The App Store is loaded with puzzle games, so it’s quite difficult to find the right one to suit a person’s specific tastes. Do you go for value, graphics, replay value or something entirely different? Glyph is able to offer all of the above and more at a great introductory price. Sounds kind of like an advertisement, doesn’t it?
Glyph has the basic concept of most Bejeweled style games. Match three or more like colors to remove the pieces from the board. What Glyph has going for it is variety of gameplay and longevity. The main campaign of Glyph consists of 200 stages. Yes, 200 stages that attempt to tell the story of Kuros and how discovering glyphs can save the world. The story itself isn’t exactly mind blowing, but we’re not here for the storytelling, we want to match some colored pieces.
The main quest in Glyph requires you to break away rock located behind the colored pieces to reveal a glyph. To break away rock just match at least three like colors. The rock won’t fully break with a single match, it requires a couple of color matches to fully reveal the glyph behind the rock. Sometimes a piece is crossed out on the left side of your screen. These pieces are still used in the game but the piece is unable to break away any rock when it is matched. In the quest, you aren’t required to reveal the entire space behind the pieces, just reveal the glyph to finish the stage. The further you progress into the game, the more variety of color pieces that are on the screen at a time. All of this may sound confusing, but it’s what sets the game apart from others. Everything seems to come naturally and progressively throughout the game.
The quest has a few other tweaks to differentiate it from other games of its kind. During the earlier portions of the game it is a pretty standard affair but later on things get hectic. In the top right corner of your screen there is a sand timer, if time runs out you lose a life. Time can be gained by matching multiple pieces and using power-ups. Some of the stages are set up to make it difficult to match pieces with single rows or stones that block all color pieces. The dark colored stones are unable to be removed by matching. The only way to remove these stones is to use one of your power-ups. Bombs are also scattered throughout the game. You can use these to remove all of the pieces of the same color. The bombs cycle through the colors so if you wait long enough the piece will cycle to whatever color you want to remove.
Power-ups can be gained by matching multiples of like pieces. The more pieces you match at a time, the quicker you gain power ups. They start weak but can become powerful. For example, let’s say you have a power-up of “color spread.” It starts out weak so if you use it right away your color won’t spread very far. The longer you wait to use it and the more pieces you match the more powerful it becomes. If it reaches the maximum spread, the entire map can be turned to the color of your choice. A wide variety of power-ups exist which are chosen at random, so use them wisely.
Arcade mode is more of the same except with a different goal. In arcade mode, you must not allow the pieces to reach the top. Keep matching and removing pieces as quickly as you can to avoid losing a life. A button is located on the right side to move the pieces up quicker but it is only necessary to use in the early stages as things get moving rapidly later on. Arcade mode will keep you interested after you have beaten the quest mode, which itself takes some time. Just more added replay value to a game that already is time consuming.
One silly thing I have to bring up is the fact that the screen can be spun either way. This should be required of all App Store games. Instead of forcing you to turn your device a specific way in landscape mode, it allows you to go either way, just like the Safari browser on your iPhone/iPod Touch. You would think that this would be an obvious inclusion for all games that require you to use landscape mode, but I have come across so many games that don’t do this that I just had to point it out.
Glyph is a great time waster. It’s not the most original game ever made but it just does everything right. For the time being, you can pick it up at an introductory price of $1.99. Astraware really spent time making sure players wouldn’t get bored with this one. If you love puzzle games, Glyph will not disappoint.
Overall: 8.5 out of 10
