GuideDevelopment
Dev diary: a pet that lives on your desktop
What it is like to design a game that shares the screen with your work instead of demanding the whole screen.
Most games demand full attention. Glims was born from the opposite idea: a game that stays with you while you do something else. The glims walk along the taskbar, live in a 3D house you decorate and spring into action when called.
The challenge of not getting in the way
A desktop pet has to be light and discreet. If it slows the computer down or covers the wrong window, it becomes a nuisance. Much of the work is invisible: measuring resource use, keeping the game window from stealing focus and making sure everything works at different resolutions.
Two rhythms of play
- The calm rhythm: the glim lives, walks around, looks after the house and gathers gold on its own.
- The intense rhythm: when you call, it defends the screen from an invasion or dives into a twenty-floor dungeon.
The fun is in switching between the two. The game respects your time and offers action when you have a few free minutes.
