Glyph

Mastering Glyph's campaign is a treat thanks to its tight and varied gameplay as well as its rewarding secrets and campaign structure.

Glyph is perfect for a 15-minute pick up and play session or something you can struggle with for an hour. It's a rewarding experience when you have mastered its controls. Soaring through the sky to the exit like a golf ball in flight is a satisfying feeling. Its difficulty spikes can be dramatic, but if you're up for the challenge and craving some 3d platforming this one is worth a look.

Glyph is a soothing puzzle platformer, which, despite its sparse appearance has plenty of bounce, challenging you with its literal sandbox gameplay.

With smooth, stable gameplay, Glyph is truly a joy to play. The exploration levels in particular are incredibly creative, with plenty of collectables to keep you occupied. The accompanying soundtrack deserves a special mention too; the ambient music really suits the tone of the game, and the way it swells when you’ve collected all of the required keys is excellent. The only major downside is the time trial levels; if you enjoy this kind of thing, you can bump the score up by one point, but there were a few too many of these levels for our liking.

Glyph manages to walk a balance regarding its game mechanics that many other titles struggle to get right. Whether you want to uncover every secret, or just get lost in some platforming, Glyph has you covered.

Though there is a bit of a learning curve, Glyph’s physics-based platforming will appeal to speedrunners and collectathon aficionados alike. Its difficulty may be a turn off for some, but those willing to cut their teeth will enjoy bouncing their way around its world.

Glyph brings together the simplest form of platforms and puzzles in one package. It is an entertaining experience that shines for its simplicity. Although it falls short in scope, it fulfills the most important thing: is fun to play.

Yes, having to replay the same section time and again until you get your jump, timing and execution just right can be infuriating, but when you do nail a section, it comes with a great sense of achievement. No matter how difficult its challenges become, Glyph is a game that begs you to keep going. And thanks to its charming design and beautiful environments, it’s likely that you will.

Glyph will no doubt end up leaving many cold – despite the game’s setting. Those who do warm to its charms will find it to be a diamond in the rough though.

Because there’s such a disconnect between what it wants to be and what it actually is, it’s hard to know whether to recommend Glyph. It doesn’t come anywhere close to achieving what it sets out to do, but it still offers enough that if you can overlook its failures, there’s a decent enough game hiding underneath.

If there was a version of this game that let players skip the Time Trials or required only minimal engagement with them, I would have no problem recommending this mechanical bug’s shenanigans to anyone looking for the kind of physics-based environmental exploration that we just don’t see a lot of these days. I honestly enjoyed my time with Glyph and found it to be a welcome surprise… I just wish that I didn’t have to include so many caveats when recommending it.

I wanted to enjoy Glyph more than I did. The framework is there: fluid gameplay, beautiful art style, and with over one hundred levels, the game will keep a determined gamer entertained for many hours. But the developers set an unreasonably high bar for progression; one that required me to put the game down multiple times out of exasperation. Newer gamers: beware, but for seasoned players looking for a real challenge, Glyph could be your next rage-inducing favorite.

Glyph is set in the desert, which is a little sour for the ball-shaped main character who is allergic to sand. And just to be clear, it's not a "Is that a pimple on my face?" allergy, but one of the "If I hit sand the whole thing explodes" type. So jump, dive and fly, anything to stay out of the sand and accomplish your mission safely. Nice to spend a quarter or maybe even an hour, not enough to convert us to platforming.