Gylt is a survival horror videogame which was released for Google Stadia only, it was an exclusive, and we all know what happenned to our old pal Stadia, it actually fucking died (good), that helped Gylt to reach other gaming plattforms such as Playstation, Pc, Xbox or Nintendo Switch, the latter being the version I could play. I genuinely think that releasing it exclusively for Stadia was a huge mistake, it could have had certain popularity but it didn´t happen due to the small amount of people actually using Stady, so I´m actually happy Gylt is actually free for real.
Sally is the main character of Gylt, she´s looking for her missing cousin, she gets into an accident and due to said accident, she ends into a town that is identical to her home, there are a few differences, the town she ended up to, it´s abandoned, not only that, but also destroyed. There is no one in this town, just her and another person who looks like Sally´s cousin, desperate for clues of her cousin whereabouts, she follows this person. This town is like an altered version of her home, like a really creepy version with monsters that will block our way. Gylt is a videogame that it´s not scary to show its inspirations, you don´t need to be a genius that it´s highly inspired on Silent Hill.
Something that I personally loved about this game is its level design, we´ll be exploring many areas throughout the whole town and they are pretty fun to explore with many collectibles. The atmosphre of the whole town is kind of creepy, we´ll be alone by ourselves in the shadows, taking care of not getting attacked by some monster, the lack of light or electricity does help to enrich the lonely and damaged environment of the game. Gylt is a psychological horror videogame and it uses bullying as its main theme, I like that Gylt does give a good use to its scenaries, so the bullying is seen from the areas we are exploring rather than just being a text stating the obvious.
Gylt has a good variety of monsters that will obstaculize our path, from normal monsters, to monsters who can get invisible, or even monsters who are immune to our attacks, our way to defend ourselves will be through a kind of a big flashlight, these monsters (some of them) are weak to light, beware that our flashlight will consume batteries so we´ll be from time to time searching for newer batteries through the scenario. Gylt is a videogame that lets you to manage things as you want, but it´s way more conveninent to use stealth, I mean, to get behind and to kill them just like that. It´s not that easy tho, there will be many monsters in a single scenario, so using stealth all the way is better.
This game has in particular many collectibles which are kind of important and some of them give you plot details so it´s better not to miss them if you want to be aware of the whole thing, actually, it´s important to get every collectible for the true ending, well, not exactly every singl of them, but ten or certain collectible I won´t talk that much, good thing is that there is map which indicates you the location of the collectibles, and also, there are many books that, as I said, they give you important plot details.
I really liked the artistic design, it kind of reminded me of Tim Burton or Stories like Coraline, it doesn´t try to disgust you with blood and meat and stuff, it has its own style and I like that, you could say it has horror friendly looking. Whenever I played Gylt, it reminded of those old Pixar films or even films from Laika, such as Coraline, it´s not coincidence since the director does thank Neil Gaiman in the credits for being kind of an inspiration to him, same to Stephen King.
I enjoyed the game but I´ve got one complain about it, that is, it´s quite of hard to even call it a survival horror, since, you know...it´s not that hard to survive in this town. There are two collectibles which you´ll have to worry about: Batteries for your flashlight and your inhaler; trust me, it´s not hard to find those since the game give them you only for existing, and that´s a shame you know, because of that, the game gets way too easy, like, way too much, I´m not expecting an impossible game to beat, but you know, it kinda breaks with the whole premise of being a survival horror. There was a time when I ran out of those because skill issue, the lacking of those items was stresful, because I was in a complicated situation, it made things more tense and that was great, but even that, I had no problem getting more. I understand they decided to do it this way so people won´t drop the game, but I wish there was another difficulty mode that complicated you finding batteries and inhalers.
To be honest, that´s the only one thing I can say the game could be better, because I eally did have a good time playing it. It´s an indie game so what was achieved here, in terms of quality, it´s more than enough, for me, I feel sastified and hope it has good sales now that it´s free from the claws of Stadia.
All of the screenshots were taken by me
