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Gylt is an Alan-Wake-for-kids adventure that trains you in the ways of survival horrorHurt people hurt people
Hurt people hurt people
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Tequila Works
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Tequila Works
Until recently,Gylt(look, stay with it) was confined to Google’s cloud gaming platform Stadia, but Stadia doesn’t exist any more, so this third-person stealth adventure is being unleashed onSteam. You play as Sally, a young girl whose even younger cousin Emily has gone missing. One autumnal evening, Sally gets lost and tries to take the old mining cable car back home - only to discover herself in a weird mirror version of her home town, derelict and abandoned save for shadowy monsters, the likes of which you’d find as models in Forbidden Planet in a cabinet labelled “From The Mind Of Tim Burton”. Sally has few defences save creeping around and shining a powerful torch at the monsters, who don’t like strong li- hey,now my title makes sense!
GYLT | Multiplatform announcement trailerWatch on YouTube
GYLT | Multiplatform announcement trailer
This could mean that for experienced survival horror veterans, or even games in general, Gylt could be disappointingly easy. But I also don’t think it’s really aimed at survival horror veterans, or even adults at all. This is a game that feels squarely directed at children - not six-year-olds, of course, but kids in that sort of grey, pre-teen area. It might be linear and obvious to me, a hardened player with a thousand yard stare from all the hours playing Fromsoft games and reviewing Resi 7, but this is a technically non-violent game where you zap shadow monsters with a torch in order to save your cousin from nightmare versions of school bullies! And it’s pretty great at that, you know?
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Tequila Works
It being aimed more at kids also doesn’t mean that you, an adult, wouldn’t enjoy it anyway. Like Tequila Works' previous gameRime, the literal explanation for what’s happening in Gylt (and the identity of the old man helping Sally out as she tries to save Emily) is only ever hinted at. It’s never made explicit, showing a lightness of touch that’s lacking in most games aimed explicitly at grown adults who have conspiracy theory boards about Twin Peaks. Gylt is also polished and plays well, as you’d expect, and as an avowed disliker of mannequins I was consistently spooked despite being old enough to buy my own hard lemonade.
