Refunct Review

Review Refunct | Dominique Grieshofer brings Refunct to the Xbox One, a short experience about restoring the game world. LifeisXbox checked it out for you.

Do whales, dolphins, jellyfish and elephants jump out of the water if I press that red button?

THE GOOD

  • It’s an original idea and the lack of tutorials and things like time pressure, enemies and even damage or death makes it a relaxing experience.
  • It’s nice having to figure things out the first couple of minutes or so as the game has no tutorials or instructions. You just have to start moving and see what happens.
  • The visuals are ok. The water looks kind of cool, and there’s a day-night cycle that is rather well done for such a budget title.
No… the only thing that jumps out of the water is that bright red box…

 MIXED FEELINGS

  • Wall jumping and slides sound great, but they are not exactly the best part of the game. I feel that some changing in wall bounces and adding wall running would make this more suited for a speedrunning experience.
  • While the no pressure environment is nice, I did feel a lack of purpose. When I reached 99% completed I didn’t know what else to do or even why I should bother. Ultimately it turned out I had to step on one more tower I skipped, and it’s now at 100% completed.
Seriously.. try coming up with funny or useful stuff with images like this!

 THE BAD

  • Calling it short was not false advertisement. Expect to spend half an hour on this, maybe an hour, but that’s probably pushing it.
  • The game isn’t just short, it also lacks replay value. It would have been better if you had something interesting to do or speed run challenges for instance. Granted there is one thing the game lets you do, but that only amused me for about a minute.

Score: 52% | Refunct is incredibly cheap but also extremely short. The brief gameplay it offers is relaxing and can be enjoyable for half an hour as long as you don’t expect any real action or advanced mechanics.

Cool level design, that’s for sure! Anyway, writing this review took longer than actually playing it.