Mundaun is an unusual video game made of a blend of pastoral alpine charm, dark investigations, and a touch of horror fantasy. The storyline plays on the effects of superstitions born of the tales of the night, day-time encounters with secretive neighbours, and unholy arrangements with the Devil. The game has the look and feel of a monochrome flip-book made of chalk sketches, and an aesthetic that reminded me of the work of Edvard Munch.
The rare characters in the game are crude in the way that people with profoundly set habits can be. Their personalities are extensions of their roles in the village, and they are motivated by simple emotions and traits like vengefulness, cowardice, vanity, and the quiet desperation that comes with not letting go of the past.
Their character development is thin, but that’s done deliberately. They are pantomime versions of mid-century rural inhabitants in the Swiss Alps. The fact that the game’s story is entirely voiced in the Romansh language adds charm and increases the immersion in the game as a first time visitor in these landscapes.
You are often moving with only a lantern, a brittle wooden fork for defence, feeling tragically exposed to straw men of the night, the swarms of bees and other perils of the game. Often glancing at the top of the mountain, holding the secret of the valley’s many curses.
This is an interesting and daring, albeit short, piece art in a video game form by Michel Ziegler. One I’d recommend.