From the beginning, it was clear that an artistic aesthetic was essential to Glitch's fortunes, and in that regard, at the very least, there's no doub

they play, decide on which paths they want to pursue. In order to achieve those paths, they must acquire certain skills. Among those skills are animal kinship, green thumb, gardening, botany cooking, baking, making drinks and so on. "We just thought about the kind of world we wanted to make," Butterfield recalled, and came up with "skills that related to each other in a supply and demand sense."
As you play, you gain experience points, and use those to level up. When you get to a new level, you get to choose new skills from a sort of skill tree, and each tree path has five or six different sub-skills.
So, for example, someone who wants to become a grand farmer must, over the course of the game, learn skills like animal husbandry, as well as gardening. "You need a bunch of different kinds of skills to get there," Butterfield said, "but you might not get there until level 30 or level 40, which could take a few months."
Players will earn skills by completing various quests and other achievements throughout the game. But while there may eventually be 40, 50, 60, or even more levels, the alpha will launch with only about 10, Butterfield said.
Another goal is to ensure that there are no barriers to people of different levels playing together. "So if your friends started playing before you," Butterfield said, "it can still be fun and not be lame, because you're in a totally different world." In the early days of Glitch's creation, Tiny Speck was using a game system in which each player would initially choose from among five character classes, each of which had a primary and a secondary talent. But after many months of work on that game mechanic, the team ripped it out in OctoberFrom the beginning, it was clear that an artistic aesthetic was essential to Glitch's fortunes, and in that regard, at the very least, there's no doubt Tiny Speck has succeeded. Throughout the game, players will encounter a series of stunningly beautiful styles, from denim mountains to clouds hanging on strings to a cracked open sky. Each of the many illustrators on the team is responsible for a different style, and in most cases, each style represents a different giant's imagination.
Tiny Speck's founders, too, seem to have a notable imagination. For example, the game plays out in accelerated time, with a game hour advancing six times as fast as a real hour. That means a day takes just four real hours to complete. The game also has what some might consider a strange calendar. Its 11 months are: Primuary, with 29 days; Spork, with 3; Turkmenbashi, with 55; Candy, 17; Fever, 73; Junuary, 19; Augtober, 13; Remember, 37; Doom, 5, Wiidershins, 47; and Eleventy, 11 days.