Grunn is a completely normal gardening game in which you trim hedges, water the plants, and cut back the overgrown grass. There’s definitely nothing else more sinister clawing at the periphery. Nope. Definitely not.
That’s honestly about as much as I’m really willing to say about Grunn to anyone who’s even remotely interested in playing it, since this is a game that’s best experienced with as little foreknowledge as possible.
If your interest is piqued, I would ask you to stop reading here and come back later. If not? Well, I can’t stop you doing what you like.
Okay, so remember how I said Grunn was a very normal gardening game? That might have been a teensy little fibette. In the same way that Dredge managed to combine putting around in a wee fishing boat with eldritch scares, Grunn is a potent mix of mundane gardening sim and Germanic horror. It is absolutely fantastic.
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Grunn begins with you hopping off the bus to take a gardening job in the middle of the Dutch countryside. It’s Saturday, and you have until Monday to ensure the garden is in pristine condition before you catch the bus home.
There’s a wonderfully relaxing quality to simply getting on with the gardening in Grunn. The shears make a delightfully satisfying sound as they glide through grass, and watering plants results in an explosion of colour as flowers burst to life with a playful pop.
It soon becomes apparent, however, that there’s more going on. Strange creatures lurk just beyond the corner of your eye, and a note warns you not to wander around after dark.
Grunn is actually a lot like Deathloop or The Outer Wilds in that the entire game operates around a very precise time loop. The key to unlocking each of the game’s 11 endings is based entirely on working out where you need to be when, and what items you need to have on you to avoid dying a horrible death.
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Approach the local dog with a bone to placate him, for example, and you’ll be mauled. No open coffin for you. Enter the mysterious door that appeared out of nowhere on the Sunday, and you might just get a fright that sends you back to the beginning again.
With every playthrough of Grunn you’ll learn a little bit more about the world and how it all fits together. It’s a delightfully strange puzzle box held together by a dreamlike logic full of bizarre encounters and portals to entirely new areas.
You’ll find clues in the form of polaroids, which typically tell you where you need to go with a certain item and when. There’s a lot less detective work to be done here than in, say, The Outer Wilds, but Grunn works best when it’s gently guiding you through its unsettling world. I should also note all of the polaroids in the world won’t help you work out some of the game’s more esoteric puzzles and endings.
Grunn really is one of the best surprises of this year. It’s a testament, I think, to both the central mystery of Grunn and its genuinely brilliantly designed simulated gardening, that a video game about trimming the same three hedges over and over again could be this good.
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Pros: Excellent gardening mechanics, meticulously designed world, deeply atmospheric
Cons: May be a little too weird for some
For fans of: The Outer Wilds, Deathloop
9/10: Exceptional
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Grunn is available now for PC (version tested). A review code was provided by the publisher. Read a guide to our review scores here.
Topics: Indie Games, Reviews