The Gunk

Very smooth game but also very short and shallow. The game is VERY linear. You can explore secret loot but it is close to useless because you really don't need it and you get much more loot than there are upgrades. At some point, looting and exploring secrets really feels senseless. The most important pro of the game is its enactement, visuals, cute story and smooth gameplay. It's a small and enjoyable adventure with a wholesome message, but I wouldn't pay the full price for it.

A charming and hopeful little adventure! Visually impressive and fun to play, even though the moveset is a little less robust than I would've liked.

Plus, you get to tell your friends that The Gunk is calling you.

This was just an amazing adventure. Im happy that I encountered this game while searching the special offers. I hope to know further advetures of Rani and others. Exploring other planets and etc. I suggest you just try without watching any tips and other things. Just enjoy the game.

The Gunk is an underrated gem that delivers an incredibly smooth and enjoyable gaming experience. From the moment you start, the gameplay feels intuitive and glitch-free, with seamless controls and non-clunky settings that make it easy to dive right in.

What truly sets this game apart is its immersive world and engaging mechanics. Exploring and interacting with the environment feels natural and rewarding, with plenty of opportunities to uncover secrets and marvel at the stunning landscapes. The progression system, which includes upgrading your character and discovering new planets, adds depth and keeps you invested in the journey.

Overall, The Gunk is a delightful mix of exploration, discovery, and smooth gameplay that deserves far more recognition. If you're looking for a relaxing yet compelling adventure, this game is definitely worth your time.

Enjoyable story, fully voice acted. I liked the fact that the UI was basically non-existent which made it easy to focus on the well designed world. Short and sweet, I finished it in about 9 hours.

Well, well, well.. that.. was pretty awesome. I think I shot this game ages ago on sale and just noticed it in my library today. Started it once, finished it, completed it, closed it.
I really like the overall graphical style. This dark, bubbly, gooey gunk and then the transformation to lush greens and thriving colourful petals. The two main characters look a bit weird though.. Just all in all, the world is a joy to jump through and explore. (assuming that you like exploring) There are no empty spots on the planet, everywhere are things to be found. You 'only' find resources for upgrades, as there are no other items in the game, but damn it - it's still a better loot system than Far Cry.

The puzzles are mostly easy and just require you to hop around a confined area, but their complexity ramps up a little bit towards the end. With a bit of thinking and keeping the surroundings in mind, you will find the solutions quickly, but not brain afk. All in all they are very fair.

Fighting is the same. Not that challenging, but fun and does not overstay it's welcome. There are not that many different species of enemies, but the terrain, your increasing skill level and upgraded equipment will provide variety.

The story is not the deepest in existence, but in my opinion it's very enjoyable, not superficial at all and, at least for me, deep enough to get invested and be curious, how it will end.

Time-wise it's on the lower end. I play very relaxed and don't rush anything and completing the whole game took me exactly eight hours. And after that additional two minutes for the one achievement I'd missed. 25€ for 8h will most likely sound expensive compared to other games but is probably as much as one would easily spend on a night out.
I personally prefer 'shorter' games, so I can spend my time with a greater variety, instead of pumping 5kh in a single MMO - so I'm alright with 3€/h

Some additional pros:
-The possibility to save almost everywhere anytime and a well working auto save system. There are way too many games nowadays without the free choice to save. grml
-not all achievements are 'complete chapter x' or similar things you just get for free. The devs created a few additional tasks for you to solve. (Something I generally miss in most modern games. Imo it's a great way to generate a bit more playtime and challenge for not that much programming effort. And even as it only was one single task, I enjoyed planning it out and getting it.)

Some negatives:
-some open ends which would have been nice with a bit character progression. Like 'what happend to the stag-MacGuffin-thingy?', 'why did no one use the scarce time and resources while rescuing a planet to teach CuRT some more words or fix him?' think of claptrap - so much potential!
-the final boss fight could have been a bit more challenging, maybe another phase would have helped
-the sudden conflict between the characters felt a bit shoehorned in.
-Sometimes elevators loose their texture and turn invisible. Especially then it is easily possible to soft lock your game when sending the elevator up and then fall below it (By expecting an invisible platform but finding an empty shaft). You can't reach the button anymore or it's a single use button and you're forced to reload. Luckily the auto save system works absolutely reliable.

