Gylt: A Survival Horror Starter Pack

Having survived the death of Google Stadia, the formerly exclusive title from Tequila Works, Gylt, has risen from the ashes and finally made its way to the full complement of current-gen platforms. Originally released in 2019, it was re-released in July 2023 for Windows and all consoles except the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo's inimitable platform finally received the title in March of 2024, completing Gylt's rebirth.

Welcome to Bethelwood, Maine, where Sally has been searching for her missing cousin, Emily, for a month. People just stopped looking for her and stopped caring, but Sally wasn’t giving up. After spending the day putting up more missing posters around town, she ends up in the crosshairs of some bullies, and in trying to get away from them crashes and breaks her bike. Needing a different way home to avoid the bullies who are still after her, she decides to try the cable car route, but this is where things take a strange turn. The ticket she receives appears to be made out of dirt, and once she heads back toward the guy who was in the booth, he is long gone after only a span of seconds. Regardless, we take the cable car.

The trip takes us back into Bethelwood, only it looks much more like Silent Hill. During the ride it almost looks as though Sally crossed some sort of threshold or portal and, once she returns to her hometown, something isn’t right. It’s a ghost town, complete with cars broken down on the side of the roads, flickering lights, boarded-up windows, and broken roads; even signs that were taken down over a week ago are still hanging. Still, Sally presses on in an attempt to find her way home – when she sees Emily peeking out one of the school’s windows. 

New mission acquired. 

During the ride it almost looks as though Sally crossed some sort of threshold or portal and, once she returns to her hometown, something isn’t right.

In navigating the town that appears to be a lovechild of Silent Hill and Alan Wake, we are introduced to potential threats we’ll encounter in the future, the sort of forever-blocked routes we’ll never get to venture, and the type of backtracking we’re likely to be doing over the course of the game. Following the brief cutscene of Emily in the window, we make our way to the school to find – and predictably so – a locked front door. It is getting the key to this door that gives us our first encounter with a monster. We can clearly see where Gylt’s influences are coming from just with these few tropes. 

Playing like an introduction to the survival horror genre and the mechanics that come with it, this game is perfect for those who want to take baby steps into the world of horror. It’s creepy without being scary, and quite child-friendly (depending on the kids in question, of course). Just as well, you can choose to run away from your fears, or you can stand up for yourself and fight them. Resources like the inhalers you use to heal, and batteries to charge the flashlight you use to see and fight are easy to come by, so taking a bit of damage isn’t the end of the world. 

Freeze your enemies with the fire extinguisher, or shine them into oblivion with the beam of your flashlight. Most of the monsters you come across will have those orange pustules typical of survival horror weakness points, at which you can aim the flashlight beam. There is also the option of using your fire extinguisher on them later on to temporarily freeze them so you can get away, or you can lure them into an electric puddle. You can also throw cans from a vending machine to send them wandering in another direction, freeing up the path for you to sneak through without conflict. 

When it comes to combat, it can sometimes feel like you would have been better off staying out of it, especially since baddies all seem to be extremely nearsighted and it’s super easy to avoid detection in most cases. Granted, it’s nice to get the extra enemies out of your path to make moving around easier, but there are times when a bunch of them gang up on you so quickly that it can be more annoying to manage than it’s worth. For example, the second monster we are introduced to can (and will) teleport directly into your path as you’re trying to run away. This, coupled with another few of the monsters coming at you, can make for a fair amount of chaos. 

It may also be worth mentioning that the camera controls are decelerated, and even at max sensitivity settings, turning the camera with a mouse still seemed extremely slow. With just a mouse and keyboard it occasionally created problems during combat, but if you decided to play with a controller instead, it may not be an issue.

Playing like an introduction to the survival horror genre and the mechanics that come with it, this game is perfect for those who want to take baby steps into the world of horror.

You will come across puzzles here and there, but they are all straightforward and nothing outside of what you may find in other games. Simple wire connections and turning valves on and off in the proper sequences are the majority of what you will deal with. Some of them you will need to complete for the game's progression, but others will simply reward you with one of the game's collectibles. 

There are things you can collect around the game (which may or may not affect your potential endings) like journals, blood quartz, caged birds, and paintings. The journals and paintings will give you a bit more insight into the backstory and the world, the blood quartz will help you to free missing inhabitants, and the birds are used to access a secret room. 

If you are a completionist, this is a super easy game to achieve 100%, especially in terms of collectibles. Finding everything also does not seem to add much to your overall playtime. However, in terms of achievements, depending on how you play the game it may actually require a second playthrough due to the polar-opposite nature of a couple of the achievements. One run of Gylt will generally take around 6 to 8 hours, on the higher side if you're going the completionist route. 

As a side note for anyone who may be curious, it’s true that Gylt was developed to play on Windows, but I did play through this myself while running a Linux OS. It played fine, I didn’t run into many bugs, and the game never crashed. The bugs I did run into though were easily fixed, so anyone running Linux is absolutely able to play this game as well if you were interested in it! 

In the very beginning, I found that cutscenes more or less prevented the game from progressing unless you skipped them. In the game’s transition into the cutscene, the screen would just remain black and never actually load anything. It was odd because I initially thought the game was frozen or something, but you could still hear music, pause, and skip the cutscene that never actually plays. In skipping cutscenes though, you miss out on the story development and the game's neat style and artwork. If you’re like me and would prefer to watch the cutscenes, this was fixed by going into the game’s launch options and typing: SteamDeck=1 %command%.

This correction fixed the issue with cutscenes, but a second popped up as a result. It wasn’t a huge problem, just a little hard on the eyes. Upon opening up the backpack, all of the text appeared to be duplicated and off-set. However, all it really took was changing to a different menu of the inventory, and then switching back for the issue to be corrected. Again, these appear to be issues specific to Linux, but they are not game-breaking. 

With its Tim Burton-esque graphics and cartoony cutscenes, Gylt is the perfect starter pack for newcomers to the survival horror genre. It has a decent narrative story that comes with an anti-bullying message, easy-to-grasp mechanics, and a design that is likely safe for those who may scare easier than others. I’d say that this game is suitable for children and adults alike, of course depending on the preferences of the respective age group. 

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