From the moment I first saw the block-sliding puzzle concept for Glyphs of Gitzan, it instantly reminded me of ReactorX and Bunny Factory. Despite being on opposite ends of the spectrum in regards to quality, both of those challenge you to light up tiles by manoeuvring things around, like Glyphs of Gitzan does.
One has to wonder which of the two aforementioned titles it’s more likely to emulate.
Can developers DoubleMizzlee ensure Glyphs of Gitzan delivers a challenging puzzler full of variety, or will it end up being a cheap offering that’s bereft of ideas?
The mysterious ruins in the ancient realm of Gitzan are adorned with hieroglyphs that have lured in many explorers over a long period of time. You see, they hold secrets promising an unimaginable power, but those who try to decipher these cryptic symbols to obtain such power are met with failure. That is until you come along, a plucky young explorer hoping to unlock the secrets once and for all as the protagonist in Glyphs of Gitzan.
While it sets the stage for the puzzling ahead, the premise is a measly offering that’s forgotten about the minute you finish reading the text on-screen. That’s not necessarily an issue however, as puzzle games usually live and die by their ability to pose intriguing problems with complex, but not impossible, solutions to figure out. Well, I hate to break it to you so early on, but good luck on finding anything intriguing or complex here.
There are fifty levels to conquer in Glyphs of Gitzan, all of which play out from a top-down-ish perspective. Upon entering a level, you’ll be presented with a tiled grid and some of the tiles have glyphs imprinted on them. There’s also a stone pillar of light and symbols upon these indicate which direction its light emanates from. The idea is to push the pillar so that it slides into a position where it illuminates all of the glyphs simultaneously. Successfully giving the glyphs a glow-up will enable you to progress to the next level.
Naturally, it’s very easy to work out the placement in the early stages with just a couple of pillars to be concerned about. So, how does it try to change up the gameplay and create more of a challenge going forward?
It attempts to ramp up the difficulty by expanding the grid and introducing a greater number of glyphs to light up. As such, more pillars enter the fray, with light emitting from up to four directions at once, but the solutions are still fairly straightforward. Certain pillars can only fit in certain spots, with the layout making this quite obvious, before then pushing the others in to fill up the rest.
Thankfully, it has other tricks up its sleeve, including the addition of deadly spikes and pillars that need charging up before use. Both ideas literally bring nothing interesting to the table, apart from the latter being a bit of a nuisance. You see, the spikes are easily avoidable, while the action of sliding a pillar to the charging spot is merely a time consuming chore – it doesn’t require any brain power. Even with wasted seconds, the entire collection of levels could easily be done and dusted in under an hour.
A small blessing for Xbox gamers is the ability to garner a huge chunk of Gamerscore for not much effort. For completing all fifty levels, the achievements unlocked will give you a whopping 3000 Gamerscore. Costing less than a fiver and taking up just an hour of your time is music to the ears of achievement addicts.
In the end though, Glyphs of Gitzan is a cheap, but not so cheerful, block-sliding puzzle game that’s lacking in multiple areas. Even though it offers a decent number of levels to work through and an excessive amount of Gamerscore for your efforts, it’s over too quickly. That’s because of how easy the solutions are, with very little difference in difficulty from the first level to the last. It also runs out of new ideas swiftly, which causes a real deficiency in both the variety and enjoyment.
Glyphs of Gitzan isn’t worth exploring and you should find your next puzzle fix elsewhere.
