Glass Masquerade – review

Went on another walk with your dog and forgot some doggie bags? Had a hard day at work because the coffee machine was broken? Had to ride on an overcrowded train? Everyone has some sort of stress and that’s why Glass Masquerade is a perfect game for Xbox, relieving you from that annoying stress. This artistic puzzle game from developer Onyx Lute isn’t your typical puzzle game, this very calming experience without punishing rules or time limits will let you travel around an International Times Exhibition placing glass pieces together. I think everyone enjoys completing a jigsaw puzzle and Glass Masquerade has 25 of them, so did we enjoy it? Let’s place the review pieces together and find out!

The good

• Relaxing and fun gameplay: Not many other games are so relaxing as Glass Masquerade, with no limits or gameplay punishment you can really take your time with making your jigsaw. Unlike other jigsaw games on a console or in real life, it is a little bit harder to see where a piece should be placed. The game starts with redlining a few glass pieces so you have a base to start, all other pieces are blacked out so you really have to look at the shape. Luckily you don’t have to rotate pieces, making it a little less frustrating than for example Microsoft Jigsaw on the Windows Store. Another difference between other jigsaw games is that you don’t know what you are making, it is like opening a Kinder Suprise egg, you never know what is in them. A particular neat idea since finishing a puzzle gives a rewarding feeling.
• Nicely designed visuals: Seeing your result while placing everything together is your main motivation, the art is really beautiful and one-of-a-kind too, never seen this type of art before in a game. While the gameplay idea might not be the most original ever, the way how the developer executed it isn’t straightforward. Making it an easy but well thought about execution.
• Layout: One thing that is really worth mentioning is how crafty and easy to use the interface is, from the menu for selecting which level or taking your puzzle pieces. Simplicity is what the developer must have thought and it worked out really well.

Mixed feelings

• Cursor movement: Remember that dog thing I mentioned in the introduction? Moving the cursor in this game is similar as walking a dog that pulls on the leash, you don’t really have precise control. When you pressed left or right for too long the cursos keeps traveling on his own, a few seconds after you let go of the movement stick. Besides that the puzzle placement is very forgiving and taking and dropping a glass piece is easy and fast.

The bad

• Replay value: You have 25 different countries that you’ll visit with the international times exhibition. You’ll spend around twelve minutes on average on each glass puzzle, depending on the difficulty of course. While you see your completion time it doesn’t actually have much meaning because there are no leaderboards. So the lack of any replay value is immediately killed.

Glass Masquerade | Score: 80%

My girlfriend told me something I hear a lot from other gamers if I talk about reviewing games. “what are you going to write about Glass Masquerade, a damn jigsaw game?!” I’ll be the first to agree that continuously writing reviews each week isn’t easy but this wonderful artistic game gave me enough reasons to pump out words of meaning. This is an excellent game to play between all the heavy hitters and hopefully, Glass Masquerade 2 will be out for Xbox too!