Gylt review — A second chance

Creating good horror is hard. It’s easy to fall into countless pitfalls and end up creating a trite experience. Gylt, a narrative-driven horror game, manages to avoid those pitfalls while striking a balance between cartoony graphics and genuine thrills, all while tackling the problem of bullying.

You play as Sally, a young girl looking for her missing cousin, Emily. The game sets the desperate scene, with Sally putting up missing posters where there are already a dozen plastered. She lives in Bethelwood, a town in Maine where most people are employed at a factory called Tomm on a nearby mountain. The factory is only accessible by a single ascending cable car, a cartoony detail.

Shortly after Sally is done putting up the missing signs, she crashes her bike while being chased by a few neighborhood bullies. Her bike is destroyed and she has to find a way home. This is where the story becomes confusing. It turns out that between putting up posters and getting into the bike crash, the location changed from Bethelwood to Tomm. This makes the new objective of going home confusing. Last I checked, she was home. Save for a few missable prompts, there was no indication that the setting changed. On top of that, there’s a parking lot visible. Why would a factory only accessible by cable car have one? When you finally do get onto the cable car, the camera is at a canted angle, making it look like you’re going up. It’s just a lot of confusion that could have been spared by a still of Sally ascending.

Despite the initial confusion, the rest of the opening unravels smoothly. Sally reaches town and it’s torn apart. The earth has ruptured as if there were an earthquake; power lines are down, and no one is to be seen. On the bright side, Sally notices Emily in the window of the school and tries to find a way in. This is where the horror starts, as the monsters make their first appearance. They’re large purple creatures covered in glowing yellow sacks. Their heads are pointy, their faces are upside down, and their top halves are disproportionately larger than their legs. As they lumber around, their lanky arms swing side to side. While not all that menacing, they’re certainly uncanny enough to want to avoid.

There are various ways to deal with the monsters the game throws at you, with the most simple option being to sneak around them. None of the enemies have far sight lines, so you can easily get away with some pretty brazen moves. You’re also given a flashlight that can be used to distract enemies, they’ll follow it like a cat following a laser pointer. If you’re clever, you can lure them into electrified puddles which will take them out instantly, but you have to turn on the power, which might put you in their sight lines.

There are also more direct ways of dealing with enemies. For example, the flashlight has an upgrade that allows you to permanently vanquish your foes by directing light at their bright-colored weak spots. You can also sneak up on enemies for an sick melee takedown that has beams of light erupting from their bodies. To be honest, some enemies become completely nullified by this upgrade, and you get it really early on. On the other hand, Gylt features a good amount of exploration for secret collectibles, so having the enemies gone for good makes exploration easier.

Using your flashlight in any sort of way that could damage or stun enemies will drain its power, which is, in a neat bit of diegetic game design, shown on a meter on the camera in-game. Aspects like this lead to the HUD being clean and minimal, meaning the horror gets all of the focus. All you see on screen are your health and inhaler count. Inhalers and batteries are how you heal and recharge your flashlight respectively, and they can be found almost everywhere. Honestly, this game isn’t all that difficult with pushover enemies and plentiful supplies, and I took more damage from face-checking environmental hazards than from enemies.

Don’t get me wrong, this game has plenty of scares. Gylt nails the elements of perspective and body horror. Sometimes you’ll see Sally being stalked or chased through the monster’s eyes. I’ve rarely seen these POV shots used in horror games, and I think it’s something more games could benefit from. On the note of body horror, one enemy crawls around like a spider and has a video projector that bulges out of its mouth… it’s some real nightmare fuel. Another enemy is a twitchy mannequin that resembles Sally. Its head cracks around, and its movements are fidgety and unnatural.

The horror goes so much further than the enemies you face. The game drip-feeds the Lovecraftian story in bits and pieces through various books, which encapsulate the thoughts of the owners. Learning the history of Tomm and Bethelwood was genuinely intriguing. All of the pieces of the story are there, but it’s up to you to uncover what really happened.

Gylt really knows how to tie the little details together. For example, the first lore book you find talks about a little girl who’s nervous because it’s her first day of school in a new town. She’s so nervous that she can’t even say her name in front of the class, and everyone stares at her. Right in front of the book is a non-hostile enemy, The Observer; a clump of always-staring eyes that blocks your path, representing passive bystanders. While Gylt isn’t a long game, it’s packed with details and lore, meaning nothing in the game feels superfluous.

The game has a great stylized look, and during cutscenes, the game switches to a hand-drawn look, emphasizing certain details like Sally’s red coat. Even the aesthetic choices have meaning, like how Sally has heterochromia, one green eye, and one brown. Sally’s sprinting animation is lively and reckless, adding character beyond the dialogue. The borderline cartoony graphics also allow children and adults alike to enjoy this game, but I would be lying if I said I was never unnerved by certain scenes or set pieces. Equally important is the amazing soundtrack with music that ranges from heavy and dramatic to haunting and somber. Overall, they hit the nail on the head with the graphics and music scores.

In the end, Gylt is all about second chances, which is ironic because it was a Google Stadia exclusive that’s getting a second, much-deserved shot at life. It’s clear the devs over at Tequila Works and Parallel Circles put a lot of love into every aspect of this game and integrated the lore, gameplay, and visuals together masterfully.

It took me a little over seven hours to complete the game, but I went out of my way to find collectibles and secrets. If Gylt interests you, then you can pick it up for $19.99 starting July 6th, 2023.