Armed with nothing but your sword and your wits, you must journey through a delightful cartoony fantasy world by collecting gems, avoiding traps, and slaying enemies to rescue your love from the vile clutches of an evil wizard! Brought to us by Huge Pixel, Glittering Sword is an action-adventure title inspired by 90’s RPGs with its bright, cartoony graphics and easy to learn, challenging to master gameplay.

GRAPHICS 9/10

This game’s cartoony art style radiates a sense of fantastical wonder that stays with you as you journey from idyllic meadows to foreboding forests.

Glittering Sword’s world is brought to life through a highly detailed cartoon art style that is cheerful without being garish or hard to look at.  The landscapes are scarred with little imperfections that add variation and color to every level, and the creatures are similarly well-drawn.  They are lovingly rendered to be as cutesy as possible, rounding out the whimsical aesthetic.

SOUND QUALITY 9/10

Glittering Sword’s delightful soundtrack uses a host of different instruments and will stick in your head for the rest of the day.               

Your journey is accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack ranging from slow and serene to rhythmic and intense. Tracks use piano, percussion, and various folk instruments to compliment the setting perfectly.  Each trap plays a  unique sound when triggered, letting you know to watch out even if you’re focusing on something else, like the conga line of spiders chasing after you.  The bees buzz and wolves growl pleasantly (even when hell-bent on splattering you across the flowery meadows).  Everything is so unapologetically twee, it’s hard not to take a liking to it. 

GAMEPLAY 8/10

Glittering Sword offers a variety of challenges that will test your skills and leave you wanting more.

The game keeps things interesting by blending a few core elements, my favorite being the puzzles.  Every puzzle mechanic is creatively combined with the others to get the most out of them.  Between collecting gems to deactivating magic walls, flipping switches for various effects, and carefully navigating mazes of spikes, there’s more than enough to keep your interest.  My only complaint is that the puzzles quickly take a back seat to the traps.

And it’s the traps that serve as the biggest threat to your beautiful, featureless face. They are a constant threat you must be wary of while simultaneously fighting off enemies and solving puzzles.  Because of this, Glittering Sword is a game that rewards you for taking your time to plan your moves while also requiring quick thinking to execute them.  It’s a bit platformer-esque and similarly satisfying when you finally reach the end.

Last and sadly least, we have the combat.  To help you conquer your foes, you have your trusty sword, a dash ability to get out of challenging situations, and a ranged magic attack if you buy the blue potions instead of health potions.  Combat consists of frantically clicking an enemy to death as you run screaming from a swarm of arrows and falling boulders.  The enemies are more of an inconvenience than a challenge in and of themselves, which I found a bit underwhelming considering how well executed the other elements are.                                   

There’s little to speak of in terms of bosses, too.  While there is a boss fight at the end of each chapter, they’re all fragile re-skins that share the same three attacks.  They don’t incorporate other game elements and barely play on the skills you’ve been developing, making them seem like an afterthought with little connection to the rest of the game.  It’s all perfectly functional but doesn’t even begin to reach its full potential.

STORY 5/10

Glittering Sword was inspired by an era of games where adding a few text lines would mean cutting out a couple of levels- a thing this game has taken to heart. There’s no dialogue, no voice acting, just five chapters of steadily increasing challenge. Your character is a man with a completely featureless face. Your purpose: to save a female character with a completely featureless face from an evil wizard who, you guessed it, has a featureless face. That is all we are told and all we need to know.

OVERALL 7.8/10

Overall, Glittering Sword is a short and sweet game chock full of challenge and pleasant visuals.  While the boss fights are a letdown, and I’d have appreciated a more in-depth story, the other elements will keep you engaged and puts your skills to the test as you hum along to the catchy music.

Glittering Sword was released on February 4th, 2021, and is available on Steam for PC and for the Nintendo Switch.  The reviewer purchased this game at a discount.