Suction please!

I enjoyed the story and the game while fun wasn't very challenging. I finished it quite quickly, And while I didn't 100% it I still felt like I got my moneys worth out of it

Great game, a bit of discovery and adventure and a beautiful world they created. The story line is strong and enticing. The fun was a bit lost in the last three fights, which started on the elavator platform and were a tad too difficult all of a sudden. I also missed the beautiful antilope like creature from the beginning of the game. Did it die with the fun in the final fight? ;-) Great game, but a bit out of balance overall.

Fun little game that was simple, and with a decent store.

Amazing game in simple words, I really loved it. At start it is a little drag but they have carried out the game visuals and the game story really well, even though the story is a little bit short it was really fun to play. I am calling this game story short cause I just played Arkham knight Knight

I bought this game for 4.99 and finished it in less than 5 hours, collecting all the materials.
Very nice graphics and enveloping game, for the price I paid it's a bargain.

good fun very peaceful till last boss fight also quite puzzling

Nice art style, nice core mechanics and movement that could have been fleshed out further - a double jump would have really improved traversal for example. Interesting story but nothing ground breaking.

One of the best game, which I can actually call a game.
Awesome graphics, cool Story telling, very atmospheric, cozy, and fun to play.
A game that's worth your time. Would definitely play it again. 👍

Feel good short story game.

Great lovable characters and a beautiful world.
The playtime is about 4 hours, great choice if you're looking for a chill game with a nice story with a good backdrop. The mechanics are not very difficult and maybe even fitting for someone who is new to gaming.

Good single player game, great story too bad that the game lasts only 6 hours

Seeing this on sale and going into this I didn't expect much. But I was pleasantly surprised by the story and the visuals. the controls felt nice and the level design was very good.
The only thing I can complain about is the repetitive soundtrack but really I don't think it's a big deal.
Story is short but I think it is passed good, you can wonder for a longer time if you want but it's not really needed.
7.5/10

fun little game, visuals are excellent and the game runs well (aside from the elevator in the garden ). only criticisms are the very easy difficutly, lack of consequence for failure, and a couple of useless upgrades.

Genuinely amazing Action-Adventure game. Like a love letter to the PS2 games that defined the action puzzler genre in the mid to late 2000's (Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, etc). And the vacuuming is super well animated as well.

I enjoyed this game, but the criticism is fair. It's visually stunning, I spent quite some time with the photo mode snapping pics which is something I rarely do, the sound also combines with the visuals to provide an absolutely lovely ambiance. It was a pleasure walking through the world, especially in the first half.

The gameplay is a little lacking. It may have been that they thought the vacuum mechanic would be enough, and it is extremely well integrated into the game, but it feels lacking in variety and depth. We've seen a lot of games that try and do way too much, so I think this was better than flooding it with 1-time use mechanics.
Gameplay mechanic spoilers ahead: Having said that, the upgrade system paints a different picture. It gave me things I never used, entire mechanics that were were never explained nor actually required. Did you know there was some kinda lure in the game? The laser shooting thing was great, but I don't know what else the upgrades did.I think the devs probably knew the core gameplay needed something, but perhaps only realized this too late in development so it feels tacked on rather than well integrated. Maybe this is more reflective of me not spending enough time to learn and experiment with them though.

The scope of the story and world felt a little too self contained. The characters didn't really help with this. Similar to the gameplay, perhaps this was also a conscious choice to keep the scope limited and polished, but especially compared to the visuals, it was just lacking.

Story/Character spoilers ahead.
There was interpersonal conflict that emerged mid-game but I think it came out of left field. We're given no context, no backstory, the characters are 2 dimensional where we cannot build any understanding of who they are and what makes them the way they are.

