Grunn review

When you arrive off the bus, cross over the rickety bridge, and pick up your garden shears for the first time, everything seems relatively straightforward. Cut the grass, clip the hedges, water the plants, and dig up the molehills in order to return the garden to its former glory. It was all going so well at first, but it wasn’t until I found a way to open a gate leading into a church and its surrounding grounds that I met my untimely demise. I was sent back to the very beginning, unsure what the hell was happening and unsure what exactly Grunn was.

I’d picked up the key to the gate and seen an apparition appear in the doorway before slamming the door. Weird as it was, I didn’t think too much about it, but when I cut the flowers around some of the graves by the church, the ghosts started to appear and the lifeforce in my body started to be sucked out of me. Grunn is about repeating the same routine in order to find new paths and secrets, all while trying to avoid the various deaths that await you. There are multiple endings, and you can die in different ways that always managed to surprise me.

When you start to understand Grunn isn’t about gardening over and over again, it becomes less frustrating and more interesting. I wouldn’t clear all the grass in every area before exploring because it could result in my death, meaning I would have to repeat it all over again the next time. I would get off the bus, cross the bridge, then retrace my steps to pick up the hammer, the keys to the gates, the doorknob in the church grounds hidden among the grass, and the paddle behind the shed that got me to the park in the quickest possible way.

I was always finding something new and something weird. Grunn is creepy and bizarre, and as much as you think you know what’s going on there’s always some surreal encounter to throw you off your game. I’d been into the toilets near the shed multiple times, but it wasn’t until at least my fourth run that I saw a weird head peer at me from above one of the stalls. I eventually found some toilet roll next to a tent in a large field filled with tall grass, and by taking it to this weirdo on a Saturday morning he disappeared. The stall door opened and a door to a strange hallway opened, replacing the toilet.

Knowing when certain opportunities arise comes with the various polaroid pictures you’ll find around the different areas. Certain things can only be done at certain times of the day, such as finding the paddle for the boat that leads to the park only showing behind the shed at 8:30am on the first day you arrive. The various tools you need to tidy up the garden aren’t available to you from the start. Through finding polaroids or sheer luck, you’ll stumble across the watering can and garden trowel. Oh yeah, and a trumpet that can both reveal and calm the dead.

There’s a wonderful sense of creativity in everything you do, and despite it being frustrating when you encounter a new way to die and being sent back to the beginning, you gain your own list of objectives instead of the game throwing them at you. Next time, you might want to focus on getting into the church, or breaking into the gas station to explore behind the counter without being told not to by the station’s attendant. Maybe you just want to find the trowel or repair the bridge thanks to knowing where a spare plank of wood is. There are different ways to play and explore, and Sokpop want you to feed your curiosity.

There is an end game to Grunn, and on the surface it sounds simple when you find out what it is, but the way it makes you uncover the answers is so clever. I became fascinated by the mysteries I was uncovering and the ways to solve them, with some genuinely weird discoveries along the way that brought a smile to my face. You can facilitate that part of your brain that finds comfort in tidying up a garden much in the same way satisfaction arrives from cleaning buildings in Powerwash Simulator, but there’s so much more here.

Grunn is inventive in so many ways, and it becomes more apparent the further you get. On the surface it’s a gardening game, but when you start to find the secrets regarding the garden and its owner, it becomes an entirely different experience. Having to replay the same bits over again can become frustrating, especially when you start to get somewhere while investigating, but as long as you remember where everything is and how to do certain tasks, it won’t take long until you’re back where you were. If you’re after something different, this is one that will leave you happy there are still developers who want to try something different while succeeding in almost every way.