Pixelsinflow

Gameplay: The Gunk is a puzzle adventure game where you travel through a faraway alien world left in shambles, but with a glimpse of the probability of it returning to its former glory. What I liked mostly about its gameplay is that it knew when to add new elements and not just splatter everything in the hopes that you would get everything from the get-go. People who play games regularly don't require much to 'get it' and just plow through the entire game, but for some, a semi-casual introduction of new elements is overall the better way to go. Puzzles are beginner-friendly and don't require timing except for a few, which still don't require pinpoint timing to complete. Enemies are, as everything in this game, absolutely beginner friendly. If you have played games before, you will know what each can do and how it can be beaten. Triple-A games should take notes from developers who know when to add and when to let players play around a little bit more with an already established mechanic.

Story: We follow Rani, a space explorer/scavenger, going through an alien planet in search of materials to sell. While we traverse this alien planet, we are met with a plethora of wild flora and fauna, which, if you read them, tell a story of their own of a forgotten planet with a long-gone population. As the story progresses, more and more truths are uncovered, and after one thing leads to another, we find out what caused all this. As we are sticking to no spoilers here, The Gunk is a pretty short game with a respectable story, but not something that will blow your socks off.

Graphics: The literal meaning of a mixed bag: some objects, be they close or far, appear somewhat muddy, and then we get others with more graphical quality and popping colors. Furthermore, particle effects are rather well done; some actually illuminate their surroundings and some even warp the screen. The art style is unique and an acquired taste, but for every dish, there is a subsequent connoisseur.

Music and Soundtrack: Overall soundtrack and music impressions are lukewarm, but the choice of instruments or synths or whatever they used stands out in a good way. The whole soundtrack had an eerie mystery to it and sounded 'strange', and that perfectly encapsulates what the game is trying to portray.

Characters: We follow a set of three characters who find themselves on an uncalled-for adventure and ultimately beat any emerging challenge. Rani is your ever-curious adventurer, going around more and more corners just to find out what cool feature may be hidden there. The devs really added to their ultimate cohesion with your trusty friend calling in constantly to see how you are, what you found, and to be careful. These small but meaningful interactions are splattered throughout the whole runtime, and they are a delight, but we get to the bad part. As the story progresses and Rani becomes more and more hard-headed, they ultimately get into a big 'fight' with Beck, which leads to them acting like spoiled teens and not talking to each other, or just one trying to communicate while the other stays in stern silence. I appreciate where the devs were going with this, but for me, it didn't work at all and just made every interaction a chore.

Weapon Variety: Rani is equipped with her trusty power glove, which is her only weapon throughout the entire game. It serves to collect all crafting materials, beat all enemies, and solve all puzzles. Those collected crafting materials are used to upgrade the weapon by boosting its main purpose and adding some new gadgets with varying effects to the arsenal. For The Gunk and its subsequent runtime of a few hours, one weapon is plenty and does what it is meant to do.

World: The Gunk, as stated above, is situated in an alien world with interesting objects and places to meet. There are numerous objects that can be scanned throughout the world with different aspects to them, like the type of object, materials it is made of, possible purpose, and much more. These little scannable objects were a great addition with a few caveats here and there, mostly regarding which objects are actually scannable, as many already are, but some that are pretty interesting were not. Personally, I would have liked to know even more; we were already riding on the curiosity train, but it didn't end smoothly, more like it stopped abruptly.

Gameplay and Mechanics:

The ground level is where you build structures, create pickup and delivery routes, decide how much you need of each robot type (there are 4), and create a whole economy from the ground up. Each building has that barely scrapped together but working effectively style to them which set them apart from each other, and I could always find whichever building I need by just what animation it is looping, and that is very high praise. Placing of buildings is of the most importance since being placed too far does increase the travel time and the delivery of needed materials to create other material, but even more, you will not meet the requirements needed to have the most type of robots and their specific needs. For a town made exclusively by robots and nothing else, you would be astonished how many needs each of these specific ones have. If you don't meet their needs to a 100%, you will not be able to upgrade their buildings to acquire the next robots, however if you do decide to upgrade them, you lose the previous ones and some buildings that require them to work will not be at full capacity, and (if you are too much in the negative) they will outright stop working. The game has plenty of buildings and each serves a specific purpose, and as you are advancing with the story more and more buildings are being introduced, but never to an extent of it becoming overwhelming.