Why did Rani want to explore more? Run through a corporate machine and desperate for adventure and to help others? She's lost her arm form a previous adventure, again we're told about that later, maybe a light joke about it early on in the game if that's how they want Becky to be portrayed, or maybe concern? Let the player know what the dynamic between Becky and Rani is. At the moment it's completely detached, they're just 2 beings sitting in the world.

Why was Becky so frustrated with Rani? We're told this towards the end of the game, but that's far too late. We've already seen Becky being completely uncaring towards Rani's desire to help save beings lives. Sure, we're in debt, then maybe we should know that. Maybe there should be contextual clues so we can understand that she's so consumed with the bigger stresses that we can sympathise with her situation. Context dumping after it's needed through dialog just felt like a bad way to handle that.

It's obvious the devs really cared about this game, it has a lot of charm and beauty. I hope we see them produce more like this in the future, if they can take the positives from this game and develop the weaker bits, I think we could see something extremely special.

Beautiful, colorful game. I wish it was longer though. I finished it in 4 hours.

This is an astonishing and incredible hidden gem.
The game strikes a perfect balance of everything one could dream of in a narrative adventure.

A breathtaking story. Calm and high-quality voice acting for the characters. Intuitive and natural level design. Incredible art. Special praise goes to the outstanding soundtrack, which accompanies the entire journey like an additional storyteller. The puzzles are not overly complicated (I don’t like straining too much after work).

You simply start your adventure and find yourself in a great, old-school movie.

Character controls are responsive and smooth. The gameplay is steady and fluid, allowing you to focus entirely on the story itself.

It’s a shame the story ended so quickly 5h :(

This instantly shot into my G.O.A.T.s, which I didn't expect when I fished it out of my backlog.

The art ist stunning, voice acting is top notch, and the music can easily stand on its own. It's part Journey To The Savage Planet, part Slime Rancher (vacuum resource collection with a really satisfying oomph), and part PowerWash Simulator.

Platforming and puzzles are on the easy side, I found it very approachable. If anything feels to difficult or tedious, just keep looking around.

The game is fairly linear, but not in a bad way. Think of it as a beautiful guided tour. And take a look at the photo mode, it's great.

All clowning & idling factored out, my actual playtime was around 9 hours. Full price of 25 € would usually be a bit too high for my taste, but the production value is incredible. Imagine what this team could do with a AAA budget... On sale, getting this is a no-brainer.

A really fun little game. A rewarding experience of exploration and discovery, short and sweet. The visuals and shader work on the gunk was enthralling and the gathering resources, puzzles and solving the mystery of this strange place was very satisfying. A nice light adventure for a relaxing time. I would recommend this game to all but also friends who don't play many games, it feels like a great 'beginner' game, and I mean that in a good way! It just does a few things but it does them well. Highly enjoyed!

Simple but well done open-world platformer with logic riddles focused on exploration rather than fighting.

[table][tr][td]
Overall      ★★★★★★★★☆☆ - 8/10
Music        ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ - 6/10
Graphics   ★★★★★★★★★☆ - 9/10
Gameplay ★★★★★★★★☆☆ - 8/10
Story         ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ - 7/10
[/td][/tr][/table]

Difficulty ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (very forgiving, for casuals)

What did I like?

* beautiful graphics
* story is ok, but adds a lot of atmosphere
* characters work well together
* linear open-world with a teleport system
* the Rusty figurine in the Dust Bunny ;)
* cleaning the gunk is fun
* no spiders (so many games have them as enemies)
* the scanning plants and objects quest is a nice idea
* some of the social critics about humanity

What did I not like?

* one missables achievement (gunk dripper)
* aim assist is on by default (you can deactivate it in the settings though)
* hefty performance issues on the big elevator in the garden tower (FPS drop from 144+ to 28 for multiple seconds every level the elevator travels, fans were going crazy)
* later gunk drippers were not scanable although green tag (bug?)
* one of the elevators visually bugged out once (it still worked perfectly)
* no new game+
* rather short with only 7 hours playtime, some extra side missions or collecting quets would have been fine

Summary:

This game is rock solid. No gamebreaking bugs and delivers exactly what I expected. I liked the characters and the artstyle as well. The feeling I had was like playing a more 3D style horizontally 'SteamWorld Dig' collecting resources (same dev team, btw) paired with some style and elements from 'Beyond Good and Evil', and it worked out.

