GRUNND Review (PC)

It looks like we’re reliving the golden era of point & click adventure games, as the genre has been revived some years ago. GRUNND is part of the most recent wave of point & click adventure games that involves some light puzzle solving and a lot of walking around.

Despite tagging itself as a side-scrolling point & click adventure, GRUNND feels more like a walking simulator and less of a puzzle solving mystery. More importantly, GRUNND is a big mystery that remains unrevealed even after the credits roll.

Developed by SEKTOUSE with help from Bright Gambit, GRUNND mixes mystery and sci-fi in a unique setting that draws inspiration from Franz Kafka and David Lynch. After finishing the game, I have to say that while the vibes are there, GRUNND lacks that coherent narrative needed to provide players with an enjoyable gameplay experience.

The surreal realm that the game’s protagonist travels to unintentionally is rather small, yet decently populated with enough NPCs to avoid making the journey boring. The conversations between the “Hero” and the characters that inhabit this strange plane are anything but mundane. Only a handful of these conversations will give you hints on what’s happening, but don’t expect any big reveal until the end of the game.

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The does feature some light puzzles, but they only involve visiting locations that you’ve previously been to, so there’s little chance of getting stuck anywhere in the game. As long as you pay attention to some of the conversations, you won’t have any issues figuring out where you have to go next.

The game’s inventory is pretty basic and it’s only there to store the objects that some of the characters will give you and those you find along the way. Everything in the game that’s interactable is marked with a small glowing circle, but more often than not you have to position the protagonist correctly to be able to interact with people, objects or locations. It’s an obnoxious system that sometimes fails, so you have to repeatedly click the right mouse button until you get it right.

Gameplay-wise, GRUNND is more of a walking simulator rather than a point & click adventure game that requires some smart puzzle solving. There’s not much happening between screens, so the lack of fast traveling would have made this a chore. Thankfully, the developers included a fast travel system to make all the backtracking you’re required more bearable.

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The best things about GRUNND are the handmade artwork and the soundtrack, which heavily contribute to the eerie atmosphere. Also, except for a few lines, the game is fully-voiced and actors are doing a decent job, especially the Narrator.

I have encountered some minor technical issues and a major one that required me to load a previous save. Right near the end, the game prevented me from interacting with anything, which basically meant that I could finish it. Fortunately, reloading an autosave fixed the issue and I was able to see the credits roll.

Speaking of the end, GRUNND has multiple endings, and while they are pretty different, they’re not that satisfying. Even after finishing the game, there are quite a few questions left unanswered and things that I wish were explored a bit more.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion