Reviews
[Review] ‘Mundaun’ is an Effectively Haunting Folk Horror Game
One of the best things a piece of horror media can bring to the table is perspective. Even if you’re telling a tale as old as time, it can feel fresh when seen through a unique lens. Mundaun, the debut horror game from Hidden Fields, weaves a classic deal with the devil story and steeps it in the culture and folklore of the Swiss Alps. The unique atmosphere is further enhanced by an art style that’s like none I’ve seen in a video game, but the moment-to-moment gameplay can be occasionally hit or miss.
The story begins with you going back to the titular town after your grandfather dies in mysterious circumstances. As you begin to investigate his death, you find pieces of information about a fateful night your grandfather struck a deal that now haunts the town and its residents. Old secrets are revealed slowly as you speak with associates of your grandfather throughout the area, creating an interesting set of characters and painting the picture of life in this small part of the world. The story and atmosphere are the strongest part of the game and set the mood for a powerful experience.
Further enhancing the mood is a beautiful hand-penciled art style. All the textures for the models in the game were drawn by hand, giving the character’s world a scratchy, monochrome look. This technique enhances the folklore style of storytelling, making it feel like something out of a book of dark fairytales. Not everything about it is perfect though. The muted tones occasionally allow objects to get lost in the background, and models tend to pop in and out a little more than I’m used to in modern games. But for the most part, it looks great.
There are a lot of small things going on gameplay-wise in Mundaun, but for the most part, you’ll be exploring the town and solving various dream logic style puzzles. Sometimes they involve staring at a painting or catching an image in a reflection, but most of them see the player collecting strange objects, like a talking goat head, and figuring out what to do with them. This can lead to some unintuitive leaps in logic, but generally, the puzzles are satisfying.
Since there’s no in-game minimap that shows you exactly where to go, exploration is done through a combination of a map your character draws and in-world signage that guides the players with simple pictures pointing to locations. Many times the game finds clever ways to guide the player along the path without making it feel too gamey, but that means if you miss that clue you can find yourself wandering around trying to pick up the breadcrumb that will lead you to the next step. There were times where I felt like the game encouraged exploration without properly rewarding it. Oftentimes I would follow a clue to a dead end that just had a small spooky beat but no items, which led me to wasting time searching for more stuff that wasn’t there.
The other bits of gameplay in the game are sadly a bit less well-designed and fleshed out. You spend a surprising amount of time driving up and down the mountainside, which tends to feel a bit clunky but still doable. The game also features a few different creatures that you encounter, but it never feels quite as tense as it should. You do have limited methods to fight back, but many times the AI causes the monsters to walk past you when it seems they should have seen you, breaking the tension a bit. There was also a fear system that was in the game, but it was not ever really explained. I don’t believe I ever felt any sort of effect from it, despite having a page dedicated to the meter in my in-game journal. Personally, I feel like the game didn’t gain much from having some of these systems, and it might have been a bit smoother of an experience if it had focused solely on exploration and puzzle-solving.
There are a couple points in the game where you’re presented with a choice, but this system too seemed like a bit of an afterthought. I went back and did both the choices for the ending, and the difference was minimal, though one of them hid what I thought was one of the more interesting story beats in the game. While I did appreciate having the agency, it wasn’t very additive and didn’t make me want to go back and play through the whole game again right away to see what I missed.
Despite all the rough edges, I find myself thinking a lot about Mundaun after completing its approximately six-hour story. Even though it plays a lot of the same dream-logic, space-shifting tricks that became so popular in the wake of P.T., the world felt so fresh and unique. I wouldn’t say the game was ever very scary, but it felt haunting in a way the best folk horror can. Everything about Mundaun feels so authentic that it wouldn’t be surprising to me to hear this is a tale told to children in the Swiss Alps as a cautionary bedtime story.
Mundaun review code for PC provided by the publisher.
Mundaun is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Movies
‘Recluse’ Review – Harrowing Haunted House Horror With Lots Of Skeletons In Its Closet [Tribeca 2026]
A haunted house story is tense, terrifying storytelling when it’s properly executed. There’s been a growing tendency in horror to blend together harrowing haunted house stories with traumatic homecomings. A family member’s illness or death triggers a return to something dark that was intentionally left behind. Recluse hits all the tropes that one expects to find in this type of horror film, yet it manages to push this story in a daring, disturbing new direction that uses sound as a superpower.
It’s a unique lens to experience a familiar story about family secrets, generational trauma, unresolved grief, and the importance of not just legacy, but preservation. It’s a hell of a directorial debut from Henry Chaisson that’s guaranteed to get under the audience’s skin as they’re dragged through this painful, toxic tale.
