Glatisant is a Duet game with okay solo rules
Glatisant is a game about a knight hunting down a questing beast and their journey in doing so.
It is a journaling game using the Carta system so players will set up an array of cards and move along the cards by flipping them over and discovering the prompt they represent.
I had a lot of fun playing but the ending was anticlimactic. The prompts were fun and evocative and showed a varied journey. You can fail to find the beast by losing all of your lifeforce represented by 7 starting points spread between 'mind', 'body', and 'spirit.
Each prompt tells you to gain or lose resources but most of them have you losing resources. It makes for a tense game where you're feeling apprehensive about where to move next but it can end games very quickly. I've lost in 5 turns.
You are given a once a game ability that can relieve some of the loss but that's all the choice you have in how you gain or lose resources.
This is a game about discovering the story of the knight and best. It's not about controlling the knight's ability to overcome situations with creative thinking.
As you journey your prompts give you two questions. One for the knight and one for the beast. You only answer the knight's questions for the first part of the game and leave room for the beast's answers in your journal. I had run out of space a few times because I didn't estimate correctly.
When you get to the end of your knight playthrough there is no resolution. What happens with the knight and the beast is entirely reliant on their interactions during the prompts so because the beast's questions aren't answered you have no direction as to how to end the knight's journey. Answering the beasts questions after going through the knight's journey wasn't as fun as playing the knight and took away the tension. There's no climactic ending here because you have to answer prompts to determine what actually happened on your journey.
It's an interesting setup but all of the buildup is lost when you have to go back and answer the beasts questions.
This game would be great as a Duet experience but as a solo one it feels lacking.