Over the years developer Image & Form have become one of my favourite indie developers, the Steamworld series gave them plenty of room to flex their creative muscle. It seems though that they wanted to add more dimension to their next game, transition from a 2d viewpoint to 3d and with it, we get The Gunk. The question was, could a developer, known for their amazing 2d work, transition to 3d and keep the same level of amazing?

The story of The Gunk is pretty thin, not to say it doesn’t have a few strong messages within it, but there are times when the story seems to fade away, in order to let you explore. You take control of Rina, who along with Becks and a robot named Curt, are explorers of space, salvaging all sorts of minerals and more, in order to make a living. As they are flying around, they detect an energy signal emanating from an uncharted planet and decided to venture down to check it out, however soon after Rina is left to clear a space for the Bunny - that’s the name of their ship, to land, she encounters The Gunk. Clearing out The Gunk, from around the campsite, reveals that the planet is very beautiful and teaming with life and once The Gunk is removed, they detect more of that energy signal and decide to try and find the source.

As Rina explores, a lot of the conversation that you have with Becks plays out over the radio, as there are only a few times you are forced back to camp in the entire story. Because it plays out over the radio, when you encounter large pockets of The Gunk, it creates a natural signal jamming effect, meaning there is no communication, leaving you out on your own. I won’t say anything more about the story, because while the game is quite short, the story and its messages are worth experiencing on your own first.

There are a few issues with the story, first of all is the pacing, it is just on the go, all the time, never really giving you a chance to stop and let loose in an area. The second is that Rina as a character, isn’t all that fun and given she is the more adventurous of the two human folks, that is not a great place to be. She has her moments of levity of course, but she rushes around and never thinks of the consequences of her actions and when Becks gets annoyed with her, I found myself siding with Becks. Of course, depending on how you like some personality traits, you may not have any issues with Rina, so your millage will vary there.

As for the gameplay, it is a 3d adventure game, where the bulk of the time you will be sucking up The Gunk, by the use of Pumpkin, Rina’s artificial arm. In all the lead up to the games released, I never once knew that she had a fake arm, I assumed it was something akin to Samus Aran’s blaster, that her regular hand was just inside of it. Pumpkin, as she calls it, attaches to her backpack via a pair of cables and I assume that is how it is able to process The Gunk and other minerals that she collects as you travel about. I say that I assume, because the game never explains how it works, there is a throw away line about why she needed to get the arm replaced, but there isn’t anything specific as to how it works, but let’s just go with it does.

As you begin to explore, you will need to scan everything, scanning not only lets you see what is around you, it will also help you understand what materials can be obtained from what plans or rocks. The more you scan, the more upgrades that you will unlock new abilities, that you need resources to build, one such upgrade lets you suck things in faster and later on in the game, you can unlock another level of that function. Some of the upgrades are quite useful and others I honestly forgotten that I had unlocked them, given just how little I used them, one of them I only used once, just to see how it was meant to work.

While exploration is the bulk of the game, there are some light puzzles and the occasional fight to get involved in and while the puzzles are more akin to just pulling a chain, the fights can be a little challenging, mostly due to the games camera. As a 3d game, camera control is almost as important, if not slightly more so than the main character control and while the games camera does a very admirable job here, it also tries to recenter itself behind Rina, all the time. This isn’t a bad thing when you are just walking around, but when you are trying to keep the local wildlife in view as you move around them, or worse attempt to line up rotating platforms to jump from, having the camera attempt to move itself back into the neutral position is frustrating. Thankfully the game is very generous with its health and checkpoints, so even if you fall of ledges and you will, a lot, the game doesn’t punish you for it.

If you have ever played any of the Steamworld games, then you will be familiar with the 2d art style that the developer is known for, one that has the characters match the world, here though Rina and Becky seem a little out of place, almost like they are more Claymation in their look and the world is watercolour. Don’t misunderstand, the world is most assuredly not painted to look like it’s a massive watercolour picture, that was just for effect, when the two of them are in the shot together they look fine, but take Rina to any of the places you can travel to and she just doesn’t quite fit in. The world itself is equal parts beautiful and disturbing and the latter is meant in the best way possible, because The Gunk is a living entity and as such it moves around the place.

Most of the design of the world is that of ruins and there is hybrid design in play, a little bit of Mayan and a little Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, the end result is that we get something that feels very authentic and familiar, but with a disturbing layer across it, it really feels alien. When you enter locations where The Gunk is abundant, taking it out can be a chore – as you have to suck up every last drop, but seeing the world change from a grab and dreary grey, to one teeming with life, it never ceases to impress.

If I had to be picky though, it would be that there really just isn’t a lot of variety in the locations you visit, sure they are named differently, but everything really just looks the same as before, with maybe a few new platforming elements. Additionally, there are times when the game struggles to load in assets before it is ready, with textures loading up a good number of seconds after you enter in new areas, or those times when you are in larger spaces, there is significant pop in of items, once they enter a specific radius from Rina. These issues don’t impact the performance of the game itself, but they are sometime to be aware of.

On the audio side, things are driven by the conversations between Rina and Becks, with actors Fiona Nova and Abigail Turner doing a great job at bringing their respective characters to life. While there are times when there is no actual conversation, just Rina talking to herself, it isn’t made to sound like an inner monolog, she is just talking aloud and it fits her character. The games music is very fantasy based, not as sci-fi as I first thought it might be and while it is amazing, it is always on, to the point where I kind of wanted to turn it off, just so I could enjoy the sounds of the alien planet I was exploring.

The Gunk is a beautiful and utterly charming game that really sets you down within an alien world, the only real downside is that the runtime from start to finish is nowhere near as long as you might be expecting. While your millage on how delightful or irritating Rina can be, will vary from mine, the story being as rushed as it is, won’t help you engage with her anymore. A few technical issues here and there, don’t dampen the experience at all, so if you are keen on a fun few hours of adventuring and you can stomach the sometimes-pulsating mess that is The Gunk, this is one I can highly recommend.