As the ski lift crests the hill, I see them. Dozens and dozens of them, poking up stiffly from the snow, rigid and unmoving. Heads hanging low, rifles buttressed against their left shoulders, I don’t know if these soldiers are alive or dead. I don’t know if they’re real or a figment of my imagination. All I do know is that they freak me out – it’s easily the most unsettling thing I’ve experienced thus far, which is something, given I’ve spent of my time here feeling hopelessly on edge – and I have no desire to get any closer to find out one way or the other.
Mundaun reviewDeveloper: Hidden FieldsPublisher: MWM InteractivePlatform: PS4 played on a PS5Availability: Out now on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and PC
Mundaun does this a lot. It tip-toes between the real and the imaginary, the mighty and the mundane, staggering between this place and a dark, otherworldy one where an old man in a jaunty hat still broods over a decades-old contract. To his thinking, he was swindled. Others believe the old boy got what he deserved. You – Curdin, an innocent party by all accounts, led to this place following the death of your grandfather and a peculiarly cold letter from the local priest – set off up the Swiss Alps to find out why.
When I hear the term “hand-drawn”, I think of cartoons. Pastel colours. Fluffy clouds and breathlessly blue skies. Mundaun, however, has none of these things. Every stroke of the pencil – and pencil is all we’ll see here, as the sleepy village of Mundaun is portrayed only with lead and shades of sepia – is harsh and unforgiving, making this world a peculiarly dark and angular place. Sometimes, the artistic method works against you; it’s very hard to follow maps that have been angrily scrawled, without scale, by hand, and sometimes things get so dark – literally as well as figuratively – you might find yourself scrambling around in the inky night without a clue as to what’s ahead of you. But this absence of colour makes for a dreamy, disquieting adventure, too.
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As satisfying as Mundaun’s story is – a tale rich in ancient folklore and told entirely through Romansh, the rarest spoken language in Switzerland – the gameplay itself is sadly less robust. There’s a “fear” system, for instance, but one that seems utterly unnecessary, easily circumvented just by backing up a couple of steps. Though the world is small and there are plenty of opportunities to loop back and unlock a door you saw earlier in your adventure, your time will chiefly be spent trudging up and down the mountainside on various, uninspiring fetch quests – occasionally even hunting down items you’ve been sent to find before, too – or seeking out keys for the game’s plentiful locked doors. Interacting with the world around you is troublesome – the button prompt may pop up in front of this sink, but hitting it will, for inexplicable reasons, open the door five feet away to your right – and manoeuvring your grandpa’s old hay mobile, the Muvel, may leave you yearning for the sophisticated handling of a shopping trolley.