Grunn is a 2024 gardening-themed simulation video game with horror elements developed and published by Sokpop Collective. In the game, the player controls a character who travels by bus to a Dutch village, where they are tasked with maintaining a garden while uncovering hidden mysteries. The game received praise from critics for its contrast between the appearance of a casual gardening simulation and its underlying horror themes.
Grunn is played from a first-person perspective. The player assumes the role of a character who travels by bus to a village in the Netherlands to maintain the garden of an absent homeowner. Gardening tasks include clipping tall grass, digging up molehills, and watering plants.[2][3][4][5][6]
In addition to gardening, the player can explore the surrounding village,[3][6] which features non-Euclidean architecture.[6] Exploration reveals various puzzles and unsettling elements, such as corpses, ghosts that appear after sundown, and randomly spawning gnomes. Polaroid photographs scattered throughout the environment provide hints for puzzles and persist across multiple playthroughs.[2][3][4][5][6]
The game features eleven possible endings, most of which result in the player's death.[6]
Development
Grunn was developed by Tom van den Boogaart and published by Sokpop Collective. Its release date was announced in a trailer in September 2024, and the game was released on October 4, 2024.[7][8]
The game's hidden elements draw inspiration from European folklore. According to the developers, the marketing was designed to present the title primarily as a gardening game, downplaying its horror aspects.[2]
Rock, Paper, Shotgun described the demo as enjoyable,[10] and in a later review characterized the game's secrets as "dark and silly," comparing its mysterious gameplay to "napping and waking up to a thrashing anomaly in the space between the walls."[2]The Guardian praised the game's hidden elements,[3] while Eurogamer described its endings as "pleasantly skin-crawling."[4]Polygon noted that the game was difficult to categorize, highlighting its visuals and the amount of content relative to the village's small size.[5]GamesRadar+ considered the gardening mechanics a clever decoy, suggesting that the game's real focus lay in its secrets, which made players feel like "surreal detectives."[6]
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