The Gunk

The Gunk focuses mainly on two characters, Rani and Becks. For a substantial portion of the game, I assumed these were nicknames, or at least first names, and that these two were best friends or possibly even romantic partners. After reading the scan entries in the pause menu I realized that Becks is actually the character's last name, that these two likely had a more formal relationship, likely just coworkers or space-roommates out of financial necessity.

The Gunk revolves around these two following a signal to a potential energy source that they hope to be able to sell. The mid-game "twist", if it is to be called such a thing, can be seen from miles away. Not just because the foreshadowing is so obvious, not just because healthy amount of the protagonists' banter is musing about the nature of the energy, but because so many other games have done it before. At the very least it's not a poorly told or constructed version of the story.

Aside from the overt conflict between nature and industry, so too is there a conflict between the aliens' willingness to have been deceived, and their need to face the truth that industrialization has only made their lives harder to the point of becoming impossible. This is ultimately made most personal and direct in the conflict between Rani and Becks: one seeks the adventure of radical liberation, the other just wants to pay the bills on time. Ultimately the result is a compromise.

The Gunk has Super Mario Sunshine-style goo cleanup, Luigi's Mansion-style vacuum cleaner combat, Metroid Prime-style scanning, and combines basic platforming with the puzzle-focused action/adventure stylings of 3D Zelda. It does none of these as well as the games it's clearly influenced by, but I don't think that was ever the goal. The Gunk is not a game that you play, it's an experience that you sit through.

One of the fears that I have about Xbox Gamepass is the nature of games coming and going from the service encourages games to be one-time flings. Game that aren't focused on delivering interesting gameplay worth mastering, games that are focused on delivering content to the exclusion of any meaningful exploration of form. Games which use ubiquitous or at least well-understood mechanics to focus on simple narratives or pure audiovisual spectacle. Games that don't need to be satisfying on their own, because they aren't really a static piece of art to be appreciated on its own merits, but a single piece of a continuously crawling cultural conveyor belt; games that don't even need to be purchased or for people to be interested in them directly or for their own sake, because they're just part of the same trough where we all gather.

I think that this is a significant part of why there was such a stink about the "walking simulator" a decade ago, though while I think Games as Content (or perhaps Content as Games) tend towards being weaker experiences I do think its important to clarify that nothing here is universal. The probably isn't exclusive to games of any genre, games on any service, games with any budget. It's not even universally a problem at all. I think games can be an effective medium for elevating other types of content through interactivity, and I would even say that many of the more high profile walking simulators are great examples of this.

One of the main reasons I think walking simulators can be effective is their simplicity. While I may wish that The Gunk has deeper platforming with more interesting ways to maneuver, or more combat options to string together in satisfying combinations, I recognize that for a game like this it may do more harm than good. Games like Bugsnax feature such winding messes of systems and mechanics that whatever center they do have is both nebulous and ineffective at holding the experience together. Games like Dear Esther or Gone Home only capture the feelings that they do because their focus is so narrow. The Gunk gets about as deep as it possibly could without going too far out.

The consequence of being a Game as Content is as much as I generally enjoy The Gunk, its drip feeding of incremental upgrades and movie-like focus on dialogue mean that this is probably not an experience I'll revisit until enough time has passed for me to forget it, if I ever go back to it at all.

It's somewhat strange to me that in a game which seems so anti-industrial that the sole reward and progression aside from literal traversal, for any challenge whether combat or puzzle, is an opportunity to strip mine a section of the planet for its resources. Becks even makes it clear that the secondary purpose for this, beyond the game's upgrade system, is selling these valuable materials once they leave the planet. Perhaps its a potent symbol that regardless of her views on the injustices of industrial civilization, Rani is still a person whose very body has had parts of it replaced with an industrial tool she lovingly calls "Pumpkin". Perhaps it's recognition of the irony of the medium being used both to craft and experience this narrative.

In order to progress you often need to completely remove all gunk from an area. On several occasions I found myself unable to progress for several minutes because I missed one tiny piece of gunk. Sometimes this gunk was simply out of view, sometimes it was stuck inside of level geometry, and in one instance even after intentionally dying to reset the area I still could not progress and had to completely restart the game. I also often found my character getting stuck on geometry, or getting caught in a falling animation despite being on solid ground.

The environments are attractive, and the level design is engaging. The character and creature designs are fine. The music is serviceable; it creates the appropriate mood but is rarely if ever memorable. The controls actually feel like a video game. If this had controlled like, for example, a Naughty Dog game, I would have rated it at least 2 stars lower and probably not finished it. I probably would have left a review that was like "The Gunk? More like... The Junk."