WHEN_ON_HIGH_THE_HEAVEN_HAD_NOT_BEEN_NAMED, reads the remote terminal prompt, beamed to you across the wastes of a forgotten earth. These radio waves, and the data carrying your scout bot's readings, struggle to reach you intact, hampered by signal interference and the irreproducible context of these ruins. Like uncovering the mounds and errata of ancient Sumeria, this process of scouring and understanding takes time and rigor—how much can you really glean or comprehend from this dustbin, flooded and mangled as it is? But a new history beckons deep within the underworld, where Tiamat again surfaces from Abzu and the answer to old apocalyptic riddles presents itself. The post-mortem of lost millennia can finally begin. You're just the first observer.
I've yet to try June Flower's previous games, exercises in minimalism and conjuration dabbling in archaeology and the unknown. Their pixel art and music, both just as mystifying yet inviting, got me interested while scanning Twitter for Itch.io shareware found off the beaten paths. (Plus Thyme's short blurb!) June describes Gunkprotocol as a way to learn coding with Godot, an experience they found vexing and of questionable utility in the end. Even if this didn't work out as hoped, the game itself confidently about the author's artistry and ability to coax fascinating stories from so little. What I've seen of Remnants and Washout Spire, two longer and more ambitious releases, still doesn't seem nearly this economic in size and design. This 15-minute romp through a walled-off world lasts much longer in the back of my mind than expected, and for only good reasons. Going from Samorost to this, a 20-year gap between either program, showed me how far the quote-unquote "walking sim" has evolved without losing sight of minimalism and prodding the imagination.
All you're obligated to do in Gunkprotocol is wander around, exploring and piecing together a simple data transaction between "blobot" and you, a far-off observer investigating these caves. Exactly what happened to this forsaken city, sitting abandoned among gardens and tunnels, becomes clear at the end in a cute moment of meta-fiction. As you sink into the pulsating trip-hop reverberations, June's inimitable pixelated artwork conveys the grit, murkiness, and alien atmosphere of each environment. Much of the visual style harkens back to eye-searing, captivating limited-palette graphics found in ZX Spectrum or Amstrad CPC games from the '80s like Go to Hell. (Given the use of Manic Miner-like room names in Remnants, I suspect this resemblance has precedent.) We're tantalized both by buried wonders and fear of what lies around the corner, though the only horrors here are existential. There's no one down in these depths left to greet us, just crusty legends and vestiges of the almighty.
What closure players get at the end of this very short explore-a-thon also dodges explication, almost like any "lore" here has become garbled beyond recognition. Is this all the work of divine intervention sometime in our near-future, or the result of an AI lashing out at human hubris? Can new life and new memories bubble into being from these grounds, or is our protagonist's belated tour merely an appraisal of what was and no longer can be? Gunkprotocol maybe spends more effort on obfuscation than I'd like, but I won't doubt it succeeds at that. It's a bit repetitive to actually play through due to non-persistent keyboard inputs, meaning you'll have to tap the cursor keys a lot to navigate around the map. Still, something this intriguing in bite-sized form has me excited to try June's other works, let alone what they've got in mind next. Entrancing presentation and a thought-provoking final report, tucked away in a password-locked .zip archive outside the game, has me sated and ready for more.
I've yet to try June Flower's previous games, exercises in minimalism and conjuration dabbling in archaeology and the unknown. Their pixel art and music, both just as mystifying yet inviting, got me interested while scanning Twitter for Itch.io shareware found off the beaten paths. (Plus Thyme's short blurb!) June describes Gunkprotocol as a way to learn coding with Godot, an experience they found vexing and of questionable utility in the end. Even if this didn't work out as hoped, the game itself confidently about the author's artistry and ability to coax fascinating stories from so little. What I've seen of Remnants and Washout Spire, two longer and more ambitious releases, still doesn't seem nearly this economic in size and design. This 15-minute romp through a walled-off world lasts much longer in the back of my mind than expected, and for only good reasons. Going from Samorost to this, a 20-year gap between either program, showed me how far the quote-unquote "walking sim" has evolved without losing sight of minimalism and prodding the imagination.
All you're obligated to do in Gunkprotocol is wander around, exploring and piecing together a simple data transaction between "blobot" and you, a far-off observer investigating these caves. Exactly what happened to this forsaken city, sitting abandoned among gardens and tunnels, becomes clear at the end in a cute moment of meta-fiction. As you sink into the pulsating trip-hop reverberations, June's inimitable pixelated artwork conveys the grit, murkiness, and alien atmosphere of each environment. Much of the visual style harkens back to eye-searing, captivating limited-palette graphics found in ZX Spectrum or Amstrad CPC games from the '80s like Go to Hell. (Given the use of Manic Miner-like room names in Remnants, I suspect this resemblance has precedent.) We're tantalized both by buried wonders and fear of what lies around the corner, though the only horrors here are existential. There's no one down in these depths left to greet us, just crusty legends and vestiges of the almighty.
What closure players get at the end of this very short explore-a-thon also dodges explication, almost like any "lore" here has become garbled beyond recognition. Is this all the work of divine intervention sometime in our near-future, or the result of an AI lashing out at human hubris? Can new life and new memories bubble into being from these grounds, or is our protagonist's belated tour merely an appraisal of what was and no longer can be? Gunkprotocol maybe spends more effort on obfuscation than I'd like, but I won't doubt it succeeds at that. It's a bit repetitive to actually play through due to non-persistent keyboard inputs, meaning you'll have to tap the cursor keys a lot to navigate around the map. Still, something this intriguing in bite-sized form has me excited to try June's other works, let alone what they've got in mind next. Entrancing presentation and a thought-provoking final report, tucked away in a password-locked .zip archive outside the game, has me sated and ready for more.