The Gunk - made by the Steamworld developers.

Ok yeah this is a very B game, but as Game Pass filler it’s fine. It’s super indie in the story, it’s a couple working through relationship issues over an alien disaster that’s a climate change metaphor. Around 4 hours or so to beat it, fairly linear and very little challenge in either the combat or puzzles. A game doesn’t need to be challenging to have engaging gameplay, see Unpacking which is not remotely challenging but is engaging. I think the core problem is dealing with the Gunk is never very interesting and mostly feels like busy work. Also despite being linear they do manage to have a level with poor signposting that is kind of annoying near the end.

More like 10 for me, I think. I enjoyed it for what it was.

Save file lists time played . I could see another hour or even two looking for all the resources (that said I finished with all but one upgrade I think) but I’m not sure how you get another six hours out of it.

You’re right, I just looked. It was more like 6.

Over 7.5 Gb update today!

Thats a lot of Gunk!

What can they update that would need that much space? Or was it the kind of update where they did a few bug fixes but then made you download the whole game again? (I’ve already uninstalled it, so I don’t recall how big the entire game was.)

I played through it over a couple of evenings, and my total played time was probably around 6 hours or so. I uninstalled it once I finished because it doesn’t seem like the kind of game I’d be likely to replay, so I can’t look at my save game file for the exact number.

That said, my impressions mostly mirror @forgeforsaken’s. The game was very linear, none of the puzzles were particularly challenging, and dealing with the gunk didn’t feel particularly satisfying. I had all the upgrades well before the end of the game, so there was never really any need to go hunting for materials… that is, I never had to go out of my way or backtrack for anything.

I enjoyed the game well enough for what it was, but I probably wouldn’t have bought it otherwise.

Ahhh, this is probably it then. I probably did miss a bunch of scans. I don’t recall how many I had by the end, but I’m certain it wasn’t 16.

That said, I never once felt underpowered throughout the whole game.

I thought this was one of the most mediocre, 5/10 games I ever finished. Nothing about it stood out at all, but nothing about it was actively bad either.

I’ve been enjoying the Gunk Mechanic too. It makes me think that maybe I’ll enjoy a Ghostbuster game or the Luigi’s Mansion games, or maybe a vacuum cleaning game.

I’m only about 3-4 hours into the game so far. I felt like I was lost on where to go next with the third part of the bridge that has to be turned for me to move on, but I finally cracked that one.

I feel like a few games have done this recently, Kena was one and I thought it looked cooler there.

Another would be Concrete Genie from a couple years ago, which is closer to The Gunk in gameplay, and I thought was also a much more interesting game, paintng was more fun and engaging than sucking up Gunk.
You can see a transition at around 1:20 in the trailer

It kind of felt like they didn’t realize their full vision with this, didn’t it? For instance, the robot never does anything. Again, I enjoyed my time with it, but it felt like they could have done a little more.

My son only knows two things about games so far.

“Mario”.

And.

“The Gunk”.

Usually I play Mario with him, and he sometimes comes upstairs and sees me playing The Gunk and sits on my lap for a few minutes before I quit out when I reach the next area.

Yesterday instead of Mario he kept insisting on “The Gunk”. So I fired up the Xbox and used the cloud gaming feature to play this on the Xbox One on the big TV.

It’s amazing how much more kid friendly this game is compared to Mario. In Mario Odyssey he’s constantly just falling to his death, losing 10 coins, respawning, falling to his death literally 2 seconds later, respawning, falling to his death. Whenever he takes over the controls, I lose a LOT of coins.

In the Gunk, he falls off the ledge, and it just respawns him back on the ledge. Heehee.

Put them together and you get Super Mario Sunshine.

Where is Tom, this game has default Chick difficulty!

I reached “The Garden”. A really great example of environmental and audio story-telling and atmosphere.

spoilers

It’s the section where the two main characters are mad at each other, so there’s suddenly no “voice on the phone” for comfort, while for the first time the protagonist goes into a new type of environment that’s really creepy and different. I just had this intense feeling of unease through a series of rooms, where they played this low rumbling string instrument soundtrack in the background. Very subtle. From a reductionist perspective, absolutely nothing actually happened in this sequence. I didn’t solve any puzzles, I didn’t shoot anything, I didn’t suck up any gunk, I didn’t talk to anyone, all I did was move the thumbstick forward from room to the next. And yet, it was great.

I checked my play time and I’m at about 6.5 hours now, and it feels very close to the end. The puzzles are much harder when my son is driving the controls. He doesn’t know about moving the camera but he insists on being in control, so it’s maddening to keep repeating “look around the room”, when I know there’s a puzzle. When you can’t look around the room, the puzzles are impossible in this game! Impossible!

No swapping on Xbox!

The whole point of swapping on the Switch is so that he gets used to saying yes to things with the bottom face button and backing out of things (or saying no) using the right face button. Xbox and Playstation already do that, so Switch is the only one where I remap.

Yes, it’s my second time in “The Garden”. That’s where the puzzles are hard.

I finished the Gunk tonight! Yay!

Sadly, it looks like I still had 2 things unscanned. And I needed one more metal to get the final upgrade, so I couldn’t get that.

Excellent game though. A light story with nice characters, great vacuum cleaner gameplay, nice challenging puzzles, especially at the end. And they didn’t overstay their welcome, a month and a half, and boom, I’m already finished. That’s how games should be.