The Gunk (PC, Xbox) Leave a comment

I never finish games. There, I said it. There are many reasons. Most of all, I don't have the time anymore. With two kids and as a tech lead at a company, my time for gaming has got to compete with lots of things including coaching my kids in soccer as well as other hobbies.

For me, the problem is that a lot of video game companies decided that their video games needed to service and be overflowing with content (looking at them again). Even for a game, I enjoy, I eventually lose interest or worse, come to realize that I'll never be able to get into the game again and simply leave it.

Why am I bringing up this point when reviewing the new game from the Swedish studio Thunderful, The Gunk? Well, I finished playing this game.

The Story

The story of The Gunk is quite simple. You follow two space hauler ships that are visiting a planet that they picked up a faint signal from. They're down on their luck and they really need to score to avoid losing their ship. Things aren't always as they seem and they eventually realize the world is overrun by something they call The Gunk. The game ends up becoming a rescue mission for an entirely alien civilization.

The Graphics and Sound

Let’s take a look at the gameplay first before we get into the looks and sounds of the game. The game is out for Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X. On a Windows laptop (Asus Zephyr G15 with Ryzen 5 9500H and Nvidia RTX 3090), I played the game.

The game uses Unreal Engine. It's not the prettiest game I've ever played, but it's not ugly either. The premise behind the game is that the Gunk has suppressed all life, meaning it is grey and dull When you clear away the junk, the colors come back and you're treated with a colorful and gorgeous view. The game has a lot of different areas, each one with its own distinct look. There are jungles, abandoned mines, and even a wasteland where nothing is alive.

One thing I really enjoy about the game is that there is no HUD. There is no extra information shown on the screen. You see Rani, the character you control, in a third-person perspective. All screenshots here were taken in-game.

It's obvious this game was made exclusively for consoles because there are basically no options to change anything besides resolution and quality settings, which don't tell you what they do. When playing at 4K/ultra, I experienced no issues except for a few hiccups at the end of the final level when you travel up the elevator. It was always a bit buggy and sometimes would slow down the game for a few seconds.

There isn't much to say about the sound department. The voice actors did a good job and the banter worked out pretty well. Besides that, I don't think the sound is special either because the Gunk itself is silent and there aren't really any other animals in the game either.

The Gameplay

The gameplay loop for The Gunk is actually fairly simple. You control one of two spaceships, Rani. She has one mechanical hand instead of a real hand. This hand can be upgraded with different functionalities. The base functionality is for it to suck up gunk. Don’t ask me where it goes ….

The glove can be improved so that it can shoot electricity and some other functions. You can also scan items, which I didn't know was very important because for every item you can scan you earn some points towards upgrades, both for your gloves and more general stuff like running faster.

This is the biggest type of monster. It behaves like a cow and you have to go behind its back to kill it.

The game has Rana running around trying to figure out where the signals come from and then how to stop the invasion. There are a number of different flowers that can help clean up the gunk that has accumulated in your ear canal. One flower seed, if planted in a shining pool of water, will grow into a mushroom. Another seed blows things up and so on. There is no real risk in the game and no need for urgency so you can spend some time exploring and finding all of the other flowers that you can fly up to get raw materials for upgrades. The gunk can turn into a few different kinds of monsters if it feels threatened. As far as I could tell, there were only three types of monsters in the entire game, which felt like a missed opportunity.

None of the puzzles were particularly difficult. If you get stuck, it's usually enough to just look for a seed or something to hit to open something. There is some clever puzzle at the end of the games where you have to think more but not much. There is no help in the game. It seems like they would have incorporated a hint system for the radio calls from the ship, Becky, however, if you are stuck you're stuck. Fortunately, I never got stuck once during the game, so it was an easy game.

The battle system isn't really a battle system. It's just a game. You can't shoot any monsters; just suck them up and toss them away. It feels a bit strange that you have a weapon that doesn't actually hurt anyone, just stuns them.

While playing the game on my laptop, I used the keyboard and mouse for most of the game. It is obvious that the game was made for console platforms because it is a bit cumbersome to use the keyboard and mouse combination. For example, aiming the energy weapon requires you first to aim with the right-click and then press e. Examples To send out a monster lure, you need to use the C key. After switching from a mouse to an Xbox controller, things felt much more natural.

Missed opportunities

While I actually enjoyed playing the game, there are a lot of things I don't like about it and which I hope the developer will improve in a (hopefully Greenlit) sequel.

To short

It took me less time than a full day to complete the game. According to the game I played for about five hours, not counting when it was pausing or during cut scenes. According to the Xbox app I played for about nine hours when counting everything I did in the game—cutting scenes, pausing, etc. It was hard for me to keep up with the pace of the story. For a second I thought that the game would be longer as you encounter the final boss first and get kicked off because he is way too strong. It seemed like the game was going to continue while you either find a method to weaken him or to get stronger. But it turned out that the game only lasted an additional 30 minutes before you got back and fought the last battle.

A bit generic story

It feels too generic. It doesn't seem like the Gunk is supposed to be anything, but maybe it represents how we pollute our world. It just didn't feel like it was trying to say anything. The relationship between the characters doesn't feel fully developed. They don't tell us much about their past and we only see them briefly during the game. There is a fight between them which ends that they don't talk for a while and suddenly everything is okay again.

Where are the cool dungeons?

The Gunk can turn into monsters. This would be a great opportunity to create a wide range of cool monsters. Instead, we get ….. three? One tiny little monster; one fire spouting static monster; and that bull thingy. That’s all. And in fact, they're rare.

To easy

As long as the game has an interesting plot, I don't mind if there are some parts where I can't lose. But I still want some challenges. Unfortunately, the Gunk has no difficulty settings and is too easy. It takes me less than five minutes to reload from the last checkpoint. There were no specific strategies for dealing with the gunk. Yes, the fire-spitting monster was a bit annoying, but I quickly figured out a way to deal with it. And the last boss encounter was quite easy and was defeated in one go.

Some bugs

The game has some frustrating game-breaking bugs. Two of those happened to me. One time, the game didn't trigger an “All Gunk Gone” animation even though all gunk had been removed. It took me a few tries before I got it right. A particularly bad puzzle had an error that it was impossible to solve. You are given three pieces of a bridge and asked to turn them into a bridge that you can use to cross a river. To do that you'll need to pull three steel balls. If you do it the wrong way, one piece resets but you cannot turn it again. You cannot continue. You have to reload an earlier saved game (the correct order is center, right then left).

Conclusion

Despite all my complaints, I actually enjoyed the game quite a bit. Even though it was boring, I would have kept playing it for as long as I found it fun. It is a great game and there are lots of things that Thunderful has done right with the game. It's frustrating that I can't see what would have made the game better. That is why I am still hoping that Thunderful will be successful enough to make a sequel for their game and learn from their own mistakes.

One of the nice features of this game is that it's available on Gamepass even if you also can buy it from Steam for 250 SEK/25$. As long as you have a Gamepass subscription, you can play the game for free. Honestly, I might think $25 is too much for such a short video game, but it would fit perfectly into a service like Gamepass where you pay per month instead of paying once.