We have seen and explored settings in video games, but Switzerland is not often taken into consideration. He thought about it then Michel Ziegler, a Swiss game designer who offers his folk horror Mundaun on PC and consoles.
Mundaun is a village in Switzerland, in the canton of Grisons, suppressed in 2015 and aggregated to the municipality of Obersaxen. It is in this small village nestled in the Swiss Alps that the story of Curdin is set, a boy who tries to unravel a family mystery.
Homecoming
curdin sets out on his way to Mundaun after receiving a letter from father Jeremiah which informs him of the death of the grandfather, due to a fire that broke out in the barn. Arrived on the spot, from the first moments we will understand that the circumstances of the accident are mysterious, the old grandfather's house has rooms locked with really too particular keys and at night the valley is populated with disturbing figures.
If that's not enough, Curdin begins to have gods past life flashbacks of his elderly relative, who has kept a secret dating back to the war years. To solve the mystery, Curdin must explore the town of Mundaun in search of clues.
This is more or less the most superficial part of Mundaun's plot, a plot that deviates from the cryptic narrative choices that are usually made by the narrative designers of indie titles. The story, in fact, while maintaining some smokier elements than others, is quite simple to follow, it accompanies the gameplay well, however we are not faced with something unrepeatable, it is a good excuse to convince us to explore the Swiss municipality.
To be honest, the hardest part of the work that goes into convincing the player is carried out by the Artistic direction, able to wrap him so warmly, despite the climate of Mundaun being very harsh, to be able to persuade him to complete the adventure. It seems to enter a drawing, to walk those mountain paths clinging to the lead of a pencil, the technical realization is undoubtedly the strong point of the game that has a well-built and always strong impact atmosphere.
Up the mountains
Mundaun is a first-person horror in which the free exploration of the locations is predominant, with consequent collection of objects and solving of puzzles. It is not a linear experience, in fact, the similarities with Amnesia, which can be read around, are less marked than expected, instead a video game that seemed more suitable to us as a reference model is Kona.
Just like the investigative thriller set in Canada, Mundaun presents open "maps", never exaggeratedly large, but still capable of disorienting and making both the exploration and the solution of puzzles more distracting, which oblige the player to often and willingly do of the backtracking (we cannot use an in-game map). Fortunately, the Muvel, a grain harvesting vehicle that has unlimited gasoline, and the sled later in the game.
In addition, the character keeps a notebook with him in which to write down the current goals, very useful when you just don't know how to move forward. If Kona, then, had survival elements, such as the need to heat the rooms in order not to die of hypothermia, Mundaun does the same but puts the player in less difficulty. The cold of the mountains is not a problem and the survival items are not essential to advance in the story, because they increase some parameters (resistance to fear, combat skills and maximum health), but never prevent progression if they were to be lacking. For example, have wood, water and coffee to use in shelters equipped with kitchen allows us to increase resistance to fear, but if we were to be without it there would be no dire consequences.
We talked about fear, of course, it's a horror and at least we should try it. Let's say that Mundaun focuses more on the atmosphere, because the enemies seemed to us the least inspired element of the entire artistic direction. In other words, it is hay men, heaps of straw that, only at night, patrol and attack us on sight. They don't instill all this fear, they are more of a nuisance that can be avoided quite easily by running away. We can also fight them, but the combat system comes down to just one type of melee attack and the ability to shoot the shotgun, once obtained, but with very very wobbly aim. This Curdin clumsiness is on purpose to make encounters with enemies more destabilizing, but once we understand that stealth and escape are 99,9% effective, we will rarely bother with a weapon.
Another note we want to make is that the type of technique used to make the game, a sort of hand-made drawing, as we have already said, during the night can make it more inconvenient to recognize a road or a hidden path among the rocks. Just get used to it anyway.
A good job is done by the sound both as regards the music and the sound effects, the dubbing is on acceptable levels for a production on which a very small team has worked (there is no español, not even for subtitles). The longevity of the title depends on the player's orientation skills, but in about 8 / 10 hours Mundaun can be completed by getting both endings.
Final comment
Mundaun surprised us positively, because an indie that with so few resources manages to convey so many good feelings should be praised. The artistic direction is the strong point of the production, the game progression manages to keep the player always on the piece, unfortunately some gaps such as uninspired enemies and a bit of excessive dispersiveness do not lead him to the highest peak of the Alps, but to a good point he gets there the same with his legs.
