Swedish developer Image & Form Games is a very "personality" company, its main "SteamWorld" brand has become a series, under the same art style derived from "Dig "Dig", "Heist" and "Quest (Adventure)" three different ways to play the label, its unique cartoon art effect is very attractive, In terms of combat design, it is one of the few teams in Europe and the United States that really understands the sense of blow, but for players in the mainland and even in Greater China, this company has an "ancestral" problem, that is, all its works do not support Chinese (some NS versions have updated Chinese, but only in a few regions).
From the pixel wind of "digging" to the side-scrolling hand-drawn version of "Adventure", Image & Form Games' games are all swirling around in 2D, but the new work "The Gunk" has a new look, an action-adventure game with a third-person perspective behind the scenes, players will control the protagonist Rani to experience a strange adventure on a strange alien planet, using a mechanical arm to absorb and clean up the mysterious "slime" attached to the surface. Finally figure out what's going on on the planet.
The game went live on the evening of December 16, supports XGP and is exclusive to Microsoft platforms, of course, it still does not support Chinese.
A brand new attempt to break the comfort zone
To be precise, the action components of "The Gunk" are very few, and in general, it is still an adventure game based on puzzle solving, with no two-stage jumps, extremely scarce attack methods, a small number of enemies, and the scene is of course relatively monotonous. In general, the size of the game is also very limited, even if the collection content is basically not missed along the way, the initial time to complete the level should not exceed 5 hours, as an action puzzle game is really a bit mini.
The story is simple and easy to understand, the two protagonists Rani and Becks fly a spaceship to a strange planet to try to collect some ingredients or other ingredients, but accidentally find a "slime" sucking the energy of vegetation and creatures, starting from the rescue of a beautiful animal, they find that this is not a wild place, but has a very advanced mechanical civilization. Then, in the process of cleaning up the slime to bring the earth back to life, they gradually figured out the reason for the emergence of the slime and what kind of survival struggles the surviving intelligent beings had experienced.
For Image & Form Games, Slime' worldview and gameplay meant a whole new attempt and challenge, but overall it was well done.
First of all, the game's screen style is between realism and cartoon, the appearance and dynamics of the two protagonists are typical European and American cartoon character templates, the surface material of the scene is realistic, but from the perspective of modeling style, it is a typical cartoon style, which is consistent with the shape of the character, whether the shape or dynamic has maintained the studio's consistent high level.
The core element "Slime" behaves like a black cloud floating in the air in the game, with an eerie red glow inside, although it will not hurt if it is directly touched, but it still looks prohibitive.
In the process of linear progressing the plot, the player will follow Rani to one new scene after another, including the wild, the mine pit, and the interior of the giant mechanical building at the end of the ruins, because the process is too short, so the styling style is not rich, but it still reflects enough differences that people will not feel like constantly exploring and solving puzzles in the same scene.
The sparrow is small and has all its internal organs
Rani is the only character that the player controls from start to finish, her injured left hand is replaced by a mechanical prosthesis, which has the ability to absorb mucus at an early stage, as well as grab items and throw them far away. The speed and range of mucus absorbed increases with upgrades, and it is also possible to install pulse cannons to fire ion pulses, or to release mechanical bait to mislead slime monsters.
However, the most used in the game is the absorption + grab + throw compound function, I originally expected the cannon to start in the battle, and later found that even the primary mobs can not be killed, basically only used when solving puzzles, including activating the switch or shooting down the seeds in the high place, which is completely different from the setting in many games.
The game includes simple material gathering and a prosthetic upgrade system. Players first need to use the prosthesis analysis function to investigate unknown plants, minerals, enemies, buildings, or mechanical equipment encountered during the adventure, as long as they complete the reading bar to gain a certain amount of experience points, and after saving a single upgrade or scanning a specific object, they can get the recipe for upgrading the prosthesis.
There are two main points to note, the first game of the scannable objects provide enough experience points to raise the recipe level to the highest (only 57 scannable objects in total), so even if there is something missed, there is no need to worry about affecting the progress of the game, some of the recipes that will be used in the puzzle solving process will be prompted or directly for the player to learn.
▲ Some items can be scanned
The companions, robots, equipment, and enemies in the second camp are all scannable objects, the former is easily overlooked, and the latter needs to scan and read the notes against the attack, giving a very untimely feeling. Fortunately, the game's combat difficulty is extremely low, there is almost no difficulty to speak of, and the way of fighting is more puzzle than action, so there is no need to worry too much about the problem of Game Over, I have only seen this prompt once in the whole process.
