Happy Anniversary to Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between!

Celebrate one year of surreal journeys with 35% off and read an interview with the Silverstring team!

Happy Anniversary to Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between and the team from Silverstring! Since its launch on 31 March 2022, Glitchhikers has helped us all to find a quiet moment to sit back and relax as we take a journey through the spaces between places. 

We recently sat down with the Silverstring team to reflect on the past year since the game came out. If you’re a fan of the game or are curious to start your own journey, keep reading below to learn all about Glitchsonas and how “being on a journey lets you detach yourself from the realities of the world in a way that you normally can’t…”

To celebrate the game’s anniversary, Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between is currently on sale for 35% off on Steam. Start your own introspective journey today!

🌙 Happy One Year Anniversary for Glitchhikers! Since Glitchhikers is a game all about journeys, how have you found the journey since launch?

Lucas (Studio Director): It has been quite a wonderful trek. We’ve had some amazing press and Steam reviews that clearly get what we were going for with Glitchhikers. That is so gratifying and validating. We’re always overjoyed when new people find the game, and find something in the game that speaks to them. Unlike a lot of projects, there hasn’t been a huge dropoff in people discovering the game from sale to sale—Glitchhikers isn’t a flash in the pan; it has some staying power. And we’ve seen a lot of love for our amazing soundtrack, including the incredible experience of having the UBC Orchestra arrange and perform a medley of tracks from it.

Audrey (Technical Director): Launching a game is always such an emotional rollercoaster. You’re always worried about whether you did enough to make the game really shine. Did we optimize everything enough? Is it easy to navigate the menu? Are there any weird bugs we didn’t catch? Usually, that anxiety disappears for me once I start seeing some Let’s Plays or Twitch streams. It's always funny to see how the things you worry about as a game developer just don’t line up at all with how players think. When you’ve spent over a year working on a thing, it's easy to forget how easy it is for players to get lost in the mystery of the experience. But then you get to see that excitement mirrored back to you in the eyes of the first wave of players and it's just an amazing feeling. I’ve definitely felt that about Glitchhikers so far.

🌙 What is it about a ‘journey’ that you think provokes thought?

Audrey: Being on a journey lets you detach yourself from the realities of the world in a way that you normally can’t. The mind can wander freely. I think we all have the capacity for deep introspection and connection, but we don’t all have the space. Journeys provide that space.

Lucas: It can sort of be this enforced time with your own thoughts—if you’re driving a long distance on a highway, especially alone, all you have to do is let your mind wander. The same goes for sitting on a train staring out the window. Even when you go for a walk, even when you’re listening to music, your mind is just wandering. Add to that it being late at night when the world is so different and you’re probably tired, and the places your mind goes are always a little strange. You’re not engrossed in the day-to-day; you become untethered and can contemplate the bigger questions.

🌙 What was your goal in encouraging introspection in players? Was it to encourage people to sit with uncomfortable thoughts? Or perhaps to explore a different avenue of thought?

Lucas: Glitchhikers was never about trying to give the player a really particular, specific experience, but rather to create a space to help them have the experience they are ready to have. Maybe a player just needs a break from the day-to-day, or maybe they’re hurting and need the space to heal or explore difficult ideas. If we help a player gain a better understanding or acceptance of their place in the universe, obviously that’s a massive success; but if we just provoke them into saying, “Huh, I never thought of it that way” or “Oh I had no idea” or even “Yeah, this hiker gets it” then that’s also a success.

🌙 Why did you choose the particular locations and modes of transport for the game?

Audrey: When we worked on the original game, there was never a question of what we were doing. Glitchhikers was about a road trip. For me, it was specifically about the road trip from Calgary, Alberta to Vancouver, BC, which I had driven many times before. Over the years I think we came to realize that although the road trip is a fairly common experience, it isn’t quite as universal as we wanted it to be. When it came time to make The Spaces Between, we thought long and hard about what kinds of journeys would help broaden the Glitchhikers experience. We talked a lot about what would just be the “most” universal travel experience but eventually came to decide that there wasn’t any one single option that would fit everyone. Instead, we opted to focus on a couple more journeys that, while not perfectly universal, captured a pretty large amount of what people think about when they travel.

🌙 Were any of the hikers based on real people?

Lucas: As a writer, there’s always a little bit of myself in all the characters I write, especially in Glitchhikers when we’re often exploring personal but universal ideas as a gateway into conversation. None of the hikers were directly based on specific people but a few had some pretty strong inspirations. The hiker that’s a wheelchair user took a lot of inspiration from a friend and consultant on the project from whom I’ve learned a lot, for instance. And when we were writing and designing the hiker with all the screens in front of him, I was like, “Oh no, he’s me”— which then led to an idea that a few of us might have “Glitchsonas”, as it were. He’s me; the travelling witch with the familiars is Claris’s Glitchsona (Claris Cyarron is our Creative Director) and was largely written by her; the bird from another dimension is Audrey’s Glitchsona, with a lot of their conversations coming from discussing ideas with her. As a fun thought exercise, find us on Twitter or Discord and tell us what your Glitchsona would be like!

🌙 What’s your favorite piece of feedback you’ve received to date about the game?

Lucas: Hard to say just one thing. We love watching live streams and seeing all the conversations the game provokes in the chat. One player said a character reminded them to take their meds. I’m humbled that there’s an occasional review saying the game saved their life in some way. But I also love the reviews that are just something along the lines of “wtf, 10/10”.

🌙 What journey do you have planned next?

Audrey: If and when we are able to make it back to the Glitchhikers universe, I really want to do a hotel mode. Just endlessly wandering uncanny hallways with interesting hikers and bizarre spaces behind random doors!

Lucas: In the meantime, we’ve been working hard in the last year on a handful of new game ideas and prototypes. We’re always keeping the sensibilities that we refined in Glitchhikers—accessibility, personal and real storytelling, a little weird and a little queer—but we’re trying to take those to somewhat more “mainstream” game ideas. We love our alt/art game history and what we did with Glitchhikers, but we love strategy games, action games and roleplaying games too! We’ll just have to see what comes next.

Head to Twitter now to wish Silverstring a Happy Anniversary for Glitchhikers: The Spaces between!