Room Escape Artist

Artisan of Glimmith is a puzzle video game created by Lunarch Studios and published by Lunarch Studios and 983 Interactive.

Format

Style of Play:

• Puzzle video game
• Polyomino (grid filling)

Who is it For?

• Puzzle lovers
• Scenery snobs

Required Equipment: Computer that meets system requirements, or a Steam Deck

Recommended Team Size: 1

Play Time: Varies. At least 30 hours of content, with more available as bonus levels and challenges.

Price: $12.99

Description

The Artisan of Glimmith overworld contained a series of plinths, each holding a different abstract puzzle to solve. For each puzzle, you must lay squares of colored glass in a grid according to an ever-increasing mix of logical rules. Different areas are gated, but you never need to fully finish a section to be granted access to the next part.

Christina Rohlf’s Reaction

The Artisan of Glimmith was a charming logic and spatial puzzle game. Gameplay revolved around completing a series of polyomino puzzles (fitting geometric shapes together into a grid) to rebuild stained glass windows and unlock new areas in the environment. I especially enjoyed that each new area was also associated with a new set of rules that needed to be met to solve the puzzle. The changing guidelines added variety to the game and also resulted in unique interactions from combining multiple rules in later levels. However, in spite of the differing rules, I found the puzzles repetitive after several hours of gameplay. The Artisan of Glimmith seemed tailored toward playing a few levels per day over a span of months to years, not speed running the game.

The number of puzzles contained within the game was outstanding. I completed about 250 puzzles in 10 hours of gameplay and finished reconstructing about one-third of the stained glass windows. Furthermore, after completing the window in each region (requires solving about 15 polyomino puzzles), you can also gild the window with silver (about 25 puzzles) and gold (about 35 puzzles). As a completionist, I wanted to make sure I solved all of the puzzles in each area before moving to the next and although the number of puzzles required to gild a window in gold is listed, I ran into several instances early on where I gilded the window and still had more puzzles to solve.

As I continued playing, I realized that the number provided does not include the level 5, 6, and 7 puzzles located in an area, so there is no way to guarantee that you have solved all of the puzzles. Furthermore, players cannot rotate the map, which I found especially frustrating given that some of the puzzles were hidden and difficult to find. All in all, The Artisan of Glimmith was a fun puzzle-centric game that I will continue coming back to if I need an hour or two to decompress and solve some colorful, spatial puzzles.

Lyra Levin’s Reaction

Spatial puzzle-lovers will find a cozy escape in The Artisan of Glimmith. The charming soundtrack and illustration elevate this game above many of its peers, while the gently escalating complexity provided hours of brain teasing. I enjoyed the sequential combining of mechanics that built into surprising combinations to wrap my brain around.

Like puzzle games often do, Glimmith has an interesting story premise, but never follows through with narrative. Expect to spend your time bending your brain in a pretty, colorful world, rather than pursuing the promised plot. The difficulty of puzzles scales nicely, though I sometimes found myself grinding on easier ones in order to fill the meter and access the next region, and there isn’t the variety of play escape room players might be seeking.

Joel Smileypeacefun’s Reaction

In a kingdom above the clouds, stained-glass windows are waiting to be restored in the right configurations.

At its best, the rules of how to fill in the puzzle grids are, for the most part, simple to understand. The game not only comes with a fantastic learning curve and variable difficulty levels for both beginners and puzzle experts, but it also showcases a nice and calming aesthetic.

At its worst, while this is a pretty straightforward puzzle game, and I therefore didn’t expect a well thought-out storyline, I at least expected the overworld to do something special. But it stayed rather basic. Additionally, a weird Steam bug while playing the pre-release version stopped the game from saving my progress twice, which was really annoying, but is probably only partially the developers’ fault.

You can easily sink dozens of hours into these riddles, especially if you’re a completionist and you want to tackle all the extra-hard bonus levels. I recommend you give it a try.

Disclosure: 983 Interactive provided the Hivemind reviewers with a complimentary play.