If the idea of guiding a rolling, bouncing and gliding 'ball' from difficult pillar to post appeals, you probably won't be disappointed by Glyph. I am a very short way in, but reckon I can tell you enough for you to know if this might be for you.

Let me say up front it isn't easy. A rather excellent tutorial gets you going but it isn't easy either! It will though fill you in on the various mechanics of the game.

You control a scaraby beetle type thing, that has spent much of my time so far curled up into a ball. It can roll though, and bounce and then spread wings and glide. Which it will need to do to gather the coin, and keys and gems and probably other things in the particular level, before reaching the portal and moving on.

Simplistically, keep your beetle on track and don't stray. Jump over gaps to the next part, glide and bounce and double pump; do whatever but if you land in the sand or a sandy tile it's all over and start the level again.

The game autosaves and not within a level which produces some frustrating wails. Get nearly all the way through and fail, and all you can do is start that level again. You will though retain the items you collected thus far. Exit if you want and and try another level, if you have the price of entry.

Did I say already that it isn't easy?

The start of each level comes with an overview of what lies before you, including where the various items are. You can press Q or whichever button you map the function to in order to check your progress. Collecting is not just for fun. Accessing new areas comes at a cost - 1 gem and 3 coins for instance.

You can play with a keypad or the mouse and keyboard. I am doing the latter and so far it's more than fine. I do intend to try the gamepad though. WASD moves you around (and you can map keys to suit), and manage your POV with the mouse. The latter enables you to stay behind your beetle, or wherever you prefer to be.

Stop your forward momentum by crashing into a solid surface, but more likely by spinning backwards. You can seemingly do that in mid-jump, effectively minimizing the length of the jump, but too much or too soon and it's a failure in the sand. Double jump up surfaces, power-up your jumping ability, glide as required. The Steam page makes a point of mentioning that you can fine tune your momentum at all times, but it still isn't easy smile. It is fun though.

It sounds good, music and ambient sound but no spoken word (I doubt there will be; its not that sort of game) and it looks good too, in a minimalistic desert environment sort of way.

The Steam page says you can "dive climb roll twist crash edge skid glide sneak scale and corkscrew" your way along. That promises to make it more challenging. There are also hidden parts of levels for you to discover, should you wish to - or maybe some you have to.

There is a story of sort but it isn't really the point.

There are apparently more than 80 levels, with secrets to also unlock should you wish to. You also apparently don't have to complete all of them in order to get to the end. I suspect I will look forward to that.