I invested most of my February and March playing two games that spent a lot of time telling me exactly where to go next. One made use of extensive quest markers, map location icons and signposts, and the other employed a main character that talked you through every problem and solution in the game. Both left me feeling largely overwhelmed by a system of guidance that never appeared to trust me, the player, to discover things for myself.
Tunic by Andrew Shouldice and published by Finji, attempts to do away with excessive guidance to afford the player opportunities for in-game discovery and satisfying ah-ha moments. That’s not to say that Tunic doesn’t provide plenty of clues or hints, but I’ll get into that in a bit because the way it does is very satisfying, clever and reminiscent of 8-bit era games. But first I want to touch on something that intersects that last fact. Tunic is very assuredly influenced by the Zelda franchise, and it borrows mechanics that can be found in most Zelda games, from the original on NES to A Link to the Past on SNES, and so on. However, where other Zelda-likes tend to be modeled after A Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time, Tunic borrows a core philosophy from the original, and that is an open landscape filled with secrets, secret passages and alternatives to the obvious core game path. Every nook and cranny of Tunic’s world is filled with secret shortcuts, or items that can help you solve your next obstacle, be that obstacle object or enemy. During an initial playthrough you might find yourself sticking to the most obvious path, completing tasks in an order that Shouldice has encouraged through excellent level design that renders certain paths obvious while hiding others behind canted angles or obfuscating objects.
In this way Tunic is perhaps the most like Breath of the Wild because that game too contains a somewhat defined path to follow, but lets you discover alternative routes if you are so inclined to search for them. However, Tunic brings something unique to the table in that it takes the somewhat loose ambiguity of BotW and amplifies it by turning every bit of actual information provided in game into a puzzle to be solved. You are left to your own devices, to ponder where you can find a weapon, where you can locate a key that you need for a locked door not far from where you wake up, and what to do with that odd tooth that you found in a chest. Tunic’s solution to these quandaries is a mix of undecipherable (or is it?) words on signposts and found on scraps of paper littered throughout the world. Those scraps of paper assemble into a manual, from cover to back, with more unfamiliar language and the occasional recognizable bit of text. This text is paired with various images. Early in the game it’s the images that tell you more about your world around you than any of the text manages to convey.
To what end, you ask? Tunic is an attempt to reinvigorate our love of game manuals, handwritten notes and puzzles that require a pen and a piece of paper. Thus, it incorporates its game manual into its world as a set of both instructions and puzzles to solve. Sometimes you discover something only to confirm it from a manual page you find later in the game. Sometimes you find yourself up against a dead end and discover a solution on one of the pages. Or maybe you just find out what to do with that tooth you found. One time I discovered a certain action which could only be performed at a specific object because a little drawing of that first object was juxtaposed with another object that I already knew how to use. Another time I discovered a brand-new attack simply because someone had scribbled a note at the back of the manual.
Ultimately Tunic is an attempt to strip away a lot of the prescriptive elements of game design to leave a mix of intuitive level design and written puzzles, ciphers and clues that encourages experimentation, discovery, and even the externalization of puzzle elements to pen and paper solutions. The question is, how well has that worked out. I think I found my answer via Xbox achievements.
I don’t usually pay much attention to achievements. However, because I was having a good time playing Tunic and was close to completing 100% of the achievements, I decided to poke around in the list and read some of them. This led to an interesting discovery. Of the people who started Tunic 83.52% found the stick, the game’s starting weapon. 55.88% died at least once, which means there was a good percentage of people who picked up the stick and then quickly decided “this game isn’t for me”. 42.38% discover the sword. 33.27% completed the first major task of the game, a task that requires killing the first official boss of the game, albeit one that is just a larger version of enemies encountered so far.
Here’s where it starts to get really telling.
Only 14.52% discovered how to upgrade the hero’s basic stats. 10.43% completed the game’s second major task of the game. There is a 22.84% drop off in players between the first and second task. There’s a pretty clear reason and it's this guy:
](https://img-grouvee-com.b-cdn.net/upload/cache/06/fb/06fb64dd42aca54f12f86932a971614d.jpg)
This is the game’s first unique boss and the sudden jump in difficulty is significant. I’ll point out the note in the game’s manual, which you can see in the image above: "Blocks the way to the belltower, Will kill you." They are not kidding. During your first fight this thing stomps you good. And there’s no going forward without defeating it. You can go back and hunt for any missed upgrade items (there is a good chance most people miss some initially), but if you can’t perfect the timing needed to beat this boss, you’re probably going to initially feel discouraged, and are one of the 22.84% that drop off at this point. And if you are one of the 27.86% that found the sword but never learned how to upgrade your equipment, you’re in even worse trouble.