Mines are a whole different breed; here we forget about building a whole town, rather constructing a small community of highly efficient structures that serve a purpose to mine, gather and deliver resources, build mines for specific resources or specific traps for different enemies. These mines added an interesting twist compared to the town-building part and served a story purpose as well, as here is where you will find the technology needed to escape this planet. Each mine introduced new mechanics, and as a player, you are tasked to create an effective supply route to an elevator which transports the resources to the town. Developing it such a way as to require as little time and as little cost in terms of upkeep is an interesting challenge, and it made me rethink my routes as more and more options were being introduced that make the previous ones, not ineffective, but could be built even better.

Also, I don't want to even admit to it. In level 3 as you are finding more equipment needed to escape the planet, you also open more ways that the enemies can attack. That and in combination with the AI of the combat robots can create not much of a challenge, but rather a nuisance which I would consider is worse to an extent. I found it a very specific way, by just trying something that made little sense, since they have flying enemies, to just tear down bridges and ultimately destroy their way to get to me. To my surprise, that simple decision made it so that side never spawned enemies again and I made my game effectively ¼ of the difficulty by not even going into the options and changing it manually. Of course, if you do tear down their way to attack, you also cut yourself off from gathering the resources placed there, but if you don't require them to keep your economy going, you won't miss them. I don't know if that is how it's supposed to work, but it somehow did. Also, last point here, if you do have some forethought in planning which blocks to mine and which not, you can make it so that enemies can only come in from a very narrow passageway and you can pick them off very easily with traps and turrets in your own makeshift chokepoint.

AI - This is where I had my most fun watching the game. I love when small characters just go and do their designated tasks around the town, building, moving, baking, creating, mixing, and whatever else. I love that and is always something I look for when playing a strategy game of any sort. However, then we get to the mines, and this is where I was letdown. Have to get into a bit of spoilers here for it to work, you get a few different kinds of robots in the mines with each serving 1-2 tasks. The non-combat ones serve their purpose without missing a beat and don't require any managing on the player's part. The problem are the combat ones that could have used a way to control them since over half the time they were on the exact opposite part of the map rather than where I needed them. They react fast and correctly to enemies and are almost every time where they need to be before the enemies has even spawned or I receive a notification of an attack. However, they react to the first spawned and all go for him, that means that if 1 enemy is on one side of the map and 10 are on the other, the will all go for the 1 and will go back after he is killed. This made a big inconvenience in the late game where attacks are set apart by a few minutes. Each time they weren't where I needed them, I had my other robots running around (because they need the combat ones near them to not be afraid) and buildings or traps being destroyed.

Sound Design and Music:

At any time, you can zoom into different buildings, and you can hear each of them having a unique sound depending on what item they are trying to create. The roads are filled with robots moving from place to place dropping and taking items, you can hear them having seemingly unintelligible chatter while moving, you don't need to understand them, it's just simulating the hustle and bustle of a town, which I liked very much.

The soundtrack, created by Ola Bäckström is very wholesome with different instruments, from time-to-time vocals and very specific whistling especially in the intro theme and some others, and especially the vocals in the credit song. Represented in the songs Main Menu Theme (A Gem In The Rough), End Theme (Astrids' Theme) (feat. Matilda Bäckström), and City (Counting Stars, Counting Days). The mines added a mysterious aspect to them, where you know what to do and how to do it, but you may meet stuff you aren't certain how to approach, through a bigger focus on drums and a very melancholic guitar. Represented in the songs Mine03 (Blue Dots In The Dark) (feat. Silia Hahne) and Mine03 (Down and Back Again).

Game Setting and Worldbuilding:

SteamWorld Build is situated in a seemingly abandoned world that at first sight doesn't seem all that left in disarray, until you get down to the mines and start seeing items that shouldn't be there. Leaving the player to gather, think over and ultimately create mini stories in their head is always a plus.

