Grunn is a completely regular gardening simulator where you complete a series of tasks and absolutely nothing weird happens.

The game is a fantastic look into Dutch groundskeeping, featuring a wide selection of tools that allow completion of yard work in different ways, giving players the opportunity to relax while watering the plants, trimming the hedges, and cutting overgrown grass.

And that’s about it, there’s not much else to the game, nothing at all…

Grunn
Developer: Sokpop Collective, Tom van den Boogaart
Publisher: Sokpop Collective
Platforms: Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)
Release Date: October 4, 2024
Players: 1
Price: $12.99

Alright, maybe there are some weird things happening in the game. Grunn is a horror adventure game that weaponizes the mundane and unfamiliar against you, creating a surreal atmosphere filled with mysteries and oddities.

The game takes place over the weekend, giving you a limited amount of time to finish your yard work, but things aren’t so simple, as the missing groundskeeper has misplaced his tools and all sorts of supernatural creatures and roadblocks stand on your way.

During the weekend your actions will heavily alter the ending you’ll get, be it a premature death on the same day you arrived or real closure on monday morning. Simply having a specific item in your inventory might completely change how the story plays out, and there’s a good amount of endings to find.

Grunn constantly injects the player with the feeling that something is wrong, but rarely provides answers on what that might be. The game’s atmosphere can feel completely alien at times, despite most of its runtime taking place in very mundane locations.

The supernatural events you encounter range from minor things, like doors showing up in places they weren’t in before, to bigger threats like vengeful ghosts and an encroaching darkness that doesn’t allow anyone to roam around after midnight.

Grunn‘s atmosphere is very charming, as it manages to mix an almost comical weirdness with scary moments without losing its unique tone. Sometimes you’ll be drowned by a vengeful spirit, while at other times you’ll go on a picnic and die for no good reason, it’s all incredibly weird.

Grunn can be completed in less than ten minutes, but a real playthrough takes around three hours, as the player won’t exactly know what to do or how to solve the game’s mysteries early on. There is a fair amount of trial and error, as well as a few deaths that come out of nowhere to keep the player on edge.

Every death starts a new loop, and the only meta progression present in the game comes in the form of polaroids, which represent locations, items, and endings you’ve encountered. The polaroids help keep track of every mystery solved so far, usually being used as a trail of breadcrumbs towards the next point of progression, as well as a way to organize your thoughts.

Most players that finish Grunn will know the game inside and out, as figuring out certain triggers and event timings is a core part of the experience. The short runtime helps keep the game fresh and stops its repetition from being grating, but the game does have a few flaws here and there.

Grunn is pretty exciting to play early on, but the experience slows down about halfway through. A few polaroids can feel like dead-ends, especially if you find them after having already encountered the object they represent, so it can be difficult to find the next route for progression.

It’s hard to elaborate on some of these things without spoiling the experience, but a few of the game’s endings can be very obscure to get, and it becomes a bit of a chore to figure out what objects might make a difference in the end.

The route to getting the four main work tools will be burned into every player’s mind after having to loop so many times, and the requirements to open up some paths sort of kills the fun experimentation the game had early on. There are a few shortcuts that make repeat playthroughs easier, but it would be nice for some progression to be actually permanent.

Overall, Grunn is a charming horror game with an incredibly unique aesthetic. The looping system is tight enough that most of its issues aren’t deal-breakers, and the short runtime helps sweeten the repetition.

The game is pretty light as far as horror goes, featuring a few jumpscares that are mostly meant to weird you out more than anything else. The cartoonish aesthetic the game goes with definitely softens the blow on these moments as well, so it’s a fun experience for those who don’t want something too horrific.

Grunn is fully committed to being a surreal experience, but doesn’t go too far to the point where it becomes nonsense, instead striking a good balance between the mundane and weird. It deserves its place as one of the most charming horror titles released this year, and is more than worth playing if you enjoy feeling isolated, uncomfortable, and Dutch.

Grunn was reviewed on Microsoft Windows using a game code provided by Sokpop Collective. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Grunn is available on Microsoft Windows (through Steam).