GYLT Review – A Flawed But Enjoyable Experience

Despite a promising concept and extravagant expenditure, Google Stadia failed to make an impact on the market – and many have blamed that failure on the lack of any exclusive games on the platform. But that’s not entirely true because Stadia did have a couple of interesting games to its name, including but not limited to Tequila Works’ GYLT which has now made its way over to consoles and PC – allowing anyone who previously didn’t get a chance to play this narrative adventure to have a shot at the game.

GYLT starts out simply enough, with the player assuming the role of Sally – a young and impressionable girl who embarks on a quest to find her missing cousin by putting relevant posters all across her hometown. She is soon ambushed by bullies, and her escape plan leads her to a simple-looking cable cart that takes her to a dark and abandoned version of the town of Bethelwood. It is here that she starts seeing the first signs of her lost cousin Emily, but the path to rescuing her is wrought with all sorts of dangers like shadow monsters and otherworldly creatures.

The story itself has a simple premise, and Sally is a well-written protagonist with all the innocent charm and personality one would expect from such a young character. The voice acting is also well done, and it does a good job of portraying Sally as a character that’s worth rooting for. Her backstory also reveals itself in layers, and the game also briefly touches upon heavy themes like bullying, depression, or survivor’s guilt – but the narrative rarely does justice to these serious topics. The problem with the game’s story is that it isn’t really fleshed out in any meaningful way.

"The story itself has a simple premise, and Sally is a well-written protagonist with all the innocent charm and personality one would expect from such a young character. The voice acting is also well done, and it does a good job of portraying Sally as a character that’s worth rooting for."

What happens in GYLT is that despite searching for Emily for a majority of the story’s runtime before it all prematurely concludes with a simple resolution to that central conflict, ultimately leaving a sour taste in your mouth. There are also no interesting NPCs except for that one old stranger who makes an appearance at several points throughout the story. Nothing eventful really happens for a solid chunk of the runtime. Those who want more out of the narrative can check out the text logs scattered throughout the environments, but that isn’t a replacement for a story that’s just weak in its bones.

Thankfully, GYLT fares better when it comes to the gameplay which involves sneaking through dark environments while avoiding the many enemies that lie in your path. The stealth mechanics are pretty basic in their scope, but it works well within the context of the game itself. The enemies have a rather rudimentary AI which makes sneaking past them and exploiting them a really easy task. You will be using bits and pieces of cover to circle around the enemies, but you can also use certain items like cans to distract an enemy and clear a path to your objective.

Later on, your character will soon obtain a flashlight that’s not only used to illuminate the dark environments but also serves the purpose of a central offensive weapon for combat encounters. You can focus a beam of light onto several weak points on an enemy’s body, and once all those points have been dealt with, the shadowy beast will vanish into thin air. Of course, using your flashlight consumes power which has to be recharged by collecting batteries scattered throughout the environment. So, you might need to toggle between sneaking and aggressively attacking enemies depending on your resources. But in my experience, battery resources and inhalers that replenish your health were always plentiful which made clearing rooms of monsters the more convenient option than slowly tiptoeing past them.

"But in my experience, battery resources and inhalers that replenish your health were always plentiful which made clearing rooms of monsters the more convenient option than slowly tiptoeing past them."

GYLT has a simple combat loop, but it does a mostly good job of shaking things up by introducing new enemy types that force you to get creative with your tactics. For instance, the Mannequins are resistant to light while the crows can teleport over large distances and deal massive amounts of damage to the player. However, the issue is that the primitive enemy AI and plentiful resources just aren’t enough to create challenging combat scenarios – which is precisely why GYLT robs you of all your tools during its finale when the mechanics have run their course.

GYLT also brands itself as a survival horror game, and while the atmosphere is definitely unsettling to a degree with levels being based around familiar places like a school gym or a theater, the jumpscares that lie within don’t quite hit the mark to really catch you off guard. There are a few instances where something might raise an eyebrow or cause you to tighten your grip on the controller, but that’s more of an exception than the norm.

When you’re not fighting shadow monsters, you will be solving puzzles where you have to use a handful of tools to clear out obstacles in the environment or try to find the keys to a locked door that’s halting your progress. These puzzles are rarely brain-tickling, and a lot of that can be blamed on the level design which is largely linear. Most of the time you will be railroaded down a certain path, so you can be sure that the solution to a particular puzzle lies within this very room, which ultimately makes getting through these obstacles a cakewalk for the most part.

"Most of the time you will be railroaded down a certain path, so you can be sure that the solution to a particular puzzle lies within this very room, which ultimately makes getting through these obstacles a cakewalk for the most part."

That said, there are moments when GYLT allows you to explore the surroundings by going off the beaten path. But even those detours will just lead you to one of the many collectibles like crystals or canaries which don’t have much of an impact on the gameplay. There are no skills or upgrades to unlock in GYLT, and all the tools can be procured by just sticking to the critical path. As such, there isn’t much incentive to replay the game once you’ve finished it except for seeing an alternate ending or going back in for the leftover collectibles scattered around the environment.

Visually, GYLT doesn’t really look anything special which is to be expected from a game with a middling budget, not to mention that it is almost 4 years old at this point. This multiplatform re-release would have been the perfect opportunity to update the visuals in some manner – but what we got is pretty much the same thing that was released on Stadia with little to no improvements in terms of visuals. That said, I didn’t experience any bugs or glitches during my time with the game and the framerate was solid through and through.

Despite its many shortcomings, GYLT is a passable adventure that managed to retain my interest for the entirety of its campaign. Sure, the mechanics aren’t anything new or particularly innovative – but they serve their purposes for the relatively short runtime of around six hours. The story also has an interesting premise, but it falters in the face of a barebones structure and poor pacing. GYLT might be worth a try if you find any of this interesting, but it’s totally passable if you aren’t particularly piqued by anything that’s on offer.