Recluse is a gothic haunted house story where an isolated audio engineer, Joan (Sasha Frolova), returns to her family’s estate to check in on her father after he suffers a terrible accident. Joan suddenly discovers something much more sinister that paints her family’s tragedies in a very different light. Chaisson’s debut functions as a fascinating companion piece to this year’s undertone, which does a lot of the same things.
These two films make for a fascinating case of parallel thinking that tackles comparable subject matter through a similar lens, albeit in a bigger, less claustrophobic story in Recluse’s case. In fact, it’s the perfect horror film for anyone who was let down by undertone and didn’t feel like it brought enough to the table. It’s a considerably more conventional horror film, but this isn’t meant to denigrate its high quality. Recluse may hit some familiar notes, but it’s a scary, well-crafted haunted house horror story that goes for the jugular.
A gripping mystery that involves the tragic, unresolved circumstances that surround Joan’s mother teases a chilling connection to the recent horrors that have afflicted her father. Joan desperately tries to put these pieces together and give her family some sense of grander peace before she’s pulled under and becomes another victim of this festering curse that’s systematically worked its way through the Wyatt family. By doing so, Recluse digs into some deeper commentary on collective trauma, a very literal look at the “sins of the father” adage, and how one selfish decision can ripple through generations and fracture off into different dilemmas. By the end, Recluse has brilliantly flipped the powerful concept of legacy on its head by illustrating the horrors and sense of entitlement that can be born out of this idea.
A legacy is just another name for a curse under the right context.
”Listen” is a simple but powerful command from Joan’s father that she briefly obsesses over. In a way, it becomes Recluse’s grander mission statement, whether it’s in response to Joan listening to the people in her life, the signals that her body and mind are telling her, or the world’s greater whims. It’s important to reconnect with these grounding pillars, especially when it feels like control is slipping away.
Recluse excels with how audio and soundscapes can create entire universes that are full of rich details that transport individuals to these environments. There’s also a level of objectivity when it comes to audio recordings and the evergreen permanence that they’re able to provide. Joan’s career as an audio engineer makes sense for someone who wants to cling to hard evidence and proof of existence. It provides great insight into Joan without ever getting lost in contrived exposition.
Joan’s entire life is built around audio engineering, and so it makes sense that Recluse features excellent sound design that really goes above and beyond with its production elements. All of the sound design is expertly handled and turns the film into something special. These auditory elements intuitively keep the audience on edge so that they’re more susceptible to the actual scares that eventually strike. The smallest sound effect gets turned into a crushing, cacophonous assault. It’s a really effective way to build terror. Writer/Director Chaisson also handles the film’s music, which achieves a sublime, unnerving dissonance that further heightens the free-floating anxiety.
The story at the center of Recluse is slightly generic in some respects, but the film’s visual language and tone make it feel distinctly memorable. It also doesn’t hurt that the home that Joan returns to is basically an eerie art studio that’s full of contorted paintings. Recluse never struggles to generate mounting dread and terror that pump through every scene. Powerful, thoughtful cinematography consistently reinforces the film’s themes. Joan is constantly reflected in different surfaces or viewed through mirrors. She’s also often confined to tight, constricting framing that all speaks to her refracted identity during this moment of loss and her attempts to regain agency and control by making sense of something that’s seemingly unexplainable.
Recluse is full of truly disturbing visuals that make it seem like Joan is lost in a dream that turns out to be an extended nightmare. It’s a surreal journey reminiscent of invasive psychological horror like Silent Hill, with a touch of Sinister and Hereditary thrown in for good measure. There are so many individual frames that could endlessly fuel urban legends and creepypastas.
It does a great job with how it presents Joan’s fragile state of mind, where chilling flashes of the past sneak up on her and unresolved trauma manifests into unsettling imagery. There are endless shots that are obscured in darkness, or shadow is creeping in from the corners of frames like a suffocating force of nature. It’s very rare that a scene is fully lit. It leads to a very lonely, isolating atmosphere that’s easy to get lost in.
Chaisson’s debut stands out from the many other high-minded haunted house horror films without succumbing to the same pretensions that often drag down these stories. It’s a grief-stricken character study that’s full of upsetting visuals that scratch at something visceral and raw. The horror elements connect, and the answers to its grander mystery provide an appropriate and believable sense of closure. Those who are looking for an atmospheric horror film that isn’t afraid to be different while still channeling something real will appreciate Recluse.
Recluse made its world premiere at Tribeca; release info TBD.
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