Everything in SteamWorld Build is constructed by bits and bobs from different metallic plates to construct buildings and robots which in terms of worldbuilding really adds to the atmosphere of 'we are here for a specific task and for a very limited time'. Also, I just have to add this ach map has a very cute looking greetings card giving you a rough idea in which place you are going to be building.

Story, Side Quests, and More:

You are marooned on a world with the simple task to escape this planet, but nothing ever goes smoothly. Tasked with the 'simple' mission of creating a self-sustaining town and operational mine, your objective is to find and collect rocket parts scattered underground. On your path you will be met with the ever-growing needs of your town robots and the constant attacks on the lower levels, making it so that you are constantly needed to oversee simple tasks like building up again support colons so that mine doesn't collapse on itself (it sounds rough, but it's just that some rocks may fall down and enemy or two with them). That is mostly it, find, collect and build the rocket so you can evacuate and leave everything you build to waste. The story is however prompt up the different characters represented by father, daughter, and old townsfolk and a mysterious machine. Their voice acting is pretty respectable especially the father and daughter.

Probable Visual, Audio and Gameplay Bugs:

I had about 3 different instances of a very specific bugs that caused my ingame time to pause in the mines (level 2/3) which in return made it so that materials do not get gathered (even if I see the animation of my robots delivering the materials). This in turn made it so that combat music that starts when I get attacked never ends, since the timer doesn't go on so that the attack ends. On the town section nothing changed and timer was still going correctly. The only way I found to fix it is to just reload the save.

Further into the game you get access to teleporters, from one point of the map to the farthest possible location wherever the player chooses. I decided to cut down on the travel time of my mines and create two points, and since they were teleporting, I didn't need my bridges up anymore. The problem was that seemingly my miners still needed the path physically connected from point A to B even if they didn't use it. They weren't using the teleporters if there was no physical connection. The fix was just building the bridges up again.

Replayability:

Once you finish the story and before taking the final decision, you get an option to continue where you are and finish digging up the mines, optimize everything up and down and try to achieve as much population as possible.

However, if you do decide to end it, you are then presented with a final cutscene and credits. After that, there is a possibility to start a new game on a different map but with a bonus structure from the map you already finished. In a way having a constant buff for each next map (there are a total of 6) to reach the endgame point faster and to ultimately reduce the slow pace of early game.

Closing Thoughts:

SteamWorld Build is a well-crafted game in almost every aspect from building, to managing (macro and somewhat micro), to developing new and better ways to play, constantly adding new mechanics without it being overwhelming and, most importantly, leaving the player to play how he/she wants.

Gameplay and Mechanics: Jusant is an exploration game with a simple mechanic of climbing rocks, yet that singular mechanic is constantly challenged. From a simple two button combo controlling each hand, moving one hand to grasp and hold, while letting the other one go to move up, and you do that till you reach the end. Gradually jumping is introduced, putting in points so that you can gather speed along the wall to make a bigger jump and many more. Jusant introduces newer mechanics in an effective way so that you don't get bored or feel that you mastered it.

After so many walls climbed, evidently impossible angles to climb (or some that would require massive strength), jumps barely made and secrets unlocked. Jusant's central rope mechanic is what stood above all else, using it as leverage over objects you place or already present objects, sliding down or up to gain more speed while swinging and manymore. For a seemingly simple game, the central mechanic is perfectly elaborated and expanded, without making it too much of a hassle to learn and or master.

Graphics and Visuals: I would call the visual style of Jusant as 'non-intrusive' as in saying that it is not trying to go for realism nor is it going in the whole other direction. Games that prefer to use a specific style to render every inch of their world don't really age, while those going for 'realistic' are beautiful, until something newer comes, and out of nowhere that old game isn't that 'realistic' looking. This is a very specific problem that many games start to have as years pass by and even having something more stylized gives that very much needed character.

