I had lots of fun with this game. Nobody will heed my word. Friends, listen: it's a great game. It's almost too clever, asking the player to think outside the box and grasp onto new concepts at a fairly speedy pace. It's almost too cute, giving you a pink laptop, cartoon avis with puns, and a match-3 puzzler that is anything but casual.
It's a high-concept cocktail of genres, that doesnn't bother to explain, or answer for the flavors. Beglitched all takes place on the pink computer I just mentioned, given to you, your character, by a talented, precocious - maybe genius - hacker who left a long shadow. You are exploring it because you were entrusted to it, and it should be fun. It has two interfaces, one a Bejeweled-like "fight," where you have to use one of several pieces to track down how far, and in what direction a certain enemy is hiding, before you blow them up. Outside of battle, you are a cat avi, traveling through a varying grid of computer screens which you can dive in, digging into more. This is the "adventure" mode aspect, where you get from one point to another over a longer period of time, with battles intermittently. It plays like Minesweeper, where spoils of certain computer screens are only revealed by their neighbors, so you deduce the "mines" from the desirables. Once you dive into a screen to the next level, it blurs and makes a quick "dial-up" sound. Which never gets old.
On a third, "menu" screen, you are simply clicking icons on Glitch Witch's desktop to travel into her files, where you can read her poetry and journal entries, or travel through a lost woods of folders that reset once you hit a wrong "turn." It has a voyeuristic thrill, except of course Glitch Witch always feels one step ahead of your nameless protagonist.
All this minesweeping and Bejewling is a metaphor, for something that goes over my head, but never bores with its ambient buzz. You meet other hackers, other speaking animals who are all happy to see the "Glitch Witch" again. Based on her old "forum" buddies, you can start to build a portrait of what kind of person she was, an early 4chan type who had experiments and potential with trickster trolls, fortune hunters, and others who didn't develop the sense of responsibility with their skills. The side characters are likeable and funny but slightly forgettable. Building your concept of the past Glitch Witch, and her vague present challenges the player in a way, and packs narrative as much as a short story might.
Eventually, after a difficulty curve, the new mechanics in each level are also explained in journal pieces as metaphors for what she was thinking when she created certain programs, or possibly even "spells." The "glitch" part is taken to the extreme as outside of the box thinking forces you to push the limits of what is given to you on the screen. Also, probably a metaphor, of course.
The tutorial is left out: it assumes the player can pick up how to play. This may rankle some, but please others, who don't like to be pulled down by tutorials. I didn't have a problem, because I like to get my hands dirty first; the game doesn't punish you for failing until after you've grasped the concept. But it is hard not to see it as a crafty cop out of making something that eases the player in more, to shove the tutorial to a later part of the game (when it becomes a gag or easter egg).
Unfortunately, I didn't catch on to the story elements until it was past time to reflect on the first half of the game, so I may go back to clear things up. The ending, however challenging, still teases that I haven't completed the game, and there is a techno hole in the pink laptop that I still can only speculate about, like he playfully cryptic journal entries.
Beglitched is a computer within a computer, to show how some people lived online, even before the dawn of social media. As a cultural artifcact, younger players may come to understand better the life of a nerdy person in the 90's or mid 2000's. Not many games help you view games, casual genres, or the world in a different way, so it's cool to Beglitched deliver.
