Astraware has just released a new game called Glyph. As with most games from Astraware, the graphics and sound quality are top-notch. Glyph is easy to learn and quickly becomes addictive. I’ve been playing it for a few days now and am pretty much hooked.

The Story

The world of Kuros is in peril because the ancient Elemental Masters accidentally corrupted the five elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Water and Aether). In their final effort to save their world they created a set of Glyphs, inscribed in living stone, which could be used to restore the dying world. The burden falls on you to discover the Glyphs and find the secret to their power so you can restore the world of Kuros to its former beauty.

In order to reveal the Glyphs, you must strip away the layers of rock by finding matching groups of at least three stones. When you tap on the stones their power is released, removing the underlying layer of rock. When you remove enough matching stones the underlying Glyph will be revealed. You must reveal the entire Glyph by removing all pieces of rock that are covering it in order to complete the level.

There are five worlds to search in order to obtain all of the Glyphs. Each world consists of five groups of five levels per group, for a total of 25 levels per world. The first four levels of each group contain four Glyph fragments, and in the fifth level you join the fragments. This challenge is met by listening and watching the fragments as they play a sequence of tones (each fragment glows brighter when it plays its tone) and then you must tap the fragments in the same order to play the sequence back.

After collecting and assembling all five Glyphs for an Elemental World, you have mastered that element and can move on to the next world. Since there are five different worlds, that’s a total of 125 unique levels to solve in the game’s Quest Mode.

Additional Game Features

Some levels are more challenging than others because the layout of the colored stones is different for each level. On some levels, certain colors of gems won’t have any power, so while you can remove them from the screen, they don’t remove the underlying stone when they are removed. Each level is timed, and while removing stones adds time, if you take too long to reveal a Glyph fragment you will lose one of your three lives. If you lose all of your lives the game is over and you must start from the beginning.

There are also several different types of artifacts that will sometimes appear on the right side of the screen. These artifacts have special powers that grow in strength as you match more stones. Some of the special artifacts include Flash Bombs, Row Break, Column Break, Color Spread, Stone Sorter and Color Dissolve. There are also Bombs and Chroma Bombs that allow you to destroy all stones of a certain color. The Flash Bombs are especially handy for removing Solid Rock stones, which can prevent a Glyph fragment from being revealed until it has been destroyed.

In addition to Glyph’s Quest Mode, there is also an Action Mode where rows of stones are added from the bottom of the screen and your goal is to clear away stones until you have removed enough rows to move on to the next level.

Good help screens explain all of the details of the game, and the first few levels have interactive help that teaches you the basics.

Conclusion

With 125 unique levels in Quest Mode and another 100 levels in Action Mode, Glyph is a game that will challenge you for many hours. The levels vary between relatively easy to more challenging, but the soundtrack is soothing so you don’t get too stressed out playing the game.

Pros

• Over 125 levels in Quest mode and over 100 levels in Action mode for many hours of unique game play

• Great graphics and relaxing soundtrack
• The special stones and artifacts provide extra challenges that keep the game interesting
• Quest Mode is a fun challenge that takes a long time to complete while Action Mode is good when you just want a quick game.
• Multiple players for those willing to share their Treos.

Cons

• Once you’ve played several levels and have encountered all of the special stones, there isn’t much additional variety to the game (but it is still fun to play)

• At 2660K, the game requires a lot of free internal memory. This is usually not a big problem on a Treo 700p, but it can be tough to free up the memory needed to play the game on a Treo 650.
• Only supports hi-res devices running PalmOS 5, so Glyph will not run on a Treo 600.

Tested using Treo 700p

Related Links

Download Glyph

Other Astraware Games

Filed under: Software reviews