Video Game Review: Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between

Developer & Publisher: Silverstring Media Inc.

Genre: Adventure

Reviewed For: Nintendo Switch

Also Available On: PC

More and more, I appreciate video game developers trying to do more than simply entertain. Long gone are the days where games were only meant to stimulate dopamine and steal your quarters. Now, players have a chance for gaming to deliver a message or enthrall you with a story, in some cases better than a book or a film might land with an individual. Yet it’s also important to remember that developers need money, too, in order to continue their craft and, well, survive. We need a game to reach a broad audience to not only tell our tale, but also to keep the lights on and maybe allow us to make more games in the future. And it’s hard to ignore the siren song of the Nintendo Switch, one of the best selling consoles in years.

Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between is the much expanded follow-up to an indie darling from a few years back which took a grand total of fifteen minutes to “play” through. The objective of Glitchhikers is nonexistent: you interface with the game in order to experience several different methods of travel, some of which will be available the further on you go. With a variety of transport set against a series of melancholy areas, your character moves through them and drinks in the atmosphere, occasionally interacting with fellow travelers along the way. These travelers, along with your own inner thoughts, help to give you the scope of the game. There are questions for them and questions for you, conclusions you draw not about your character but yourself, and other such waxing philosophy moments. This is, in no uncertain terms, a multi level walking simulator that gives players chances to look inward as they continue to be fascinated by the outward world.

Relying heavily on presentation over anything else, Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between is an absolutely fascinating game to take in. The designs, which have their own special taste of purposeful roughness, capture an ethereal quality wherever you go, adding to the dreamlike nature of your quest and encounters. AS the name might imply, there are various “glitches” built into the game, be it you blinking and time skipping forward or the game very literally having tears and graphical errors in everything around you. A lot of love and care was put into making sure that these glitches were interesting rather than foreboding: in the wrong hands, this could have easily been an unsetting backdrop for a horror movie. In the same vein, the use of chill beats and very light synthwave helps to relax a player throughout the adventure, though adventure still doesn’t seem the right word. In any case, the music is top notch for focusing without being overstimulated: I’d highly recommend checking it out wherever you get your music.

As for the game itself, this is where Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between is either going to make lifelong fans or utterly spurn players. Relying on narration and exposition (which is mostly read, but some is voiced), you have to base your entire enjoyment or experience with the game by what you think about what happens. You’ll pick up hitchhikers if you go off on the car journey, and you can make deep small talk (if that makes sense) which invites you to try and find your own position within this conversation. The hitchhiker’s childhood wasn’t great, how was yours? They want to smoke in the car, do you approve? Or when you go onto the train, do you want to stay and think more about why trains are disappearing as a public form of transportation, or just wander off to another car and look out the window? Each interaction tries very hard to appear casual and welcoming while simultaneously attempting to plumb your depths as quickly and sometimes as awkwardly as possible, but that’s how conversations like this go.

As an aside, I distinctly recall a conversation I had with a person waiting for a bus years ago in which we got into a pretty deep debate about the energies and intentions of people as a whole versus as an individual. That conversation was sparked by simply waiting with someone, and it was a phenomenal experience that actually helped to shape events later in life. I get the impression that Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between is trying to capture that same magic, because the developers know that it’s an important moment for emulation. And, for the younger audience (or at least the more extroverted among us), it’s probably hitting the nail on the head by running these moments (or simulated moments) through such a fascinating world filter. Yet, for someone who is inexcusably introverted and prefers not to make small talk, this was dead in the water for me pretty quickly, and being limited in my other means (you can change lanes in the car and that’s about it), the “game” element was incredibly superficial. Plus, and maybe this is just me, but I feel like the conversations just didn’t occur frequently enough. If there was a great moment of connection, I would want to reflect on it for a while, but, instead, I just found myself chomping at the bit, trying to get to the next moment to see if that changed anything. It didn’t.

To reference my point up top about making money, Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between feels like a game that would be phenomenal in a VR setting, no doubt in my mind. This is also something that people can and should experience in a widescreen format, allowing for a grand display of all the bizarre but wonderful design and landscape choices that went into this game. Cramming it all into the Nintendo Switch, though, just doesn’t feel like a good fit. For one, it doesn’t hold itself well in handheld mode compared to other games of the same cloth (Neo Cab, Coffee Talk, even VA-11 HALL-A). All those titles give players a chance to view from third person, which lends itself better to the Switch’s natural orientation. The first person makes it too floaty and beyond ethereal: it seems more intangible than anything else.

Still, like I said, this game feels like it’s reaching out to a part of me that’s been dormant for decades now. The part that wants to talk and wonder and find some kind of connection with another to connect with myself. I love what Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between wants to do, and I wish I was capable of coming along on the journey in order to accomplish it. But this isn’t my space, and I don’t think I can come back this way. So I encourage others to try. To jump in and make their way forward. These steps will be the ones that carry you home: don’t mind me, I’ll just wait here.