Gylt is a Third-Person horror game released exclusively for Google Stadia in the tail end of 2019. In it, we play as Sally, a young girl simply hanging up ‘lost person’ posters in the hopes of finding her cousin who suddenly vanished one day. She finds herself doing so until deep into the night where a couple of bullies on their bikes decide to give chase upon spotting her. Sally manages to shake off her pursuers, but much to her luck has now found herself stranded in the middle of the woods with only a broken bike and a flashlight. Leaving her bike behind, she takes the first steps into her real adventure which will only get much tougher from now.
It takes more time before things hit the fan as it teaches us many of the gameplay mechanics and allows the atmosphere to build. Soon enough, we will find ourselves in constant danger as supernatural foes lurk around and impede your progress. For a good portion of the early game, we have no means to defend ourselves. We must rely on stealth and avoidance to survive in our now monster-filled town. The flashlight is as much as a hindrance as it is a tool. Using it will make it all too easy for anything in the vicinity to be alerted of our presence.
This is a nice looking game with a CG cartoon art style to its world. Everything feels grand and imposing given your short stature, making what would be an easy task for an adult require some brainpower on Sally’s end to overcome. Sadly, it does suffer from being a Google Stadia exclusive. The encoding method they use for this streaming service does not handle dark areas well at all, which most of this title is composed of. You will notice heavy artifacting in areas that are supposed to be near black in its contrast. Hardly what I’d call the end of the world, yet it is interesting Google choose this type of game to be the first exclusive instead of one better suited for their current tech.
That flaw is no doubt noticeable, yet it doesn’t ruin the immersion. The town we find ourselves in is oozing with detail and variety. Our main zone of interest will be the school, but we do explore surrounding areas throughout the game, each fraught with their own dangers. You’ll be exploring and solving puzzles as much as you’ll be sneaking around. Seemingly everything that can go wrong will go wrong, leaving Sally to find out how to methodically traverse the world. Then Gylt throws a curve-ball. Eventually, you will find a more powerful flashlight that can actually harm and slay the monsters if you aim it at their weak spots. This allows you to either go in loud or to keep playing it as a stealth game if that is more to your liking.
Alan Waking enemies is certainly the more dangerous option, yet a good deal of fun. There is an auto-aiming option that snaps to the monster’s weak points when you aim that is turned on by default. That makes encounters an easy affair. If you want to up the challenge, merely turning it off causes every encounter to be a lot more intense as you can no longer defeat a foe before it so much as attacks. Some enemies have ranged attacks, others will instantly try to charge at you, and having more than one to deal with will be a really disastrous situation more often than not. Running and hiding yourself again is always a valid option. They give up pursuit rather quickly, leaving you to go on your way or to try to solve the puzzle you were working on before being spotted.
Getting away from a fight may in fact be a little too easy. To the point that you neither have to fight or stealth your way through some situations. You just need to full sprint your way to the exit, even if you alert everyone, and go somewhere they can’t fit in. These monsters react slowly and can neither crawl nor climb. When you don’t need to solve a puzzle in the area, there is little in the way of an actual threat. There is still the danger of running into a hazard like an electrical cable in a pool of water, however, so being careless is still ill-advised.
As you continue your journey, you will gain more abilities that open up more combat and puzzle opportunities with their use. This title is constantly introducing new gameplay mechanics all throughout to keep things fresh and may even take some away, causing you to adapt. There are also enemies that simply can not be slain and other implementations to keep you on your toes or getting too used to this world. Your environments are ground in reality at the start, yet will soon enough become increasingly disturbing and otherworldly. You won’t find gore, violence, or even jump scares here. It is a rated T game and opts to use a restrained form of horror.
The theme of the title is that of bullying. Every time you start it up, it will ask that if you have been impacted by bullying and need help to seek professional advice. Much of the horror aspects are centered around that. Things like mannequins positioned on a table as if they were pointing and laughing at another mannequin that is fallen on the floor with a lunch tray, as an example. It is pretty hamfisted stuff that is neither scary nor much more than a simple “bullying is bad” message. They are in my opinion far too overused and not really effective. There are only a few instances of the theme done well, such as in a certain boss fight toward the end. Fewer more impactful moments like those and more restraint would have done a lot more for the story than a ton of PSA messages about bullying. Humanizing those traumatic events, not leaving them feeling completely hollow and just there for the sake of it.
That said, some of the horror can still be quite unnerving. From some enemy designs, to some of the scripted events, there is a sense of unease here. Having your flashlight be as much a hindrance as it is a useful weapon was a great touch. Even if you plan on fighting everything you see, it is still a bad idea turning the corner with the light on and possibly alerting several foes at once. You can still take a decent amount of damage and can carry up to five asthma inhalers, this title’s version of a first aid kit to heal yourself with. It takes time to inhale and leaves you defenseless as you do, however. Hardly what you will want when in the middle of a fight and low on health.
When sneaking around and undetected, you will be able to sneak kill an enemy if you manage to get behind it. That will instantly slay it, yet at the cost of a ton of your flashlight’s battery. It is far more cost-effective to shine your light and fight it normally, but also more dangerous. Both batteries and asthma inhalers are scattered all throughout the world. It is unlikely you will ever run out of either, though it is worth taking into consideration that you can’t carry spare batteries, you can only use them immediately. With the amount a stealth kill drains, it is something best used out of necessity rather than to take down every foe in sight. You’ll also find vending machines around the school and be able to use soda cans to distract enemies for a more pacifist approach.
This town and the places you will explore are pretty large in size. Gylt is an open world, though if you simply want to follow and get through the plot, it guides you every step of the way. The level design does an excellent job of guiding the player. It gives you good-sized areas to explore, but it won’t overwhelm you with a massive play area. The objectives are always close by and more of the environments open up when you are done with that area. There isn’t much to find if you don’t want to do the story first, the open-world aspect is more to let you backtrack and pick up any collectibles you may have missed. Once you finish this seven-hour adventure, it will allow you to continue exploring if you so choose.
Gylt was an interesting title with many ambitions. It tries to be horror, open world, have both puzzles & combat, as well as have three different endings to discover. Considering all they tackled, it is surprising all of it ended up this well. This is a game that is more than the sum of its parts. Puzzles are simple, the horror is tame, and generally, each individual aspect has been done better elsewhere. I wouldn’t call Gylt a must-play title or is it a “system seller”, yet it is still worth experiencing for fans of horror-themed adventure games. It is an inoffensive romp through a well-crafted world and allows a good amount of player freedom for how you want to tackle situations. Just don’t expect an enticing narrative and enjoy the journey itself, not the destination.
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