This game is worth it to kill some time.

It is a fun straightforward game that you can just sit back and explore, it's not a very big game only 4.5 hours in length but it's not repetitive. The dialogue/story behind it is alright but i did find it kind of annoying when i was in the middle of clearing an area and had to read the subtitles because of the creatures not speaking English.

But overall i do recommend it if you have an afternoon

A great game with Beyond good and evil vibes. It's optimised brilliantly, so you'll have no problem running it even on a potato laptop. And it's beautiful too. The controls can be clunky sometimes but it doesn't really matter. The story is simple and it's not a bad thing. A nice thing to spend a couple of evening in.

Colourful Chupa Chups with Rotten Filling

• Boring and repetitive gameplay,
  
• Pointless upgrades and gear,
  
[*]One button progression

Beautiful game! Had a really fun time with it..plus the soundtrack is an absolute gem!
For anyone interested you can get it for small money via bandcamp...

https://ratvader.bandcamp.com/album/the-gunk-original-game-soundtrack

And yeah the game has it´s minor flaws and you have to get used to the movement but overall it´s double thumns up from me!

Nice experience for about five hours game time. After that there is not much more to do.
But "The Gunk" has great graphics and appreciates beatuy in its purest sense. As you clean up gunk again and again you are rewarded with gorgeous vistas and a lush world.

The voice work is great though the writing seems like it's targeted to a younger audience.

Write a review for The Gunk

This game has such a wonderful atmosphere, it's beautiful and chill and then suddenly everything's happening and there's all sorts of disasters! It was an absolute blast to play! The graphics are beautiful and gives that feel of both Slime Rancher and Journey to the Savage Planet. The music is very atmospheric and dials in perfectly to the situation you find yourself in. The story is interesting and engaging and the relationship between Rani and Becks feels very real. It isn't very long it took me about 5 hours to finish but it was such a beautiful experience, go try it for yourself <3

It's pressure washer simulator but with Gunk.

nice small, but a bit short game (around 5h)
simple puzzles and enemies (a bit too simple for my taste), but the game focuses on its nice story and enviroment

A very cool game, quite enjoyable experience! Beautiful world, nice game mechanics and some simple puzzles on top.

Worth the price!

Suck all the gunkk..!!

I don't like giving negative reviews to games, specially to the developers of a series/universe I like so much, that is SteamWorld, but damn, how am I glad I finished this already. In no way I can recommend it. Halfway through, it felt like playing an internet argument.

The game models and environments are beautiful and that's the only good thing about it.

It's a linear, 'adventure-platformer' mix, in the likes of Uncharted, except it has no action or puzzles, whatsoever.

Although the OST fits the atmosphere, it has no identity and it's pretty forgetful. Not something I would hear outside of the game.

Gameplay is repetitive and linear: You follow a single road (even when it bifurcates, you need to go through both roads to progress) and very so often needs to clear the gunk to proceed. Also, it holds your hand all the way through, either through yellow paint or through dialogue.

There's a scan system, which is similar to Metroid Prime's, yet it adds absolutely nothing of useful to the gameplay or the lore. Many of the "comments" of the analysis are disposable, pretty much like those open-world games which you can gather documents, books and etc.. But, unlike these games, The Gunk unlocks upgrades based on the number of scans you have... I don't mind that, but at least the analysis should've been somewhat useful...

It has combat, but it's ridiculously bad. You basically absorb small enemies with the glove and throw them back at one another (or at the ground/wall so they get squished). There are a total of 3 enemies (4, if you count the gunk, which is basically an environmental hazard you need to absorb): a small flea-like one that gets close and jumps at you, a turret-like one that occasionally spits a rock of some sorts at you and that you need to either pull it off the ground or throw a bomb-like plant onto it (bombs in the fighting area happens 2 or 3 times), and a big one that only charges at you (you only fight 3 or 4 of it throughout the whole game) and you have to lead it to a wall so it's gets stunned so you can then absorb the core on its back...

