Gylt (Stadia)

There are many road bumps on the path to playing every video game ever released, but even with the hardest to find games, there is usually someone out there with a copy or fans who have backed up the game in some form or fashion. The advent of Google Stadia introduces an all new wrinkle though, the idea of a game service where you can only stream a game rather than being provided even a digital copy for your own use. This isn’t too much of a concern if Stadia receives no unique exclusives, but if Stadia is ever discontinued, it might be some time before we see what is the service’s single exclusive on any other system. Gylt could have been a white whale, but two free months of Stadia Pro allowed me to access it, and even though I had to go through some goofy hoops like downloading the Stadia app to change the streaming settings for how I play on PC, I actually got the game to a point where it was almost completely smooth and responsive, meaning I could properly experience what is, at the time of writing, Stadia’s only full on exclusive.

Gylt follows a young girl named Sally whose cousin Emily has mysteriously disappeared. While canvasing the town with missing posters, Sally stumbles across a cable car that takes her to a strange alternate version of the city where it has been devastated by unknown forces and strange monsters patrol the land. However, among this world of horrors, she spots her missing cousin, so Sally must safely evade the creatures as she tries to rescue Emily and take her back to the regular world. This story is often told in hand drawn cutscenes that seem to be quite different from the game art. Sally looks the most different between the scenes, her in game model having a wide head with brown hair while her cutscene version has a slimmer look and hair that looks black due to the limited coloring choices, but this isn’t so distracting that it will pull you out of the plot or the light horror experience on offer.

The horrors of Gylt’s alternate city manage to find themselves on a line where they can be effective to people of all ages without featuring any of the gore or themes that would alienate younger players. In fact, Gylt’s low difficulty level does imply it is meant to appeal to younger players looking for a scary experience, and the monster designs in Gylt definitely have an interesting style to them. The basic foes already have an incredibly distinct look, the shadowy figures having upside down faces with massive fangs and bodies covered in orange welts that give them a sickly look. The raven-headed versions aren’t quite as scary due to being a fairly plain concept, but these are essentially more capable versions of the regular monsters and their audio cues are more ethereal compared to the human mutterings of the basic creatures. Some of the boss monsters definitely have some memorable designs, the projectionist creature’s spider-like movements and movie projector mouth giving its large humanoid shape more impact, but the best on show might be the doll mannequins. Simple in concept, these little dolls have some absolutely chilling voices that break the silence of the world with deceptively innocent calls to be your friend. They reveal their true face if you approach, and with their unusual movements and seeming inability to be permanently killed, these definitely stand out in a small set of creatures with some already good concepts on show.

The horror of the game isn’t all creature designs though. Bullying is given a big focus in the plot and the construction of the alternate city. Walls of the school have graffiti scrawled across them with hateful jeers and juvenile taunts, notes found along the way tell the story of how people suffer with this all too real problem, and little displays can be found around the school of mannequins frozen in time as they bully the victim stand-in. Most horror swings much higher with the subjects it touches upon, but having an otherworldly and monstrous take on the experience of bullying gives Gylt an interesting avenue for unique set pieces. It won’t always stick to focusing on the subject, many parts of the game about exploring buildings in the wrecked city like an arcade or an underground mine without the core themes truly being represented, but the rather large school does have repeated opportunities to reintegrate the topic as you unlock new locations in it like the gym or art center.

Gylt probably is quite a good pick for a young player looking to test the waters of the horror genre, but by catering to younger players, Gylt might have held itself back from being a more enjoyable title. Gylt is a stealth game technically, the player encouraged not to directly confront monsters by sneaking around areas filled with cover. However, after just introducing the many ways you can sneak your way around enemies, Gylt gives you a flashlight whose beam can be focused to easily damage most enemy types. Any creatures with the orange welts on its body can have them targeted and destroyed to make the creature crumble into smoke, and suddenly, there becomes very little reason to stick to the shadows. You may think directly confronting the creatures risks the damage they might deal if they come charging towards you, but the inhalers you use to heal are placed so liberally that you’ll often find yourself unable to pick up new ones because you’ve still got all you can carry. Same goes for the batteries that power your flashlight. Doing sneak attacks to instantly kill creatures from behind can drain the flashlight quickly, much more quickly than just aiming your flashlight around to explode the welts, but batteries are so abundant that there really seemed no reason to hold back on clearing a safe path forward. When the game does introduce the mannequin girls though they are revealed to be resistant to the flashlight… only for the game to shortly after hand you a fire extinguisher that can be used to freeze them in place.

Save a few small moments where you don’t have the right tool to face the enemies, Gylt really weakens the threat of its monsters by making them so easy to overcome. Bosses still require some puzzle solving to defeat and can’t be so easily dealt with, but so much of the regular game’s challenge is invalidated by having your opposition so easily defeated. There are thankfully puzzles scattered all around the city to add something to the moment to moment gameplay. Getting through places often involves things such as flashlight beam puzzles where you need to properly split the beam so it can activate switches, but there are other forms the puzzles take like needing to find out how to safely get around electrified puddles, how to arrange fuses or activate valves, and timing challenges where you’ll get burnt by steam if you move at the wrong time. There are some challenging ones and straightforward ones, but the mix is decent enough to ensure that Gylt has some interesting activities between easily killing or incapacitating creatures. There are also plenty of collectibles to find, the game rewarding a thorough player with the best ending of the three. The two lesser endings have an interesting angle to them so they aren’t totally unfulfilling, but Gylt asks for quite a lot out of the player if they want the happiest outcome.

THE VERDICT: Gylt constructs an unsettling town full of effective monsters designs and ties its brand of light horror to the less traveled theme of bullying, but a lot of the tone and visual design is wasted on the noncommittal stealth. So much of the game feels built for having you sneak past monsters but you are quickly given ways to easily take down or incapacitate anything that would bother you save a boss. The puzzles do still give the game enough gameplay that you won’t just be blitzing past easily conquered horrors throughout, but Gylt is far too accommodating and thus not quite able to gel its narrative and tone of constant danger with how the game actually plays.

And so, I give Gylt for Google Stadia…

An OKAY rating. Tequila Works has a good narrative here and some strong monster and environmental design to support it, but trying to emphasize the helplessness of the two girls and their horrified reaction to the alternate city is definitely undermined by how easily you can handle most of the monsters you encounter. Simply limiting the available batteries and inhalers would ask you to engage with the stealth much more often, but in its current state, you can often find yourself wondering if it’s worth spending extra time sneaking around, and while distraction tactics have their uses, you can even handle a large group of monsters if you just put a little bit more effort into it than the typical easy flashlight aiming required in most skirmishes. The few times it does hold back the tools you need show that being a bit more helpless could have benefited the regular play, but there are still decent puzzles to fall back on and an interesting world to explore. Less experienced players will probably still get a lot from Gylt since the horror’s only major issue is that it doesn’t connect well to the true strength of Sally and her flashlight, but it doesn’t feel like Gylt had to sacrifice difficulty to court these type of players since the mild stealth that is on show isn’t too demanding.

While it took knocking my streaming settings down and other such adjustments to get Gylt to run as smooth as a regular game, outside of the early period of figuring out how best to stream on Stadia, I had no issues with the game that could be connected to the service. I do hope Gylt will become available by traditional means some day, but it also showed me there is some hope for game streaming, Stadia working better than PlayStation Now at points. Gylt might not be a spectacular game in the end, but its merits do have enough weight that certain types of players might just want to check out Stadia for a chance to play it.