Mundaun

Set in the Swiss Alps, Mundaun is an effective first-person horror game that boasts a unique visual style and a strong sense of mood and atmosphere. Even though it doesn’t exactly stick the landing, it still provides a unique and memorable experience.

When the game starts, a young man named Curdin is on his way to the mountains of Mundaun in Switzerland. He has received a letter from the local priest, Father Jeremiah, informing him that his grandfather has died in a fire, but that there was no need for Curdin to come for the funeral. Sensing something is amiss, to Mundaun Curdin goes.

One of the first lines of dialogue in Mundaun is about the uniqueness of the setting. It builds the valley of Mundaun as this peculiar, secluded place that seems to exist isolated from the rest of the world: “I forgot how the fog tends to separate this world from the one below,” Curdin says. The protagonist is framing his home as this lonely landscape that seems to operate in a different plane of existence: for him, there’s modern society, where reason rules, and there’s Mundaun, where fantastical things are possible.

Mundaun’s unique visual style contributes to this feeling of otherness, as it’s made to look as if the landscape and characters were drawn with a pencil. This “graphite aesthetic” paints the world in a worn-out hue that makes everything look old and degraded: the town, the characters, the buildings, they all seem sad, melancholic, deprived of energy. The characters themselves appear to be perpetually locked in an expression that looks the antithesis of a smile: these are broken people who would not live happy lives even if they were not being haunted by the devil.

For, as soon as he arrives at his grandfather’s burned-up barn, Curdin spots a painting standing suspiciously next to the charred ruins and meets the devil. When he examines the painting, Curdin is sucked inside and sees a vision of a strange old man that marks his hand, making it decay while the barn burns up. This figure operates in the same business as the devil: it makes deals to upend the natural order of things while trying to unveil the worst that dwells inside every person.

Mundaun’s narrative is structured around memories. Paintings send Curdin back to the past, to witness his grandfather’s worst decision, but sometimes memories are relieved in a more subtle manner. Curdin may find a picture of when he pretended to drive his grandpa’s car and briefly recall the warmth of the moment, or visit his old hideout in the mountains, where we hear the faint, spectral echo of children’s voices playing. Mundaun’s story is made of memories: it’s about the ghosts of the past returning to haunt the present.

Some of these memories come in the form of visions, when Curdin witnesses the context of the hellish deal his grandfather made with the strange old man. This supernatural figure functions as the main antagonist in Mundaun, making deals and corrupting the land as if he were the Devil himself. The theme of the Faustian pact, then, is at the core of the narrative: Curdin is haunted by the sins of the fathers, having to pay the price of a deal he never signed up for but is still dutybound by blood to fulfill.

But what makes Mundaun’s narrative soar is the weirdness it shares with folktales, where the fantastic is the norm and a morbid sense of humor thrives. Dangerous monsters that look like people in carnival costumes roam the land at night, such as the creature made of hay that moves slowly and awkwardly, just like a person wearing a heavy coat of straws would. Curdin himself carries the head of a talking goat in his bag – a goat named Allegria, no less – and seems much unphased by the supernatural forces that surround him – as if he kind of expected them in Mundaun. Characters, of course, speak in Romansh, to add a local flavor that reinforces the importance – and otherness – of the setting.

The characters are mostly odd and peculiar, too. Flurina, for example, is an elusive little girl who comes and goes without warning, like a phantom. One moment, she’s riding shotgun in Curdin’s car, and then, after a brief vision, she’s simply gone without explanation. Always silent, she’s enveloped in a ghostly aura that the people of Mundaun seem to just accept. As a character describes her, “She is a free spirit. Here today, gone tomorrow.”

Despite their funny appearance, the “haymen” that lurk around Mundaun at night can hit Curdin from a distance and kill him – and we don’t even know exactly how. When they spot the protagonist, these beings will stretch out their arms and a few seconds later Curdin will just scream in pain as the screen fills with straws, which horribly seem to come from the protagonist’s own body.

These pagan creatures clash with Christianity, which should rule the rural environment of Mundaun: one of the few buildings we come across is a church, after all, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s the first one to be attacked when Curdin is there. The character of the priest, meanwhile, seems always afraid, and rightly so: he has a gentle demeanor that makes him look feeble in that harsh and dangerous environment.

To defend ourselves, since we have just a very limited number of flimsy pitchforks at our disposal – we poke a hayman three times and they break –, we are encouraged to avoid the monsters as much as possible: this is a horror game with almost no focus on action. There’s barely any stealth mechanics at play either, so we must just run away and avoid being in the creature’s supposed line of vision. The simplicity works in Mundaun’s favor, however, as it puts the spotlight on the thing it does best: the strange, off-putting atmosphere.

The sound design is crucial in this regard. Music is sparse so we can notice better the noises of the landscape: we hear the ever-present wind, the sound of weathered doors, and of our battered footsteps. When music appears, then, its effect becomes more pronounced: even the tune that plays when we save the game contributes to the unease, as its grave, foreboding sound imparts the notion of impending doom.

The game’s focus is on exploration with the occasional puzzle-solving. There are three big areas filled with locked doors and hidden caves. We can move freely, looking for the keys and other important items needed to progress in the story. And there’s some leeway for exploration: there are optional caves to find, for example, that lead Curdin to specific memories or visions.

The weird quality that permeates the story applies to the puzzles and combat as well. Curdin’s journal is off-putting with its weird drawings and notations, for instance, while some of the items acquired – like a pipe – make for unexpected weapons during some encounters. Even collectibles have strange requirements: each time we want to increase Curdin’s resistance to fear, we must drink a cup of coffee, but it’s not that simple. First, we must find a bag of coffee and then fetch water to put on a pan, a piece of wood to light on fire with a matchstick, use an oven to make the coffee, and then finally fill a cup and drink it (most of these things are near each other, so it’s more of a quirky thing than a hassle). Even some design choices are unusual, such as allowing us to almost maximize the upgrade for a weapon that we will only find much later in the game.

Mundaun’s main weakness comes in its three endings, which could have been more developed. They generally revolve around the idea that changing the past is in itself a pact (an unnatural action that changes a fixed outcome). The problem is that characters only talk about this subject once – in the form of a generic warning that comes from the most suspect character of all, no less –, which means the final events can end up feeling unearned or random.  Discussions about this theme, then, were necessary to better connect the last events to the choices that lead directly to them.

Nonetheless, despite its somewhat disappointing ending, Mundaun is still a very effective horror game that excels when it comes to establishing a strange atmosphere of unease while presenting a memorable setting and a fascinating set of characters.

September 09, 2023.