As much as Rani enjoys the sense of discovery, the circumstances behind it are far from ideal, and Becks’ constant worrying is a sign that Rani is putting herself in danger for other people’s profits. The point, of course (again, like Savage Planet), is that Becks and Rani are also exploited, forced to search for farmable energy, disregarding ecosystems, because they have no economic power to refuse. After all, they originally came to this planet not to clean it but to identify natural reserves for corporate extraction, and the blurred line between exploration and exploitation was often in the back of my mind as I hoovered up resources I’d just rescued from the black goo.
The warmth of their relationship and its soap-opera fluctuations dovetail neatly with some poignant big ideas about the ethics of their work. In all this, however, I remained invested in the back and forth between Rani and Becks, and the difficult decisions they’re pushed into because of their precarity. Savage Planet is a bigger game, so it’s not an entirely fair comparison, but it’s hard not to feel that The Gunk is missing some of the intrigue and playfulness Typhoon Studios injected into its world’s discoveries. I couldn’t help comparing this experience to that of Journey to the Savage Planet, which offers a similarly colorful world to explore under similar circumstances. It’s doubly frustrating that Rani constantly expresses her amazement at each new discovery, while the game’s systems refuse to reward my curiosity. This really seemed like an omission when I stumbled into an alien facility and only a couple of bits of furniture could be examined to tell me anything about the place. It’s strange that there aren’t even many different types of plants to scan beyond the opening sections, and that so many bizarre and potentially intriguing items can’t be scanned at all. I started to lose the exploration bug after a couple of hours, once I realized I wasn’t going to stumble on much that was genuinely fresh. The denizens of the gunk, meanwhile, only come in three flavors, and while their numbers grow towards the end, dispatching them is a one-dimensional task. These function as steps, ladders, and bridges to further ground (including one that looks ominously like a great unfurled tongue), but none have interesting properties beyond that. Suck up nearby gunk and colorful plants and mushrooms blossom. In many other ways, too, the stakes and the demands of your expedition hardly evolve until the game is on its final stretch, like a Zelda dungeon stuck in second gear. I lost count of how many times this trick is repeated throughout the game, and while sometimes there may be minor obstacles separating the two, often it’s simply a case of grabbing the seed and lobbing it at the target. Early on, for example, you’re introduced to a species of seed that transforms into huge mushrooms if you throw it into an energy pool, enabling you to reach new areas. What at first feels like a rich proposition reveals its limitations surprisingly quickly. The problem is that it does start to feel like a job after a while, along with the rather workmanlike platform routines around it. It’s a shame then that the planet itself renders their adventure a little flat. The act of exploring is pushed and pulled between their two perspectives - a simple twist on an old formula that’s easy to appreciate. The Gunk is as much about the bond between this duo and their difficult situation as what they find. What could be a silent, Metroid-style dive into buried secrets thus becomes something slightly different.
Wary of fieldwork, she stays with the ship, reminding Rani through her earpiece not to be reckless. Becks is practical and responsible, reluctantly assuming a maternal role. Impulsive and adventurous, she relishes the opportunity to dive into the local caves and shrubbery. Rani - the player character - is an excitable explorer.
They’ve landed their rickety ‘Bunny’ spaceship on this uncharted world to seek out an energy source they detected from space, in the hope it might be valuable enough to pay off their mountain of debt.
Indeed, the game’s two main characters, partners Rani and Becks, have an almost parent and child-like relationship at times.
#Games like the gunk series
Platform(s): Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC, Game Pass
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