What stood out immensely is how Jusant uses shadows to enlarge an already big world. There are times where your whole road ahead is covered in a light yet still noticeable layer of thin shadow. On the other hand, we have lighting, while Jusant is almost perfect in terms of shadows, lighting shines brightly (pun intended) in the cavers. In Jusant you have long stretches of gameplay where you are trying to go through tunnels of that aforementioned civilization. These long tunnels are only lit by small or big cracks in the walls to let some sunlight in or in places where there are no cracks. However, when there are no cracks to help light the way, bioluminescence comes into play thanks to a few little creatures to light up the floor and walls. The environment feels alive and dynamic.

Sound Design and Music: Jusant's audio design is intentionally quiet, due to it being made that way, even a single stone falling down a rocky wall can oversaturate the vast sandscape. Even more when you eventually enter a cavern area where each footstep is reverberated endlessly amongst these halls. I cannot praise enough the mechanic with the seashells which is so simple, yet so effective. Slightly zooming in to certain objects within your vicinity, stopping on them and playing sounds, as if they were still working or people are traversing/chatting around them. Showing rather than straight out telling can work remarkably well.

The soundtrack, composed by Guillaume Ferran adds weight to everything you witness. When you get the hang of something new and finally observe how it works you get enveloped by an evidently calm, yet steadfast song that serves to push you even further onto the new ever high ledge or barely standing stone in the tower's wall. Steadily changing pace to something more melancholic when you witness all the disarray left from people in a rush and all that will never be used again, but wholly left to the elements. Ramping up the speed when certain moments come about where precision and timing is key and steadily dissipating when the challenge is beaten. Never forgetting to keep up with the curious mind and adding a cute 'childlike wonder' to some songs in between all the 'hard hitting' ones. The soundtrack complements the game's pacing, enhancing the overall sense of wonder and exploration.

Game Setting and Worldbuilding: The intro to Jusant is one of intimidation. Opening on a, as far as one can tell, barren wasteland with different objects scattered along the way and the focus being one tower at the very front. The tower appears endless, shrouded in clouds, hinting at its vastness.

The game excels in worldbuilding, offering answers while posing new questions. These people that lived here seem somewhat primitive, yet by going persistently up and up, you witness more and more elaborate mechanisms that helped them in various ways. Rather than spewing all their lore and being done with it, this way it offers gradual learning while still keeping you guessing at all the snippets of lore. This way of presenting a story or just giving you context is not for all players and some wouldn't even glimpse at the various notes placed around the world. For those who couldn't be bothered to read anything there won't be any consequences in you beating the story or just advancing on to the next ledge, cavern or barely standing house.

Overall Story, Side Quests, and More: Jusant delivers a story better experienced than watched, relying heavily on visual storytelling. With no talking and a massive focus on visual storytelling be it through places that you could walk through or distant locations only there to be seen rather than reached. The only snippets of story you would gather would be through a few well-placed seashells, notes left from previously settled people on the tower and what your own mind can muster through what you're seeing.

There is a certain number of collectible notes that when gathered make up a story between certain characters. Which could be considered as sort of a "side quest", but in traditional terms there isn't anything else except that main quest of going up the pillar.

Probable Visual, Audio, and Gameplay Bugs: In terms of bugs, my entire playtime only encountered one issue, a softlock during a specific gear rotation segment. This could be attributed to playing with a keyboard instead of a controller, and the easy fix was connecting a controller. Other than this isolated incident, Jusant delivered a stable experience from start to finish.

Replayability: Jusant has a few pretty cute collectibles, be it in notes scattered throughout the world where you can read up upon the everyday life of its inhabitants, different conversations between individuals, shells that offer a momentary respite with accompanying sounds of past time and rock balancing / stone stacking offer tranquil moments and are placed in places that offer beautiful views. Without counting collectibles, Jusant is an experience that is hard to achieve again on the second playthrough. So preferably beat it once and only go off the beaten path to gather collectibles if you wish.

Closing Thoughts: Jusant offers an enjoyable journey with its simple yet engaging gameplay, effective visual storytelling, and immersive atmosphere. It comes highly recommended for fans of games like Journey, Gris, ABZU, Limbo, Exo One, and similar titles.