Night has enveloped the highway and your only companion is the music from the radio. A hiker stands on the road’s edge and, after passing them by, they appear in your car. Did you stop to pick them up? Did they teleport into your car? Does it matter? They tell you a story about their childhood – a tale of stars and pretending to be a god – only to, at the end, say they were never a child. You blink and they’re gone. All that is left is you and the road curving away into the dark – your journey will end when you need it to.
Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between is a follow up to developer Silverstring Media’s 2014 title Glitchhikers: First Drive, and it captures the experience of the late night solitary journey, where reality seems to shift into the otherworldly. Expanding on the late night car journey from the original game, The Spaces Between takes you to an airport, on a wander through a park and a train. Throughout your travels, you’ll encounter hikers who engage you in conversations covering subjects spanning personal stories to discussions about fate and whether our lives are predetermined.
Last month, I spoke with Lucas Johnson, founder of Silverstring Media and studio director, and Claris Cyarron, co-founder and creative director, about the development of The Spaces Between.
We started by discussing the inspiration for the Glitchhikers games, before exploring how they expanded upon the concept in The Spaces Between and captured the game’s ethereal tone. Afterwards, we moved on to the conversations you have with the hikers – touching upon the writing process, chosen topics and the importance of including queer stories – and how they explored the concept of space, particularly liminal space, within the game.
Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between Launch Trailer Watch on YouTube
Where did the inspiration for the Glitchhikers concept stem from?
Claris Cyarron: The inspiration came from our Technical Director ceMelusine – who also goes by Phil. This was in 2013 and the turn of New Year into 2014. We sat down and Phil wanted to make a game about driving alone late at night. We started talking over beers and it turns out each of us had a lot of experience driving alone at night. I suffered from insomnia a lot as a teen and when I couldn’t sleep, but wasn’t too tired to drive, I would drive and listen to the late night radio and pick up breakfast from some all-you-can-eat-drive-through and enjoy the night.
We wanted to make a game that captured the experience we’d all had and figure out the intersection between our shared experiences though we were in different places.
Lucas Johnson: So that became the core of this idea of, no matter what we were doing, we’re making a game about driving late at night. There were key elements to that like the weird music on the radio which only plays at two in the morning on NPR or the conversations you have are the kinds of things your mind wanders to when it’s the middle of the night – life in the universe, the afterlife and other things.
‘In First Drive, you don’t have full control over your car – you can’t drive off the road like in Grand Theft Auto, because, in real life, you don’t do that. It’s this automatic process of driving and zoning out, so we don’t give you that much control.’ – Lucas Johnson
We then took that idea which was for Glitchhikers: First Drive that we released back in 2014, which became the seed of the Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between. We had this idea, a lot of people really jived with it, but not everyone had this same universal experience of driving late at night. We would pitch the game and some people would be like, ‘I’ve never really done that. I don’t really drive.’ And we’re like, ‘Right, there’s other aspects of this concept that are rich for exploration.’