Glyph has two gameplay modes, Quest and Action. Each mode has its own style and can almost be considered two completely different games in one. Besides reusing the same art assets for the different colored tiles, both modes also have power tiles or artifacts that will help to change the look of the board.
One artifact will remove a column, while another will cause the color of the stone you click on to spread to surrounding tiles. In Quest mode, each artifact can be leveled up. When an artifact appears on the screen, every tile you remove from the board adds power to the artifact. The more power an artifact has, the larger the area the artifact will affect. For instance, the power tile that removes columns will affect only one column with no additional power, but if you destroy enough blocks before using it, it can clear out three columns.
Glyph's Quest mode actually conveys a pretty solid story. Though that story is told in text with the occasional voice-overs (no flashy cinematics here), your progression between the different elements doesn't feel anywhere as random or pointless as, say changing temples in Zuma. You are trying to piece together the five lands (Woods, Fire, Water, Earth and Ether) and in order to do that, you must uncover ancient buried glyphs. You use stones that can cause layers of rock to be blown away and the more stones you blow up at a time, the more rock you get rid of. At its heart, Glyph is a tile-matching game. But instead of just having you try and clear as many tiles as possible, Quest mode gives you a purpose. The levels don't really care how many you get rid of, instead, it is where you get rid of them. As you remove rock-layers, the bright-blue symbol buried underneath gets uncovered and once you have revealed the entire glyph (not necessarily cleared the board, just the rock on top of the glyph), you are done with that level.
After four or five levels, you then play a Simon-esque game to combine them and form one of the glyphs that will help to bring life and energy back into that part of the broken land. In this part of the game, the newly-uncovered glyphs will light up in a certain order. You have to click on them and repeat the order a few times before you are allowed to continue with the rest of the game.
Action mode, on the other hand, is much closer to your standard color-matching game. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to Collapse. Rows of tiles appear from the bottom of the screen at regular intervals. You need to click on matching colored tiles in order to get them to go away. If you remove a column of tiles, then all of the columns will slide towards the center of the screen as much as possible (this is what really makes it feel like Collapse). The artifacts from Quest mode appear in this mode as well, but instead of appearing outside of the game board and being available whenever you want, they appear with the rest of the tiles. This slight change gives them a more pressing feel and makes you want to use them faster.
Action mode's similarity to Collapse is, by no means, a bad thing. It is a fun game and I have spent way too much time playing this mode. It offers a nice distraction and break from the potential repetition of the other mode.
Glyph also comes packaged with a bonus game called Snail Mail. In this addictive game, you are trying to race through obstacle courses full of enemies, asteroids, ramps and power-ups in order to deliver packages across the universe. In Snail Mail, you have no control over your speed, but you can navigate the snail left and right across the space-highway in order to guide your courier around obstacles or through packages and health units. Your only other mechanic is a mouse click that fires your weapon. As you go through certain colored rings, your weapons upgrade, and if you go through enough rings, you become invincible for the rest of the track (or until you fall off in a pit). Fun stuff.
