![]() ![]() None of the enemies have far sight lines, so you can easily get away with some pretty brazen moves. There are various ways to deal with the monsters the game throws at you, with the most simple option being to sneak around them. While not all that menacing, they’re certainly uncanny enough to want to avoid. As they lumber around, their lanky arms swing side to side. Their heads are pointy, their faces are upside down, and their top halves are disproportionately larger than their legs. They’re large purple creatures covered in glowing yellow sacks. This is where the horror starts, as the monsters make their first appearance. On the bright side, Sally notices Emily in the window of the school and tries to find a way in. The earth has ruptured as if there were an earthquake power lines are down, and no one is to be seen. It’s just a lot of confusion that could have been spared by a still of Sally ascending.ĭespite the initial confusion, the rest of the opening unravels smoothly. 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. On top of that, there’s a parking lot visible. Save for a few missable prompts, there was no indication that the setting changed. This makes the new objective of going home confusing. It turns out that between putting up posters and getting into the bike crash, the location changed from Bethelwood to Tomm. This is where the story becomes confusing. Her bike is destroyed and she has to find a way home. Shortly after Sally is done putting up the missing signs, she crashes her bike while being chased by a few neighborhood bullies. The factory is only accessible by a single ascending cable car, a cartoony detail. ![]() She lives in Bethelwood, a town in Maine where most people are employed at a factory called Tomm on a nearby mountain. The game sets the desperate scene, with Sally putting up missing posters where there are already a dozen plastered. You play as Sally, a young girl looking for her missing cousin, Emily. 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. It’s easy to fall into countless pitfalls and end up creating a trite experience. It’s a good message for kids and adults, but there are less scares for the latter.Creating good horror is hard. Those games are actually scary though, and it feels less like Gylt is trying to spook you than to scare you straight, implicating even nice kids in the harm done if they don’t stick up for their friends who are being bullied. Taking in each new environment is a lot of fun, as objects like arcade cabinets and school lockers are rendered in a stylish way that’s akin to popular titles like Little Nightmares and Inside. Their world is dangerous, but in a kid-friendly way - at least, older kid-friendly - that feels more Halloween night than all-out horror. Sally and Emily wouldn’t look out of place in a stop-motion animated film like James and the Giant Peach (though they most remind me of the kids from the Puffs Tissues commercials). ![]() It helps that the art style is just right for this kind of double-A game. I’ve always found it immensely satisfying to get introduced to a space and then explore until it makes sense, finding keys, unlocking doors, and grabbing useful items, and Gylt is that kind of game. Each area is spatially coherent, with a map that starts black and fills in each room with color as you explore it. I get it intellectually, but I much prefer Gylt’s approach. Its geography is ever changing, using the player’s inability to get a grip on where they even are as another vector for horror. That series, though occasionally good, represents a lot of my frustrations with modern horror games. After reviewing Layers of Fear last month, I found Gylt incredibly refreshing. And the exploration is a breath of fresh air. ![]()
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