Editor’s note: Hello! Over the next few days we’re running a “Games That Got Away” series, where we finally get round to reviewing games that released at some point in 2021 but, for various reasons, we couldn’t quite manage to cover at the time.
We’ve gone back to a few real gems, so for more catch-up reviews like this one head to the Games That Got Away hub, where all our pieces from the series will be rounded up in one convenient place. Enjoy!
As the ski lift crests the hill, I see them. Dozens and dozens of them, poking up stiffly from the snow, rigid and unmoving. Heads hanging low, rifles buttressed against their left shoulders, I don’t know if these soldiers are alive or dead. I don’t know if they’re real or a figment of my imagination. All I do know is that they freak me out – it’s easily the most unsettling thing I’ve experienced thus far, which is something, given I’ve spent most of my time here feeling hopelessly on edge – and I have no desire to get any closer to find out one way or the other.
Mundaun review
- Developer: Hidden Fields
- Publisher: MWM Interactive
- Platform: PS4 played on a PS5
- Availability: Out now on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and PC
Mundaun does this a lot. It tip-toes between the real and the imaginary, the mighty and the mundane, staggering between this place and a dark, otherworldy one where an old man in a jaunty hat still broods over a decades-old contract. To his thinking, he was swindled. Others believe the old boy got what he deserved. You – Curdin, an innocent party by all accounts, led to this place following the death of your grandfather and a peculiarly cold letter from the local priest – set off up the Swiss Alps to find out why.
When I hear the term “hand-drawn”, I think of cartoons. Pastel colours. Fluffy clouds and breathlessly blue skies. Mundaun, however, has none of these things. Every stroke of the pencil – and pencil is all we’ll see here, as the sleepy village of Mundaun is portrayed only with lead and shades of sepia – is harsh and unforgiving, making this world a peculiarly dark and angular place. Sometimes, the artistic method works against you; it’s very hard to follow maps that have been angrily scrawled, without scale, by hand, and sometimes things get so dark – literally as well as figuratively – you might find yourself scrambling around in the inky night without a clue as to what’s ahead of you. But this absence of colour makes for a dreamy, disquieting adventure, too.
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As satisfying as Mundaun’s story is – a tale rich in ancient folklore and told entirely through Romansh, the rarest spoken language in Switzerland – the gameplay itself is sadly less robust. There’s a “fear” system, for instance, but one that seems utterly unnecessary, easily circumvented just by backing up a couple of steps. Though the world is small and there are plenty of opportunities to loop back and unlock a door you saw earlier in your adventure, your time will chiefly be spent trudging up and down the mountainside on various, uninspiring fetch quests – occasionally even hunting down items you’ve been sent to find before, too – or seeking out keys for the game’s plentiful locked doors. Interacting with the world around you is troublesome – the button prompt may pop up in front of this sink, but hitting it will, for inexplicable reasons, open the door five feet away to your right – and manoeuvring your grandpa’s old hay mobile, the Muvel, may leave you yearning for the sophisticated handling of a shopping trolley.