After obtaining the recipe, in the process of adventure, use the prosthetic suction function to collect 4 kinds of materials such as organics, metal, fiber, and slime monsters, and accumulate a certain amount to return to the spaceship's workshop for transformation and upgrading, in addition to the items for prosthetics, there are comprehensive contents such as increasing health and increasing movement speed, each item can only be improved once.
▲ Upgradeable options
However, unfortunately, there are only 4 kinds of materials in the game that are collectibles, there are no other treasures, text materials and other common content, players need to carefully observe the branch route and solve some puzzles to go to the location where the materials are located, in order to unlock all the items in a week, the amount of material consumed is still considerable.
However, even if you only run the main route, the material obtained is enough to strengthen some key functions, because the process is short, the difficulty is low, and the forced battles are puzzle-solving, theoretically, even if you ignore all the battle class enhancement options, you can pass the level, this design makes the entire material collection process seem dispensable.
"Puzzle solving" is the key word I have repeatedly mentioned above, the whole game process is basically advanced by the player's continuous puzzle solving, and the operation accuracy requirements are placed in a very secondary position. But even so, the game's puzzle types are not many, the difficulty of solving the puzzle is also very low, basically at a glance can see the idea, the vast majority of problem solving steps are not more than three or four, limited to a small area, there is really no challenge at all.
The first puzzles that players can encounter during the exploration process include using prosthetic limbs to grab seeds to grow mat mushrooms in specific locations to go to high places, rotating platforms to open up different roads, grabbing explosive seeds and throwing them out to blow up slime clumps in specific locations, and all the slime in the most basic light-absorbing scenes to restore the mat platform and materials to their original appearance.
Most of the puzzles are related to the collection of materials, the main line of course to rely on the puzzle to open up, as long as the idea is correct, the action elements can be ignored, the accuracy of jumping, throwing is almost no requirement, in the throwing of seeds, with cannons to aim at the mechanism when the system will also help the player automatically correct the landing point, it can be said that the nanny-level intimate care.
The battle part is the same, first of all, the player can encounter only 6 kinds of enemies and the final boss, two of which are still organ nature, can not be said to be lackluster, can only be said to be better than nothing.
The most common is a puppy-like "Critter", which will rush to the player with agility, just suck it up and throw it out to destroy it, throw it accurately and hit the other one and kill two at once.
"Spitter" will charge up and spit out a bomb-like ball, which is slightly more threatening than "Critter", but you can still use a prosthesis to grab the flying bomb and throw it back (the system will help you aim it when throwing), so that it falls into a brief coma and then goes up and rips it off.
The large enemy "Beast" has a thick skin and will charge at the player like a bull, but it has a large spherical weakness behind it, and when it hits a rock or wall for a short time, it goes around the back and uses a prosthetic limb to absorb the weakness, and it can be eliminated three times, although it is a boss level in the game, but it is not difficult to fight.
Including the final boss battle of the game is also a puzzle nature, it can be said that there is no action element, for an action puzzle game, such a design makes the difficulty of the game almost nothing, the action and puzzle solving are completely unbalanced, the lack of puzzle solving means is constantly repeated, it may also make the player feel bored, if you can strengthen the performance of some action parts, the playability of the game is believed to have a lot of improvement.
summary
The work of Image & Form Games is easy to give people a feeling that the beginning is very amazing, playing and playing gradually begin to pull the crotch, and the characteristic content is constantly repeated, in the rhythm grasp, content balance is always a problem, just like the "League of Legends" with q rapid shooting of the small cannon or opened a big barbarian king, can only be a real man for a few seconds.
The problems of "Slime" are similar, the alien environment shaping within the opening 30 minutes, the puzzle mechanism display, the material collection, the equipment enhancement system and the story suspense are amazing, but who would have thought that these are already the most highlights of the whole game, and then the repeated game experience and lack of content make my mood when playing gradually fall from high to bottom.
Of course, as a small volume of experimental nature, for the studio, "Slime" should be a good job of training the team and preparing for the transformation of larger projects in the future, but for fans like me, there is a huge gap between such content and previous expectations, and I hope that interested players will experience it cautiously, not to mention that it has not yet Chinese.
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