I think the best ideas for a game like glitch are ones that are less "real world" and more "that's ridiculous in the real world, but would be SO COOL!" For instance, flying with a jet pack is on the right track, but what if you earned a skill where you could just fly? Grow wings and up you go. A little bird body with one of our current big avatar heads flying around would be pretty funny. Maybe there's a ball of water in the sky, grow wings to fly up to it, grow a blowhole and swim through the floating water. That's nowhere close to taking things as far as they could go. Cooking is nice, but DOOD! You can grow ostrich legs and run fast like in roadrunner cartoons!
That's often what I think when I see ideas, "too real world." Some things will have to be on the mundane side such as basic skills, but the rest needs to be exciting, imaginative, something to draw players forward instead of "I'm bored. I quit." Encouraging cooperation is good, too, as covered elsewhere. It also helps if the idea isn't too hard to program/animate.