Game Review - The Gunk

Posted On: April 08 2026

When I was a kid, one of my favorite games to play on my 3DS was Steamworld Dig by Image and Form. Fast foward to the GOG Winter Sale and a newer game of theirs was on sale (typically sold for $25, I got it for $0.74) that was not a part of this series. For such a low price and from developers I trust, what was there to lose?

In short, this is one of the worst games I’ve played in a while and I’m thankful that I spent so little on it.

Good Yet Demanding Graphics

Upon starting the game you’ll immediately notice the dense and lush foliage that makes up the levels. It genuinely looks pretty good and really gels with the game’s theme of reclaiming the land from the putrid and ruinous gunk. Plus, whenever you fully clean out an area, green particle effect immerise the area in a satsifying manner visually rewarding you for a good job.

That said, I primarily played this game on my Ally which typically doesn’t require changing graphic settings with indie games. Not so with this one. And there came my first big issue, a lack of proper graphics settings. All I could change was switch between Low/Medium/High. While toggling between them did result in signifigant changes to the graphics, it irked me as a handheld PC gamer that I couldn’t dial in my settings better. Even when I set the graphics to low, I found the frame rate to be lower than what I’d expect. It was still playable, but was far from ideal.

One thing that I didn’t like about the level design was the conspicuous usage of yellow paint to guide the user. It felt jarring and a sign of poor level design I felt. The areas felt more focused on looking good vs being actually fun to navigate and traverse which this was added to help with.

Promising Yet Ultimately Agrivating Gameplay

For me, gameplay is king and I actually found the main mechanic of sucking up the game’s titular gunk to be quite nice and relaxing. It was similar to Powerwash Simulator but less granular and with more of an impact on the surrounding enviroment. Then that was it. After the first hour, there was practially no change or additions made to the sucking gameplay. Powerwash Simulator at least has multiple types of nossles/surfaces/materials that all interact in different ways. This game had none of that depth and felt akin to a puzzle game with an interesting premise and basic set of intro levels, but then didn’t progress from there.

Then came the combat, which I was surprised this game has in the first place. It’s essestially boils down to sucking up moving gunk/enemies and the things it’ll throw at you. This is bad enough on it’s own, but what made it worse was how poorly implemented it was. As you might imagine, this causes the somewhat relaxing atmosphere I appreciated to be killed and be replaced with an annoying hectic and frustrating goal of dodging crap I couldn’t see, vacuming up stuff that wouldn’t keep still, and getting killed by enemies that I couldn’t touch unless I sucked up the moving gunk. I can understand the concept they were going for, but the execution is terrible and resulted in the goodwill the game built initially being trashed.

Powerups provided via crafting did exist, but these were essestially useless and made no real impact on the gameplay. Plus you had to traverse base to the basecamp to craft them which was annoying and unneeded since they could’ve been applied from the pause screen. Also, why does a game like this with linear levels even need crafting? Just use coins or some other more basic token vs 5 different materials I won’t keep track of.

I Muted The Dialog

I typically don’t care for the dialog of the games I play, however the best scripts can elevate my enjoyment of games (such as with Death Stranding). However in this case it only worsened my experience.

The main charater can be best described as obnoxious, selfish, uncaring of what her partner has to say, and generally a bit of a jerk. She’s also written as a “bubbly” character which I thought I didn’t like in games, but then I started playing Yakuza 7 featuring an ultra bubbly and outgoing dude who genuinely likes helping others. The key difference is in their selflessnes of which the main character of this game has none. I found no redeeming traits in her character and pity the VA who had to record her lines. Due to how the plot progresses during minimal cutscenes and mainly during gameplay there’s no room for the other side characters to breath, but even then they were bland and generic at best.

The only thing that could’ve saved the game for me was the plot which was dealing with an anicent alien civilization that mysteriously disappeared with the only trace of them left being their structures and the gunk. I was hopeful for something akin to an episode of Star Trek Voyager, but what I got was barebones at best and annoyingly cavalier towards world altering implications at worst. If the characters in the game weren’t taking the plot seriously, why should I?

In Short, It’s Shit

With crummy gameplay and a worse script, I trudged towards finishing the game. I have a bad habit of not finishing games and planned on having this one be an exception, which was the only thing keeping me going.

My breaking point finally came when I pulled out my Ally on a subway and spent 10 minutes dealing with a crappy puzzle. Eventually I realized that I’d have to watch a walkthrough video in order to progress, but I refused to do that there. This overwheling sense of frustration was too much and I uninstalled the game on the spot there.

There’s no nice way of putting this: after the first hour this game became a waste of my time. I can’t recommend it at all, even if you play it for free (such as via Xbox Game Pass). I can still recommend Image and Form’s Steamworld games but for now I’d advise to steer clear of their other stuff.