4/5 ★ – hcolesmith's review of Mundaun.

Games like this are a bit hard to review. Indie games at this scale can often have these flourishes of inspiration that make for interesting and captivating experience, but they can also be filled with a lack of polish or esoterica that weigh down or (in the worst case) overwhelm the experience. This is Mundaun. I returned from Switzerland for a vacation last week, and while I was staying in a remote mountain town I remembered I’d never finished Mundaun, despite buying it awhile back. I made plans to do so as soon as I returned, and so I gave myself a weekend project. Given that the development team here is Swiss, it feels very representative of a time and place, but it also bears all the hallmarks of a game at this scale—and while the esoteric moments don’t ever completely overwhelm the experience, if it weren’t for all the other elements firing on all cylinders it very well could have. In short, Mundaun has a terrific atmosphere and art design. I was frequently unnerved and captivated while playing. But about a quarter of the way through, I started to feel as though the critical path, though as straightforward as you’d anticipate in a modern horror game, still had quite a few levels of obscurity—primarily in how you deal with enemies, easily the worst part of Mundaun. On the whole, it’s simple enough to skip the combat but doing so is sometimes tedious and disappointing when the rest of the experience is so strong. This wasn’t the slam dunk I would have anticipated from a game included on so many best of the year lists, but nevertheless I did quite enjoy this for how culturally specific and cleverly unsettling it is.