Our own game · iOS & Android
Glyphs Below
The board remembers. An offline-first puzzle-strategy game for iOS and Android where a three-room tomb board carries every repair, crack, lock and corruption forward — with weekly contracts, a daily tomb, shareable tomb codes and a 24-exhibit museum to restore.
Built and published by IGEARS TECHNOLOGY LIMITED
The loop
The board remembers
Most puzzle games are generous in a way they never admit: every level is a clean slate. Make a mess, lose, restart — the board forgets. Glyphs Below does not. Three rooms run as one continuous board, and what you leave behind in the first is still there waiting in the third.
That single decision changes what a good move is. A play that solves the room in front of you can quietly ruin the one after it, so the question stops being "can I clear this?" and becomes "what am I willing to leave behind?" Archive Replay exists because of it — you can go back and watch exactly how a run went wrong, from the same starting board, rather than reshuffling and pretending it did not happen.
Around the loop
A daily reason to come back, with nothing to sign into
A new tomb every UTC day, four weekly contracts each with its own rule set, a season called The Siltbound Ledger, and a museum of twenty-four exhibits across four wings that fills up as you play. All of it resolves on the device — no account, no connection required, and no online leaderboard telling you that somebody in another timezone already did it better.
Tomb codes are the social part, and deliberately the only social part. Every tomb has one. Hand it to a friend and they get the identical board, so a run can be compared or argued over with no server in between.
At a glance
ca.igears.glyphsbelowWhat is in it
Six ways to play the same board
Archive Replay
Finish a three-room expedition and the board replays itself: the repairs that held, the damage that spread, the guardian calls that mattered, the seals you missed — and a suggested goal for the next attempt.
Four Weekly Curator’s Contracts
Four deterministic contracts, each with its own rule set, rotating entirely offline. No connection and no sign-in needed to start one.
A Daily Tomb
One shared board per UTC day, with your personal best kept on the device. There is no online leaderboard in version 1.0 — the score you are chasing is your own.
Shareable tomb codes
Every tomb has a checksum-protected code. Hand it to someone and they get the identical board, so runs can be compared with no server and no account in between.
The Siltbound Ledger
The first device-date archive season: its own Sentinel, two authored room rules and featured exhibits, played through chapter by chapter.
A four-wing museum
Twenty-four exhibits restored in a fixed, duplicate-free order, each with a reveal, a lore page and a conservation note. Completing a set unlocks presentation themes and sidegrade starting relics — never raw paid power.
The product
Real screens from version 1.0.0
Captures from the actual game — no device frames, no mocked-up store badges and no text laid over the screenshots.
Phones
Swipe for more screens →
Tablets
Offline-first, and specific about it
What the game does and does not do
"Offline-first" is easy to put on a store listing and harder to mean. Here is the actual behaviour of version 1.0.0, in the same words the privacy policy uses.
Stays on your device
- Offline-first: core version 1.0 play is designed to work with no connection at all.
- No account, no login, no chat, no user-generated content and no online leaderboard.
- No energy timer, no punitive streak and no loot box.
- Save progress, settings, local bests, tomb codes, museum progress and entitlements stay on the device.
- No name, email, contacts, photographs, precise location, microphone or camera access is requested.
- Gameplay events go to a size-limited file on the device — version 1.0 sends them nowhere.
Optional, and only if you choose it
One optional rewarded restoration per UTC day
A single rewarded advert is offered per UTC day, granting 20 Archive Dust, and only if you choose it. Declining never blocks play, and advertising is never required to play or complete the game. Where required, a consent message appears before any ad is requested, and Ad Privacy Options can be reopened from the game’s Optional Support screen.
Two one-time cosmetic purchases
First Conservators Folio and Gilded Guardian Frames I — both non-consumable, both restorable, and both presentation-only. No gameplay advantage, no currency, no loot box, no subscription. Every expedition, guardian, season and exhibit stays playable without paying. The store shows the regional price.
Glyphs Below is offline-first, but purchases, purchase restoration, the optional rewarded advert and these legal pages need third-party network services. Changing a device clock, clearing data, reinstalling or moving between devices can affect local records — version 1.0 has no account and does not promise cross-device save transfer.
Engineering
What shipping this actually took
- A persistent board: damage, repairs, locks and corruption stay at their coordinates across all three rooms.
- Four Sentinel archetypes with distinct behaviour, plus guardians that charge from the board edges.
- Deterministic tomb generation with checksum-protected codes, so a shared code reproduces the identical board.
- Dated content — the Daily Tomb, four weekly contracts and the season — resolved from the device’s UTC date, with no server.
- Archive Replay reconstructs a whole three-room expedition from local state and proposes the next mastery goal.
- A deterministic, duplicate-free 24-exhibit museum across four wings, with set rewards that are sidegrades rather than power.
- Local-only persistence for saves, settings, best results, tomb codes, museum progress and entitlements.
- A bounded, size-limited on-device event queue for diagnosing game flow, with no remote endpoint in version 1.0.
- Unity IAP for on-device store integration; Unity cloud purchasing and direct-to-consumer reporting are not enabled.
- Google Mobile Ads with the User Messaging Platform consent flow, gating one optional rewarded restoration per day.
- Ten selectable in-game locales, including right-to-left navigation and script-aware fonts.
- Store-compliance work that matches the code: privacy answers, data-safety declarations and a 13+ age rating.
Accessibility, in the game itself
- Reduced-motion support.
- Non-colour board symbols, so no rule depends on hue alone.
- Adjustable text size.
- Right-to-left navigation and script-aware fonts.
Game development is the hardest test of mobile engineering — real-time state, deterministic generation, offline persistence and two sets of store-compliance rules that have to match what the code actually does. It is the same bench that builds our clients' business apps.
Where to find it
Get the game
Glyphs Below is finishing store review. The badges become links the moment each public listing exists — we do not publish a store URL before there is one to publish.
Questions we hear
Glyphs Below FAQ
Does Glyphs Below need an internet connection?
Core version 1.0 play is designed to work offline. Purchases, restoring a purchase, the optional rewarded advert and these legal pages need third-party network services, but the puzzle itself, the Daily Tomb, the weekly contracts and the museum do not.
Is there an account or an online leaderboard?
No. There is no iGears account and no online leaderboard in version 1.0. Best results are kept on the device, so the score you are chasing is your own.
Are there ads?
One optional rewarded restoration is offered per UTC day, and only if you choose it. Declining never blocks play, and advertising is not required to play or complete the game. Where required, a consent message appears before any ad is requested.
What can be bought?
Two one-time, non-consumable cosmetic items through the App Store or Google Play. They change presentation only — there is no gameplay advantage, no currency, no loot box and no subscription. The store shows the regional price, and eligible purchases can be restored.
How do the daily and weekly modes decide what to show?
From the device's own UTC date — there is no server deciding it. Changing a device clock, clearing data, reinstalling or moving between devices can therefore affect local records, and version 1.0 does not promise cross-device save transfer.
What data leaves the device?
In version 1.0, none of the gameplay data. Save progress, settings, local bests, tomb codes, museum progress, entitlements and a size-limited event queue all stay on the device. If you use the optional advert or make a purchase, Google's advertising SDK and Apple or Google's store handle that under their own policies — the details are in the privacy policy.
Get a quotation
Want a game — or an app built by people who ship them? Tell us what it has to do.
Send it today and our Hong Kong engineering team scopes it overnight, so you usually have an answer before your next morning. Your contract, your invoicing and the person you call stay in Edmonton. A quotation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Prefer email or phone? info@igears.ca · +1 587 599 2412