Gylt Review

"Monsters You Create"

Campaign

April 12, 2020 at 2:55am
By Jason Stettner

This is a narrative driven horror title following a girl that’s trying to find her younger cousin. After getting pushed off a trail by some bullies, the girl finds herself on route to this almost alternate world where everything is destroyed. On top of that, various monsters roam the streets and she sees her cousin running off in the distance.

This is largely a puzzle based experience with minor elements of stealth. You’re largely moving around, completing simple challenges and then progressing. It’s quite linear in a sense despite having a more open world approach. The rooms are well designed, with a nice layer of complexity in how you’re able to move through it and therefore progress onward. The story is told through a mix of regular in-game cinematics, and some 2D drawn art.

I didn’t mind that mix-up, but I did find that the latter sort of took me out of the action at times. There are collectibles to discover, and sadly these directly impact the narrative. I hate when games do that sort of thing, it’s a silly way to determine your fate. That aside, there’s actually a fairly lengthy and well done story with a predictable yet well presented lesson.

Gameplay

I found this to generally be impressive when it comes to the visual aspects and flow of the game. With this being on Stadia I only faced a few loading screens, and they were all fairly quick. That being said, I did notice some occasional stutters while I was playing. For the most part it did run quite well, and was an impressive showcase for the technology.

This is a third person 3D world, you’ll lightly interact with it and use more tools as you continue to progress. This includes a flashlight to battle the dark, a fire extinguisher and smaller items that refill your health or battery life. The mechanics are fairly simple, and it’s a streamlined experience. The monsters were interesting, and it was nice to have distraction assistance through pop machines.

I do however wish there was more of a chill factor as this AI wasn’t necessarily the brightest. Not to say they didn’t create an atmosphere that was spooky or chilled, just that the creatures you face off against were fairly easy to deal with.

The Conclusion

Gylt was actually a fairly good experience, it brought some chills and had an interesting story. This wasn’t necessarily the deepest of narrative driven experiences, but it was somewhat of a sad one. I found it very predictable early on, but it was still enjoyable to sit there and roll through it in a single session.

The gameplay mechanics were interesting, and different. It focuses on puzzle based exploration, but I never felt really tested which is fine. I only started to get a tad bored of the style towards the end of it, so this had an appropriate game length to it. I dislike that elements of the story were tied to collectibles however, that’s disappointing. This was a spooky, and enjoyable experience to have with some nice challenges along the way.

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Gylt Review on PC

Rating Overall: 7.6