What does this say about Tunic, a game that I thoroughly adore after completing it twice over the course of a single week? I think anyone’s first impulse is likely to say Tunic is too hard. It’s a fair conclusion to make because the game does see a significant initial drop off. However, let’s establish a few reasons other than difficulty for that drop off. If 83.52% of people stuck with the game long enough to find the stick, 16.48% didn’t. So just a little above 15% of people booted Tunic up and possibly didn’t enjoy the art direction, the controls, or some other non-combat element and quit within the first 3-6 minutes of the game. Given only 42.54% stick around to find the sword, another chunk of people probably come to some conclusion about the art style, movement or general feel of the game and quit before ever finding that sword. And let’s not forget Tunic is part of Game Pass, so there will be a lot of people who drop off between starting the game and finding the sword simply because they only logged in to engage their curiosity about a free game.
However, it’s probably fair to say some people get lost or find combat with the stick too difficult. By the time we get to that good old boss pictured above, it’s probably guaranteed that a bunch of people fall off because of difficulty. As the game goes on, steadily more players drop off and I can only conclude that people are either felled by the increasing difficulty of the bosses, or because they didn’t pick up on the fact that the manual was itself a problem to be solved, leaving them clueless about the game’s many mysteries. The fact that only 15.02% of players discover how to upgrade their stats means that many people don’t figure out the manual, so to speak.
Ay this point, do we conclude that Tunic is too hard? Perhaps. But it’s considerably less difficult than many Soulsborne games, and I’d argue it’s no more mechanically difficult than something like Death’s Door. I think the problem that Tunic presents is one of unfamiliar ambiguity. Many games preen us to expect a guided experience with a certain amount of power fantasy attached. Think Assassin’s Creed games, or any of Sony’s narrative driven games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Marvel’s Spider-Man or God of War. They can be hard if set to a difficulty high enough, but they are largely games with plenty of guidance that turn your starter character into an absolute powerhouse by end game. And then you have Soulsborne games wherein getting better usually means facing a challenge multiple times and improving your approach. Perhaps it means finding items, or devising a build that gives you an edge, but largely it’s about perfecting your personal skills fighting difficult bosses. Maybe it means learning how to dodge, or to parry at the right moment. Maybe it means applying fire to your blade to add DoTs to your attack.
For the most part Tunic adheres to the latter. it’s a game in which a lone enemy can skewer you at the wrong time, or a boss can one shot you if you dodge at the wrong time. But Tunic has simplified upgrade items that can increase your attack, HP, stamina and so on so that you have more of a chance against difficult enemies. If you find those items, it’s a bit like you find yourself halfway between a Soulsborne with multiple important stats to upgrade, and a God of War or HZD wherein you mostly just dump points into all your stats until you are tougher. Thus Tunic offers a slightly less micromanaged upgrade path that almost anyone can wrap their heads around without worrying about things like min-maxing. Lastly, tunic borrows a number of weapon items from a Link to the Past, granting you a decent toolset.
Therefore, you can get increase your chances of winning various fights like you can in a Soulsborne through improving your skills, and you can up your stats like you can in your average action-adventure game, and you get decked out like you can in your average Zelda game, why then do achievement percentages for main game events drop off so drastically with ever new boss you have to fight?
The answer to that is probably Tunic’s best feature: the manual and all it’s secrets. Which may also be its most frustrating feature if you do not enjoy solving cryptic puzzles. Going back to what I said at the beginning of this review, Tunic is a love letter to old NES games and thick manuals. However, that manual is not just an homage to 8-bit nostalgia, it’s a part of Tunic’s world, story and puzzles. To solve some of Tunic’s more difficult problems, you need to be willing to dig into that manual and solve its little riddles. Doing so becomes one of the game’s most satisfying aspects. Failing to can be one of its biggest obstacles.
SPOILER WARNING: from this point on I am going to delve into some spoiler territory. I’ll try to keep it light, and I’ll use tags while trying to keep the content logical for those who don’t want to click into the spoilers
The manual is designed as the first step in mitigating Tunic’s difficulty spikes. One of the things you might notice is that the manual provides a recommended level for attempting the Garden Knight boss. Although this is not the first point at which the manual will help you, it’s a major point at which it provides clear indication that you won’t fare well unless your paying attention to it. And the manual never specifically shows you the location of the boss and its level requirement on the same page, so it take a tiny bit of logic and deduction to place the two together and understand what the manual is trying to convey. But what the game is really trying to teach you is that if you hit a brick wall, turn to manual for ideas. You might see something you missed, or an answer might click because you developed new context since the last time you looked at the manual.
A second set of tools Tunic provides is something I posted a status update about:
Tunic has accessibility settings like Celeste. Not quite as many but there are two things you can adjust that can help you survive a tough fight:
- Unlimited stamina: toggling this will prevent you hero from running out of stamina, increasing the number of times you can dodge-roll, and thus increasing your supply of I-frames to avoid damage. Turning this on can give you a bit of an additional edge in a fight.