Speaking of dialogue, my god, how awful it is. It's badly written and cliched, not to mention halfway through the "we're an inseparable team" couple starts to argue out of nowhere bc protag dives head-first into saving the world. And the antagonist? Well. It's an alien known as "the Gardener" that dislikes wilderness and also hates humans bc they destroyed their home planet, yet, he's doing exactly the same thing... Needless to say, characters are very forgettable (gladly) and annoying.

Good Game!

beautiful, charming, and, most importantly, fun. beautiful environment, extremely enjoyable gameplay (yes. cleaning-up the gunk is exactly as satisfying as it looks!). This experience is exactly what i was expecting, and honestly, exactly what i needed. Fans of games like Subnautica, Slime Rancher, and even Creatures of Ava will enjoy this lovely and relaxing game.

The Gunk is a highly pleasant relaxing platform adventure game. It's exactly what I expected.

You play scavengers that discovers a new planet and you want to find loot to extract and sell. You come across an organic mass which they name "The Gunk". The voice acting is good, the story is well written and presented. One negative: The main characters companion tends to get a bit too whiny. It does start to get annoying hearing it throughout the entire game. The game lasts about 5 hours.

The game play is great. Moving, jumping, platforming and combat feels great. There are very few enemy types in the game and the combat is extremely easy. I don't mind as I bought it to play relaxed on my Steam Deck. The environments are beautiful and well crafted.

I liked the game a lot.

A beautiful and charming action adventure with vacuum gameplay. Low skill requirement with a moderately intense climax. Short, but fulfilling. Music fits the setting, but not particularly memorable. Only glitches I encountered were an elevator going invisible, and the last elevator sequence had massive frame rate drops while moving. The ending payoff was a bit weak in presentation.

Great little gem of a game. Awesome atmosphere, really sucks you in. Story is deep enough as well as long as you believe in the characters and I think they did an awesome job with them. Relaxed gameplay but enough challenge to keep playing and get all the plants and items. I can really recommend this for a nice story rich gaming time!

Fun and easy to play. Not very challenging but very suitable for some killing time.
Didn't quite like that it forced me to look all the credits until the end (ESC didn't worked, ENTER, SPACE nothing... you have to stick to the Credits until they're finished)

Cool little game..

the game was fun i love sucking stuff

I liked it :)

Fun little Action adventure puzzle game. Clever mechanics for the Gunk, gameplay stays fresh just long enough to complete the game. Shame they included these semi-woke characters, unneeded and doesn't add anything at all.

It's a pleasant 8 hrs, but it's not a must-play.

The game will entice you with its story and it's sense of discovery, but the devs didn't stay focussed on this towards the end. They must have ran out of money because (no spoilers) instead of a cinematic ending they had a bare bones slideshow of silent storyboards. No lie.

And the sense of discovery means that you get to scan lots of new plants and wildlife at the start, but then this form of discovery tapers out before the half-way point.

This means that the 2 things that grabbed you at the start are never fully delivered at the end, and I was left feeling a little cheated.

It's a peasant time though, so it gets a Yes, but with a few caveats.

It feels like Jak & Daxter's level designs fused with the art style of a grungy stop-motion version of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It could do with a little more time in the Charm oven, but overall it is aesthetically appealing.

The relationship seemed like it was heading somewhere between the two leads, but hearing them bicker like they were in a dysfunctional marriage was quite a turn off, and was handled poorly. A missed opportunity.

The gunk itself was always fun to scoop up and felt rewarding to get rid of completely, every time.

I'm glad I played it, but now that I have, I'll uninstall it.

I'm disappointed by the fact that the end cinematic was storyboards. I feel a little cheated, but not enough to take away my recommendation.

beautiful and interesting game