The Gunk
The Gunk is an adventure game that stars Rani, one part of our duo of gritty space haulers, struggling to make a buck as they chance upon an untouched planet brimming with life. They came in search of valuable…
The Gunk is an adventure developed by Image & Form, released 16 December 2021 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC (Microsoft Windows). It currently starts at $3.75 at GOG. The main story takes about 5.5 hrs to finish.
What The Gunk is
The Gunk is an adventure game developed by Image & Form and released in 2021. It was published by Thunderful. It is available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC (Microsoft Windows). It runs on Unreal Engine 4.
The premise, in the publisher's words
The Gunk stars a duo of gritty space haulers, struggling to make a buck as they chance upon an untouched planet brimming with life. They’ve come to gather alien plants and other valuable resources, and it looks like they’ve hit the jackpot… However, as they start uncovering the dormant secrets of a shattered civilization, they realize that they must save the planet from the curse of a corruptive gunk parasite – while desperately keeping themselves from getting caught in a spiral of festering mistrust.
How it plays
It is played from a third person perspective. Its themes are action. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component. There are 17 achievements to unlock.
How it was received
The Gunk holds a critic score of 66 out of 100. That places it above 27% of the 7,525 rated adventure games in our database, which average 72. Games released in 2021 averaged 74, so it scored 8 points below the year average. Player ratings track closely with critics at 65, across 73 votes.
How long it takes, and what that costs
The main story runs about 5.5 hrs. Completing everything takes closer to 8 hrs, roughly 1.5 times the length of the critical path. At its current cheapest price of $3.75, that works out to about $0.68 per hour of the main story, or $0.47 per hour if you finish everything.
What you need to run it
The minimum specification calls for AMD FX-6100/Intel i3-3220 or equivalent, 4 GB RAM and AMD Radeon RX 580/NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660. At 4GB of RAM, it will run on essentially any working PC — that is below what a budget laptop ships with today. Install size is roughly 11GB. Both tiers are compared side by side on the requirements page, and you can check your own parts against them without installing anything.
What it costs, and where
The cheapest verified price right now is $3.75 at GOG, 85% below its usual price.
What it launched against
The Gunk launched on 16 December 2021, within three weeks of Halo Infinite, Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, Solar Ash and GTFO. All of them reviewed better. It arrived 1 year into the Xbox Series's life, so it was built for hardware developers already knew well.
Released around the same time: Halo Infinite, Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, Solar Ash, GTFO.
Cheats and codes
We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for The Gunk yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.
Official trailer
Sourced from the publisher’s YouTube channel. See all 2 videos →
Screenshots
All media
Quick answers
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