Grunn, described as “a very normal gardening game,” there is nothing quite ordinary in sight. To begin with, it presents operations as simple as mowing of hedges, grass, and cleaning of litter.
However, lurking right from the onset is a sense of wrong appear, which draws a curtain over the fact that the play is more than itself would have everyone believe.
Even if it is a gardening game, Grunn is clearly creepy and full of strangeness, which is why people will find it most interesting and different.
Playing ground start with what seems like regular gardening items, for instance, there is a set of shears, a tool used in cutting grass and bushes. However, things start becoming even more interesting especially when the second tool used in the ritual is a trumpet.
But this is not a regular trumpet – it is not used like one and its powers cannot be treated under the umbrella of a musical instrument. The progression continues with a trowel, but once again, there’s a twist: it begins to pull up queer, odd things which are in no way affiliated with a garden at all.
Even sooner, you get the first hints of the game’s main character – mysterious and kind of quirky – which pull you in into Grunn’s world.
Whenever you are tending your garden, an eerie element comes into play yet it is quite comical. A live moment involves a reflection in a bathroom mirror. As you can almost imagine, it is not as if you look in the mirror and there is nothing that can be reflected.
It is such a little thing, and yet it only contributes to that slowly building tension of there being something wrong in this cute little community. It builds up gradually to a kind of strangeness that makes for a charming, if somewhat creepy sort of conclusion.
The gameplay in Grunn is of two days, where you are given some responsibility to rearrange and clean up the garden as excellent as you can. The tasks appear simple: cut the grass, edge the yard, water flowers, sweep the path, and level mole hills.
However, gradually it becomes understood that Grunn is not only about performing routine tasks connected with gardening.
The first moment an idea is given that all is not well when a plank from a bridge collapses a little too conveniently whenever the character is crossing it, which gives a feeling that the world is turning upside down.
There’s far more to Grunn than just the playfully mysterious and the weird and wonderful. It is also the kind of game where the play feels like they are doing very simple things – yet actually, nothing could be less true, as the stakes are considerably higher.
For instance, when sweeping, collecting garbage and washing the floors one cannot help but notice that Grunn peering at you with a sort of derisive giggling intending to remind you that there are far more serious and ominous issues out there to worry about. Players are lonely in the game; NPCs speak incoherently and the game is somewhat surreal.
Conclusion
Grunn is a game for the audience interest in a funny and mysterious game filled with entertaining and at the same time rather eerie tasks while being accompanied by a whimsical atmosphere.
If you enjoy such things as the satisfaction derived out of indulging in strange secrets and prescribing into odd surprises and solving mysteries then Grunn is the ideal game for you. This game is wonderful, charming, a little strange and creepy all at the same time.
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