The Gunk Reviews
While not perfect, The Gunk is a fun game that carries a great and important message. We need to save our environment. A compelling story, relaxing yet sometimes boring gameplay, and stunning visuals.
Ultimately it’s hard to give The Gunk a strong recommendation. It’s a very old-fashioned game, one that feels like it wouldn’t have truly stood out even in the era it feels like it belongs to. Despite likable characters, the story doesn’t really satisfy either. The core mechanics just plain work, though, and its short length doesn’t overstay its welcome. While it feels like the development team squandered the potential for more, those who can check it out without a significant investment will find a few fun hours. Perfect for Game Pass, indeed.
But as a package, this is a nicely put-together game and a great little addition to the Game Pass’s ever-growing library.
The Gunk is an excellent relaxing game without any innovations, but it has a charming, comfortable pace and offers a satisfying cleaning feeling.
Review in Czech | Read full review
The Gunk is a competent product, but it feels very risk-adverse and derivative. You’ve seen and played elements of this game before. It can be fun for a while, but you soon realize that The Gunk has a limited vocabulary and spends too much of its time amicably repeating itself. Instead of being the foundation for something grander, The Gunk is satisfied to make its exploration and simple mechanics the entire game. As a Game Pass product, however, it’s not hard to cautiously recommend The Gunk as a pleasant enough diversion.
There is nothing special or complicated about The Gunk, but it proves to be a relaxing and light adventure that focuses on the manual removal of a toxic substance and the abrupt return of nature.
The Gunk provides a fun mystery in what’s a very easy going and guided journey, it’s rather short but at the same time a fine experience.
The Gunk is a short adventure but will please players who want to take a break between two AAAs. Without revolutionizing the genre and despite its lack of depth, the game brings a little breath of fresh air and gives us the opportunity to leave our planet to heal another.
Review in French | Read full review
Meaning his God complex is very real, and very much in play throughout your journey.
The Gunk sports an interesting core mechanic and two likable heroines, but lacks the depth and complexity needed to make the game stand out.
The Gunk is a rather visually stunning experience with many drawbacks that prevent it from scoring higher. While it has some noteworthy high points, it also has some devastatingly low points that show that Image & Form Games are just dipping their toes into 3D world design.
The Gunk game can be considered a short adventure. Nothing more and nothing less. Don't expect anything special to happen during the game. However, the experience of this short title may bring some people some enjoyable moments.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Rani and Becks are an appealing duo to share adventures with, but they deserve something more exciting than The Gunk has to offer.
Too familiar, too easy, and too short but if you're looking for an undemanding time waster on Game Pass you can certainly do worse than The Gunk.
Cleaning up the titular Gunk is satisfying, but the rest of the game surrounding it is routine and overly familiar.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with The Gunk. It works from a technical standpoint and it isn’t the worst way you can spend about five hours of your time. But I just can’t muster up any sort of authentic excitement about it. If it were funnier or cleverer or more challenging, I could maybe start to see it as a title I could recommend. But as it is, the best I can do is pay it that slightly backhanded compliment of saying it’s perfect for Game Pass.
The Gunk has a fantastic setting and lovely characters, but ultimately the gameplay is lacking.
The Gunk has its flaws, but it's still a mostly enjoyable way to spend a few hours. It's a short but sweet adventure with gameplay reminiscent of PS2-era platforming games and so fans of the genre should certainly give it a look through Xbox Game Pass.
The Gunk is not a disastrous game. I enjoyed turning my brain off for five hours and exploring this strange and mysterious planet. It’s okay for games to just be empty calories sometimes, and I wouldn’t knock The Gunk for just being a generic popcorn flick. The Gunk aspires to be more than that though, and it falls considerably short. The quality of the SteamWorld games gavethe expectation that this would be a fresh take on the third-person adventure genre, but The Gunk is too shallow for me to recommend - even in the slow December months. If you’re looking for character-driven action-adventure games on Game Pass, Lake and Firewatch were both added earlier this week. Give those a look and leave The Gunk in the gutter.