December 12, 2023 - Day 346 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 366

Game: The Gunk

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 30, 2022
Installation Date: Dec 12, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 78m

The Gunk is a third-person action-adventure platformer, with some puzzle elements thrown in. It's game number five in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and honestly, was not a game I was looking forward to playing.

The game title, and the thumbnail on Humble's website really put me off; had I stumbled across this game, with a name like "The Gunk"? Ew. No thank you.

But here I am, forcing myself to play through each of the games each month, so I installed The Gunk and loaded it up.

The game opens with an external shot of a workhorse ship, in space. This is a no Starship Enterprise, more of a yellow brick.

From inside the ship, a conversation between Rani (a crew member) and Becks (the captain) ensues.

They're low on funds, and space hauling is no way to make money. They've found a barren planet, which set off an alert on the ship for an energy source, but as Rani disembarks from the low-flying ship, her "power glove" barely holding together, all they find is a few worthless crystals, and a bubbling mass of "gunk".

We're off on an adventure... and what an adventure it is.

The gunk, as it turns out, is drawn to the energy pools that triggered the ship's alarms, and Rani's power glove has a build in "vacuum" that can suck up the gunk (don't think too hard about this). Once the area is freed of the gunk, it springs back to life.

Gorgeous, colourful, life. As you move through the various tunnels and platforms, they're rendered beautifully, but watching the bubble of life expanding outwards from your position as you remove the last piece of gunk, is wonderful.

Built into Rani's power glove is a scanner that can scan the various resources you encounter as you can explore, and you can extract them in much the same way as the gunk.

You'll need them, too, because scanning every new thing you come across is how you unlock upgrades to the power glove.

The platforming and puzzles are not too complex, and the laid-back accompanying score is fantastic, and suits the game perfectly.

The best thing for me about The Gunk, though, is the narrative; the back and forth between Becks as she waits back at the ship, and Rani as she explores further afield is fun, and it's this that genuinely kept me exploring for more than an hour, only quitthing because I was going to be late to start work if I didn't.

As they say, "Never judge a book by its cover", and missing out on The Gunk would have been a terrible shame. For me, this game alone makes this month's bundle entirely worth the money, because The Gunk is:

5: Excellent

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