After learning of his grandfathers mysterious death in a fire, the protagonist travels to Mundaun for the first time since childhood. He will soon discover that something old and diabolical is haunting the remaining inhabitants. The quest to find out the meaning behind these sinister events takes th...
After learning of his grandfathers mysterious death in a fire, the protagonist travels to Mundaun for the first time since childhood. He will soon discover that something old and diabolical is haunting the remaining inhabitants. The quest to find out the meaning behind these sinister events takes the player on an odyssey up Mundaun mountain: From steep meadows across stony fields and to the snow-covered peak.
Mundaun is a lovingly hand-pencilled horror tale set in a dark, secluded valley of the alps. Explore various areas full of secrets to discover, survive hostile encounters, drive vehicles, fill your inventory and solve a variety of hand-crafted puzzles.
Key Features
Immerse yourself in a unique setting: An alpine world where reality and myth intertwine.
Experience a unique greyscale aesthetic thanks to hand-pencilled textures.
Explore varied and open levels from green meadows to snowy peaks. Beware of the creatures roaming the landscape.
Inventory system to keep you focused on collecting, find out the story secrets.
Fear resistance factor – A “cause and effect” for the player within the game eg: the stronger the fear the more slowly you move.
Solve Puzzles that are integrated into the game world as you make your way up the mountain.
Interact with its eccentric inhabitants who even have their own obscure spoken language.
Control vehicles such as sleighs and hay loaders.
Find out the dark secret behind grandfather's death.
Eerie and unnerving, "Mundaun" offers beautiful landscapes and memorable characters. Its puzzles are pretty good and quite intuitive. Besides, the game's always there to help you if you missed a clue. And even if the fighting system can be a bit clunky, you can absolutely beat the game without confronting a single creature. Its retro style makes it look like a lost classic. And now that our screens are packed with new folk horror films, it was about time to see a proper game in this style. This game, and by extension this studio, show a lot of promise. It's a yes.
Mundaun is a critical darling despite being deeply flawed. If you want to see why the game has such a great reputation, read the positive reviews. People have raved about the art, setting, atmosphere, and characters. Mundaun does a great job with all that. I bought the game on those merits and I was still disappointed, so read on to see if you'll feel the same.
The gameplay is unremarkable at best, tedious at worst, and gives you a "This would be better as a film" kind of feeling. While there are some attempts to take advantage of the medium, they don't often work because they're limited to slowing the player down, applying a filter to the screen, or presenting some admittedly well done visual shenanigans.
Much like 2018's Call of Cthulhu, Mundaun has some light RPG elements that aren't developed, never feel important, and only seem to be in the game because it's a video game and video games have those.
The gameplay systems are varied but rudimentary. Walk, drive a truck that feels like a bouncy castle, go sledding, juggle items in a box, solve baby's first puzzles, poke monsters with a baling fork, shoot monsters with a bolt action rifle, and set things on fire. None of it feels satisfying and most of it doesn't even feel necessary. Toward the end of the game, I found myself shooting every enemy that would die not because I needed to, but because I was bored.
The game is unnerving, but your goals are accomplished by acting on dreamy vagaries so it's often unclear how to resolve things or why your actions worked. There are some uninspired monsters, but they're easily avoided or shot. Their attacks are all cheap shots, so when they do get you it makes you feel frustrated, confused, or stupid rather than frightened. This all coalesces into a game without stakes, so the frights are parlour tricks.
Is Mundaun a "lovingly-crafted" piece of art? Yes, but it's not a good video game. I think people are mistaking it for brilliant when really it's just Swiss.
Mundaun is a remarkable under-the-radar indie release in a year that really needed it. The game oozes an a style and atmosphere that is both warm and calming, while always remaining eerie and a bit unknown. The comparisons I could make that would be the most well-known would be the films of Robert Eggers (The Witch and The Lighthouse), those being of old-world mystic horrors, delas with the devil, etc. The game is presented in black and white with all textures being hand-drawn and scanned into the game. This, combined with the carefully chosen lighting, give the game a dream-like quality often found in the horror films of the silent and black-and-white era. It's simply breathtaking to behold. It's also filled to the brim with little environmental details, rewarding players who take their time to soak in as much as they can. The game is fairly short, around 6 hours for an average playthrough. It's also quite a slow burn, relying mostly on atmosphere and the player's own perceptiveness to deliver small, unnerving details to establish a continuous sense of unease rather than relying on jumpscares (though when sparingly used, they are effective). The sound design is fantastic with convincing ambient audio, as well as a present but never overpowering or out of place soundtrack. Combat is present, but always at the fringes and very much a last resort. As with most horror games it is clunky and difficult by design to disincentivize using it. I think it could've been better implemented, but struggle to really come up with how.
Bottom Line: Pick up and play Mundaun. The love and care put into the game shows in almost every moment and kept me interested the whole way to the credits. Little details scattered throughout the world reward careful attention and multiple playthroughs. Deserves all the praise it gets and definitely needs more eyes on it. Personally, I find it to be a stand-out title for 2021 and will recommend it to anyone interested in intensely atmospheric games.
Ahh, bittere. I still hear it in my head whenever I make a great cup of coffee. I will tell you that this game is something like Darkwood and Disco Elysium. They play differently. They never look alike. But they all tried to give you as complete a slice of their cultural history as possible. Mundaun is just as amazing at accomplishing this as those games. If you play it, you will feel like you know the world and you should know it because you just experienced an actual story. An actual complete story that starts as you end it, with some great and grave bits and pieces in between. I would compare the gameplay with Edith Finch, only here you actually have something to do when you move towards the next story segment. About 7 hours long. Hard to die. Some missable upgrades, none of them necessary. Small world, easy to learn and quick to traverse through, some forgivable backtracking. Great story. Great art direction. Multiple endings. A lot to keep thinking about. A lot to take with you. Makes you feel at home in a strange and foreign land, possibly because every culture has their version of a Devil (except for Merica. They don't have anything, so maybe they won't get this story or why it's so great.
some advice:
I suggest that you lower the resolution and tweak the brightness until you see the difference between an item and a wall.
Use a guide if you get stuck on an objective. The overall game has so much to offer, that you really won't spoil anything looking for one solution.
Forget about the combat. The game has about 4 combat encounters that you can't avoid and you will know these when you get to them. Some of it is just cheap and tedious whether you engage in it or try and avoid it. It makes no sense to seek it.
Finally. Tell your friends about this game. Not everybody subscribes to Ragnarox but anyone who appreciates atmosphere and distinctive art direction and complete slices of other cultures in video game format, should hear about this game. Great stuff.
If you've
- Lamented the fact that all "horror games" seem designed for streamers and their audiences and seem incapable of making design choices that don't fit that mold.
- Liked films like The VVitch
- Enjoyed first-person narrative adventures like Soma and Edith Finch
give this one a shot - it's so very tight, it doesn't over-explain itself, it uses every part of the game to foreshadow without explicitly foreshadowing - it's just excellent.
Every part of it makes sense, it telegraphs intent and goals to you without you realizing it, it doesn't rely on scripted jump scares.
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