Editor’s note: Hello! Over the next few days, we’re running an “Escape Game” series, and we’re finally starting to look back at games that release sometime in 2021, but for various reasons, we couldn’t fully cover them at the time.
We’ve returned to some real gems, so for more catch-up reviews like this, head over to the Games That Got Away hub, where all of our work in the series will be gathered in one convenient place. enjoy!
I saw them as the ski lifts reached the top. Dozens, dozens, sticking out of the snow stiffly, motionless. With his head down and his rifle on his left shoulder, he didn’t know whether these soldiers were alive or dead. I don’t know if they are real or my imagination.All I know is they freak me out – this is easily the most disturbing thing I’ve experienced so far, considering I’ve spent most My time here is desperate – I don’t want to get close to find out one way or the other.
Mundaun does this often. It tiptoes between the real and the imagined, the powerful and the mundane, oscillating between this place and a dark, otherworldly place where an old man in a perky hat is still contemplating a decades-old contract. In his opinion, he was deceived. Others thought the old boy got what he deserved. You – Curdin, a notoriously innocent party who arrived here after your grandfather’s death, with a particularly frosty letter from the local priest – set foot in the Swiss Alps to find out why.
When I hear the word “hand drawn”, I think of cartoons. Pastel colors. Fluffy clouds and a suffocating blue sky. However, Mundaun has none of these things. Every stroke of the pencil – all we’ll see here is pencil, as the sleepy village of Mundaun is depicted only in lead and sepia – harsh and unforgiving, making the world a particularly dark and angular clear place. Sometimes artistic methods work against you; it’s hard to manually follow maps that are angrily scribbled without scale, and sometimes things get so dark — literally and figuratively — that you might find yourself wandering around on a dark night Running around, not knowing what’s ahead. But this lack of color also makes for a fantastic, disturbing adventure.
As satisfying as Mundaun’s story – a tale full of ancient folklore, told entirely in Romansh (the rarest spoken language in Switzerland) – sadly, the game itself is less powerful. For example, there is a “fear” system, but it seems completely unnecessary and can be easily bypassed with just a few steps of backup. While the world is small and there are plenty of opportunities to go back and open a door you see on your adventures, your time will mostly be spent trekking up hillsides on all kinds of tedious fetching tasks – and sometimes even looking for you ‘s items have also been dispatched before to find — or find the keys to the game’s massively locked doors. Interacting with the world around you is cumbersome — a button prompt may pop up in front of this sink, but for inexplicable reasons, pressing it will open a door five feet away to your right — and manipulate your grandpa’s old hay phone, the Muvel, possibly Will make you crave the refined handling of your shopping cart.
There’s also combat – well, kind of – but like a lot of horror games, you’ll probably find that defense is the best way to attack, especially since the pitchforks you encounter are degradable(er), and so is Curdin Roughly swings his rifle, which essentially renders it useless (which is very disappointing, especially since you’re being teased for clearing ammo for it Hour before you are able to unlock). However, you can use a match to light a bale of straw in the hope that the flames will lick away the trail leading to the ungodly inhabitants lurking behind, but doing so also inevitably puts you in a very precarious and hot situation. Maybe you’ll be like I know the same about Muvel and your trusty sled-cum-mobile murder machine.
By the way, the first monster you encounter is the worst for me. Slow and somewhat inelegant though, they staggered through Mundaun—half man, half haystack—and their frustrated growls bounced off the scarred sky. Get too close and your heart beats like a razor-sharp crown of hay piercing your peripheral vision, your heart rate triples, and the fingers of your left hand – left indelibly by that old man at the beginning of your journey The imprints – curled, twisted, snapped and cracked like being lit on a campfire.
If all this sounds a little weird, it’s because it is. Mundaun’s grip on reality ebbs and flows in this quirky tale. It’s a game where the protagonist can pee — sometimes forced — and those haunting hymn-like tunes wafting from the radio are collectible for reasons I still don’t quite understand. A magic bell can lead the way in a blizzard, and we’re followed by a dumb girl named Grandfather’s feminine name – but doesn’t Curtin think it’s worth mentioning?
Actually, Curdin didn’t notice much. Despite the horrors all around him—walking haystacks and ghostly soldiers, and bizarre reimaginings of abominable yetis and weaponized bees, and the severed head of a goat who is always chatting—he is a Weird aloof guy. From the moment he saw the ashes of his grandfather’s burned barn waiting for him, until he left the village and meandered down the same pass he had taken up the mountain four days earlier, he seemed neither surprised nor particularly concerned things that happened to you. See and learn. Not that I want Curtin to be one of those ultimately dull protagonists who endlessly talk to himself and push the story forward with tedious show trash, but he’s totally unaltered and unbelievable. I thought I could understand it if it was a neat little narrative device, but it wasn’t. It’s just…well, weird.
That’s not to say the voice acting is bad; just like the sound effects and the soundtrack, the voice work is understated but effective, and I think the decision to tell the whole story in a native language was a bold and brilliant one. While I appreciate its unique presentation, Mundaun’s intriguing premise is undermined by tedious gameplay elements, repetitive acquisition quests and occasional opaque confusion and a fear system that doesn’t seem to add much at all.
2021 is a good year for horror, and Mundaun can proudly stand among its peers. While mechanically it may not be the best game you’ve ever played, it’s still an unforgettable and unique adventure — and one I’m sure won’t be forgotten anytime soon.
