Nearly one and a half years, the first trailer took attention to The Gunk. On the one hand, this was at the interesting look of the game and on the other hand, on the fact that Image & Form for the game is responsible, the creative minds behind the Dreamworld DIG series. The Gunk is your first 3D game, but does it fun? After the test of the Xbox Series X version we clearly say: Yes!

The Story of The Gunk is about the two scrap collectors Becks and Ran looking for energy and usable parts in all and on planet surfaces to make them money. One day, the two land on a seemingly abandoned planet, which has not offered much to offer out of earthy areas at first glance. On the contrary, large parts of the planet are covered with a tough, schmodderigen mass, which denote the two as The Gunk.

Great characters

Ran and Beck’s wider at first a great energy deposits and thus enormous wealth, but quickly turns out that the planet has just to offer more and is not so uninhabited, as he seems. And so the initially banal scrap collection evolves more and more to a rescue task during the game.

Moreover, is not revealed at this point, but in general, the gunk tells a nice, though later pretty predictable story, at the latest when the largest mystery of the planet is decrypted. But this is not more tragic, because a lot is collected by the interaction and the different points of view of the two scrap collectors.

While the Ran played by us continues and on the planet and developed an ever-greater need for help, the Becks remaining in the base camp wants to leave the planet to his fate. Anyway, the resulting dynamics in the radio talks of the two has liked us a lot, which also contributes to the successful English stoning. There is no German synchronization, but we can only connect subtitles.

Way with the mucus!

Playfully, the gun presents itself as a balanced and accordingly pleasant mix of action, smaller bouncing passages and puzzles and of course the exploration of the planet. We move with Ran through several linear, but thematically and visually varied areas such as ancient ruins, along the shores of a poisoned lake or through a gloomy mine, and try to go to the mystery of the planet. Eliminate the gunk schmoozers around everywhere is one of the most important tasks. For this, Ran uses its multi-function glove that can suck and absorb the gunk.

This remembers a bit of the Schreckweg-sucker from the Luigi’s Mansion games and ensures really great moments in the game. Because as soon as the gunk is completely sucked off in a certain area, living in the booth in the true sense of the word. Trees, flowers and grasses peel from the formerly withered landscape, and everything shines in colorful colors.

Every time this is a great moment. At the same time, we place so new paths freely or leave as growing tongue-like structure with which we can then jump across chasms.

In this trailer you get a taste of The Gunk in action:

A glove as all-rounder

Ranks glove but is also useful for other types of mechanisms in the game, about the little mystery. For example, we have to suck nutty objects in places, and then green in a small pond throw to grow a fungus, which then brings us to higher levels. Practical: The glove can be throughout the game to upgrade, for example with energy ammunition, the remote switch can press, or faster Aufsaugtempo.

For this, however, we must first adequately such as plants or crystals scan objects in the environment and also gather resources, which are in part apparent and in part however well hidden fairly distributed in the areas. In addition, there are also some smaller skill passages, such as when Ran hop over rotating stone elements or creeping along climbing needs.

That works really well in general, because, among other things, the control works very precisely. We would have always liked a bit more variation in the similarly designed puzzles and a resulting call for their difficulty. In addition, there are a few summary problems here and there, such as when moving Schmodderwolken momentarily block our view.

Not without hiccups

Another criticism is the struggles: at regular intervals, we get it with small, false jetliners or spit plants. For this we also use the glove, but this unless is always the same, and you can even be annoying if you want to worry about a larger bunker gun, but is constantly malted by the little ones. Fortunately, there are not too many of these fights in the game.

And last but not least we had it with our test in two job problems with the gun detection. Because even though we had eliminated in a field of all Schroeder and convinced us minutes, no blossoming sequence was triggered, which thus made progress impossible. Fortunately, a restart of the last memory point managed to remedy.

A really nice planetary trip

Nevertheless, we would like to move through the levels of the game, there is also on the successful optics of the game based on the Unreal Engine, in which, above all, the atmospheric lighting effects and the colorful and partly bizarre fauna of the planet excelled. Only the animations of the characters in the intermediate sequences do not want to fit completely to this picture, because the work largely stiff and angry.

Nonetheless, The Gunk is very pleasing down, so the time to credits — about four to five hours, which is completely okay for the price and size of the project — as in flight passes. After that, we can try to find all scalable objects in the areas to unlock all the skills, but the gun does not offer a huge resume stimulus. But it probably does not want to offer that and therefore fits perfectly in the categories Entertaining Game Snack for a rainy afternoon or weekend and There can be any R ‘. So it’s the perfect Game Pass game in which the title appears directly to the launch.