention to these stoned madmen:

If knowledge is power, then, having just finished learning Animal Kinship II, you are filled with power. Tingling with power. Knowledge-infused power is radiating from you, like the smell of freshly roasted chicken radiates from, well, a freshly roasted chicken. Look at you! The Freshly Roasted Chicken of Knowledge-Power!

Here’s what you just learned, chook:

Advancing on the path of Animal Kinship introduces some additional rewards for the basic animal interactions, such as increasing the amount of meat piggies give when nibbled and the amount of milk butterflies give when milked.

Glitch: I'm Inside Their Thoughts

 
Location: Petting Trees

And learning to jump, put things in my backpack, and pet piggies who give me a steak--not pork, I presume--for being kind to them. I'm getting advice from something that looks like a floating potato emitting rays of light. It keeps reminding me it's my "familiar."

Glitch as to be the strangest little casual game I've ever found. It seems a creation of people who took a lot of mind-altering drugs while reading the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. The look and feel reminds me of late, lamented Metaplace, but with more content ready made and a urge to explore.

Hmm...sounds like the promise of Second Life. It's a 2D game, but it runs in my browser smoother than silk.  All you need is Flash (sorry, iPad users).



The metaphors are clearly going to keep me playing Glitch.  It is an invented world focused on inventing a world so the inventors will grow. Yes, that makes about as much sense to me, too.

But it's not about sex or shooting things. I rather like the idea of massaging a butterfly and getting repaid with "butterfly milk" that has magical properties. The best soundtrack since that for Harry the Handsome Executive accompanies me as I trundle along.

Not much to report on this initial dispatch from Glitch, except I was laughing out loud as I finished the quick tutorial and began to explore my first destination.  The world seems to be made like Metaplace's; it's not contiguous like SL or an Open Sim grid, but regions light up when an avatar enters.

The game just went live on September 27. I followed Hamlet Au's breadcrumbs to the site, watched the trailer, and just had to give it a whirl.

There's something about being inside the thoughts of one of 11 "giants" who made this universe...ahem, cannot call them "gods" without offending those touchy about religion. So giants they are, right out of Lovecraft's fevered brain.
 
So far I've not done much. I'm closing in, after 15 minutes of play, on Level 2, when I hope my little green man, Smoky Messerschmidt (I know, another hard-to-type avatar name) will begin to accrue enough in-world swag to trade it for a custom appearance.

Just like that other virtual world I've shed so much typing on over the years.

Update: It's not a grey potato. It's a pet rock.  And the trailer is so addictive I'm going to embed it right here from YouTube:

This thing must involve Metaplace alums.

Road Trip Attempt: Linden Lab, I Hate You

Location: Sim Crossing

You reek, LL. The perfect car, and at the first sim-border, I get this. Fix the damned physics.

Road Trip?

 
Location: Looking at a car I would kill you to own

Pontiac GTO, 1967: the power and glory of a nation on a rocket sled. Men like young gods steer their street monsters into telephone poles, spewing testosterone and hubris. They want to be astronauts, but instead of Saturn V rockets they have Pontiacs.

My god, an SLer named SeVeN VanDouser made a '67 Goat that is worth my notice. IRL, I care for one classic vehicle (a hot-rod racing truck with some mice living in it) and I'd not want a real GTO until I had a better garage with climate control.

But in SL? Hell, yes. The '67 is The Machine That Must Be Worshipped.

Bring on the toys of the young gods.


So I guess I need to take roadtrip again, eh? Anyone care to visit the shop and get a car to race me?

Hint to classics owners: Urinal blocks keep the mice out, but your car smells like...a clean urinal. This, too, will never happen in SL.

Update: Next post will feature a road trip in the Goat. I also found out that, IRL, my Mini-Cooper S does a 0-60 time of 6.6 seconds, the same estimate as a stock '67 GTO with the 400 cubic-inch V8. As much as I love the Mini....the Goat still wins.