- No fail mode: toggling this turns off damage. It’s full god-mode, and Celeste had a similar toggle. If you simply can’t beat an exceptionally tough boss, or just can’t past a particularly annoying area stacked with enemies, like the Quarry if you visit it before you’ve upgraded your attack and defence high enough and don’t yet have the gas mask, you can turn this mode on to help you survive so you can continue to enjoy the game. Turn it on temporarily for an assist, or permanently if you just want to enjoy Tunic purely for its exploration and discovery.
If you’re having a tough time but enjoy the world of Tunic don’t give up yet, there are options to help see you through.
While Tunic can be tough, it includes measures to ensure that everyone, whether they enjoy tough battles, or just want to play Tunic for its exploration and discovery, can enjoy themselves. Those who are interested in the latter are in for a treat because there are no menu options to simplify Tunic’s various puzzles. You are going to need to sit down and read that manual, pull out a pen and piece of paper, or your phone note app, and start jotting things down. You’re going to need to decipher some of the text and determine what various images in the manual truly mean. If you like that sort of thing, Tunic is going to be glorious, especially if you’d prefer that over the alternative, fighting.
Why?
SPOILER WARNING: Ok, we are stopping here again because I’m about to reveal another spoiler and this is a big one. It might be something that you want to experience for yourself. You might not want this spoiled for you. If you are already intrigued by anything I wrote above, you might want to turn back now and just find out what happens in the last third of the game.
But if you’re still unsure, and you want to know why I think Tunic is 2022’s first brilliant game (Elden Ring folks, don’t @ me), keep reading.
Despite the various boss fights, the final fight of the game can be experienced in different ways. As I mentioned above, a lot of Tunic feels and plays like a Soulsborne. Tough bosses, instant deaths, bonfires and respawning enemies. And it can be experienced entirely as a Soulsborne if you’re not particularly interested in solving all of Tunic’s puzzles, including those hidden in the manual. You can kill the main bosses, collect the items you need, and face the final enemy all on the terms of a Soulsborne. The final boss, The Heir won’t disappoint, I can promise you that. It’s a grueling fight that requires twitch reflexes and a decent amount of special awareness and strategy. It’s a rewarding fight because nothing in the game compares.
But it’s not the only way to go. For those that don’t care for boss fights, but love a fantastic puzzle, you can explore, discover and solve your way to an ending. There is a reward for finding every page, which takes a certain amount of clever deciphering and discovery, and that reward is an alternative path to an end. In fact, the true ending of the game requires no final clash of swords. The final act of the hero is to share the knowledge they have gathered with the final boss, thus freeing both from an eternal and futile loop.
However, there is no toggle to help overcome the challenge presented by the manual, the collection of its pages, and its many puzzles. Tunic may give us all a means to withstand its difficult combat, but we are left to solve the problem of the manual on our own. And what if we can’t? What if I can’t reach the glorious moment I reference above when everything in the manual falls into place? Well, that’s when the manual becomes the obstacle that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. For those who struggle with the puzzle aspect of the manual, it might be the final roadblock that forces them to drop the game. But there is an alternative, if we accept the manual’s final lesson: one person alone may not be able to answer every riddle, and we may have to turn to others for help. That collected minds can solve the riddles presented, through the sharing of assembled knowledge. Tunic almost necessitates a turn to others for the help we need. But what makes this different from any other game with online communities sharing walk-throughs? The answer to that is that the act of building upon existing knowledge through the discovery of new knowledge is a central theme of the game.
Tunic’s brilliance is in its thematic treatment of the manual as a repository of knowledge, something that is both of and external to the world of our Fox hero. The manual is our guide to success, but also the hero’s final weapon, one much stronger than the sword. The act of collecting information and then sharing it becomes the single most important act of the game, and articulates Tunic’s fundamental central tenant, that the sharing of knowledge, knowledge built over time and through concerted effort, is the key to salvation. But more importantly it is through community between players, as mirrored by the hero and the Heir, that we will both enjoy and overcome the many obstacles that Tunic offers us.
The manual and its scattered existence signify both existing and yet to be discovered knowledge. Its pages are partially translated but other information still needs to be discovered. The act of discovery in the game mirrors the process of finding and assembling the pages. The act of searching for knowledge among the community mirrors the process of accessing existing translated information in the manual. A parallel exists where what we do in the game mirrors what we do outside of it, all revolving around the discovery and sharing of information. Tunic is itself about how information is most powerful when made whole and shared with each other, and thus why a complete manual is the Fox’s greatest asset.
Tunic is a beautiful game about adventure, adversity, discovery and the power of shared and combined knowledge. It’s about the practices we keep when playing games, the ways we deal with various challenges, and the importance that community has to gamers who rely on each other for the knowledge that is required to overcome gaming challenges. It’s also a meditation on the idea of hero, the endless cycle of the hero’s quest, and what it means to succeed. Do we win because we beat the difficult boss, or do we win because we experience something to it’s fullest? Tunic offers paths to both answers, and clearly has a few things to say about those paths along the way, but ultimately leaves us to decide if winning is the challenges we overcome, or the community we develop.
