Glitch Hero review

A lot of youngsters nowadays are lucky enough to learn a little bit about computer coding in school, but back in my day that simply wasn’t the case. With computer lessons focused solely on making boring spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, I couldn’t even imagine learning even the most basic steps towards making my own program or video game. Perhaps the most delightful way to learn how to code though (for me at least) would be via playing a video game itself, and although Glitch Hero has a few issues, it definitely does teach some programming basics.

The protagonist of this edutaining adventure is Ada, a young girl whose computer scientist father has been trapped inside the virtual world of Codeland. Only with the power of the hammer.exe will she be able to rescue her dad from this digital domain he made, and hopefully debug his creation a little bit in the process. It’s a charming enough concept that gets you into this world of bits and bytes nice and quickly, and closer to learning a thing or two.

Now although there is some learning to be had in Glitch Hero, you’ll spend the majority of your time in the game swinging a hammer around in a top down Zelda style setup. I was pretty excited about this side of the game, although that excitement was soon dampened by how poor the combat is. Especially in the early hours of Glitch Hero, when your sluggish attack speed and pathetic reach makes fighting digital nasties a real chore, and because of this I wasn’t expecting to enjoy my time with the game at all.

It doesn’t take long though for other aspects of Glitch Hero to take centre stage, like the similarly Zelda-styled dungeons and puzzles within. With new abilities to unlock like box pushing and a dash to get over gaps, it was always a treat to find a new dungeon and see what new equipment it would add to Ada’s arsenal. Deep in these dungeons there were always a few programming puzzles to solve too, which were absolutely my favourite part of the game.

Upon finding a coding puzzle Ada will be locked on the spot on a floor of squares, and to solve the puzzle is required to move to the exit square. This is done by filling in a sequence of commands such as move forward, turn left or right, or attack an enemy blocking the way, but with only a limited number of these commands you’ll need to use them cleverly.

It doesn’t take long for more complex functions to appear in these coding puzzles, like the repeat function that you can use to (you guessed it) repeat a selection of commands as many times as is required. This could be as simple as walking a few steps forward over and over to save on move commands, or as complex as zig zagging around multiple enemies and dashing over gaps to make it to the goal. Even on the hardest difficulty (which is admittedly called 12+ mode) this doesn’t often get too taxing, but as a game aimed at a younger audience it’s likely an ideal learning curve.

Repeat functions are only the first of these complex functions too, with all sorts of handy bits of coding knowledge made digestible for those hungry to learn. My favourite of these to use were the “if then” functions, which are explained and utilised perfectly to sort out pineapples at a candy factory.

It’s a shame that the combat in Glitch Hero is such a drag, as the rest of the game is enjoyable. By spending the zeroes and ones you get by smashing grass or enemies you can improve it somewhat by upgrading your attack power and speed, but even when fully upgraded you’ll often take damage just by trying to get close enough to an enemy to strike. Upgrading your dash or projectile attacks is pretty important too, so the fact I felt forced to only focus on my melee upgrades to make the combat even passable was even more frustrating.

Glitch Hero is a great way to introduce younger gamers to the concept of computer programming, but as a video game in its own right has some issues. The coding puzzles and Zelda-style dungeons are always fun, but the combat is painful especially before you upgrade your attack power. Still as a way to entice youngsters to program you could do much worse than Glitch Hero, and I know if I’d played this growing up I’d have learned a thing or two.