Images: How Glitch's aesthetic matured

The logo for Tiny Speck's Glitch, which the company announced on Tuesday after eight months of stealth development by a team led by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield and fellow Flickr veterans Serguei Mourachov, Cal Henderson, and Eric Costello.

A screenshot from a very early version of the online social game that Tiny Speck eventually named Glitch. The company got its first checks in March 2009, and this example of early development on the game client dates from May 19, 2009. At this stage, the graphics are rudimentary and the impressive layering of the game's aesthetic are missing, but the client already shows that the team was thinking about the game's mechanics--or system of scoring and rules--as evidenced by the Stats table across the top of the screen.

This screen grab dates from about a month later, June 11, 2009, and shows a lot more elegance than the previous shot. Now, the layering is more visible, as is the sophistication of the aesthetic. Still very basic at this stage--as they are today--are the game's avatars.

A few weeks later, on July 6, the aesthetic has taken another leap forward, and the interface is sleeker. The avatars still need a lot of work, something Tiny Speck is the first to say is still a major priority.

A much later image of a location in Glitch called a firebog. Note the polished aesthetic and the elegant layering. These elements are expected to be big parts of Glitch's selling point.

Tiny Speck hired a group of illustrators, each with a different artistic style. The various styles are meant to represent the imaginations of the individual giants, on which the game's back story is based.