Imagine how easy platformers would be if you could fly. You could make a beeline for the final castle and be back in the pleasant but security-lax Mushroom Kingdom by teatime.
Short of a future Mario microtransaction, though, it’s not to be: Munin’s raven protagonist has been stripped off her wings and transformed by that pesky Tom ‘Loki’ Hiddleston into a mortal girl. She’s consequently forced to traipse through the nine worlds of Yggdrasil using only her legs and the ability to rotate bits of the environment. Er, hang on – can all mortals do this?
Munin is the work of Gojira, who I can’t find any record of on famed existence confirmation tool Google, but whom publishers Daedalic will vouch for as a Portuguese game developer. It’s a 2D platformer which ties Nordic mythology to something a bit newer, but not especially new – physics-based puzzles.
As you can see, it’s really very 2D. Its environments are collage-like in the same way as those in A Valley Without Wind, or And Yet It Moves – which come to think of it, Munin also shares a gravity-flipping mechanic with.
This is different, though. In Munin, players will twist “portions” of the environment rather than the whole thing – nudging boulders, liquid and lava into new positions, creating bridges from pillars, and turning walls into floors to overcome obstacles.
77 levels later, we’ll reach Asgard and return Munin to the side of her master, Odin. And I’m sure we’ll be dead pleased with ourselves, because if there’s anything this genre offers it’s bite-sized self-satisfaction.
Munin will be sold digitally on PC and Mac sometime this Spring. Do you think you’ll give it a go?