Tunic (2022)

This title is an indie action-adventure game where you take control of a small, anthropomorphic fox who finds themselves in a vast and mysterious world filled with hidden secrets, dangerous enemies, and intricate puzzles. The game draws clear inspiration from classic adventure games, particularly The Legend of Zelda, blending exploration, combat, and discovery into a cohesive and rewarding experience. From the moment you step into the world of Tunic, there is a sense of curiosity and wonder, encouraging you to explore every nook and cranny.

Exploration is central to the experience, with the game offering a non-linear world where secrets are tucked away in obscure corners. You collect pages of an in-game manual, written in a cryptic language, that provide subtle hints, maps, and guidance on how to progress. This system reinforces the feeling of discovery and rewards careful observation, creating an experience that is both challenging and deeply satisfying. Every encounter, puzzle, and hidden item feels meaningful, giving players a strong incentive to thoroughly investigate their surroundings.

Combat is deliberately paced and strategic, relying on a mix of attacks, magic, and dodging. The game features a stamina system, which forces you to plan their actions carefully, and respawning enemies that maintain a sense of tension throughout the journey. Boss battles are memorable and often require learning patterns and timing, making victories feel earned. For people seeking a more accessible experience, the game includes a "No Fail Mode," allowing for exploration without the pressure of punishing combat.

The visual design of Tunic is striking, with a soft, watercolor-inspired aesthetic that evokes both nostalgia and a sense of wonder. The world feels alive through its careful attention to detail, vibrant colors, and charming environmental design. The soundtrack enhances this atmosphere with an ethereal and immersive score that perfectly complements the game’s tone. Sound effects, subtle ambient noises, and the musical cues during exploration all contribute to a deeply engaging sensory experience.

Critically, Tunic was well-received, earning praise for its inventive gameplay, sense of discovery, and beautiful presentation. Some criticisms were directed at the occasional clunkiness of combat and movement, as well as the steep difficulty curve that might frustrate some players. However, these issues are often outweighed by the game’s charm, rewarding exploration, and the satisfaction of uncovering its many secrets.

Overall, Tunic is a beautifully crafted and thoughtfully designed game that appeals to players who enjoy exploration, challenge, and discovery. Its combination of charming visuals, immersive soundtrack, cryptic puzzles, and strategic combat creates an experience that is both nostalgic and innovative. This is one of the best action-adventure games in gaming history a must-play if you like this genre to any extent.

I also recommend playing it's optional content, which is considered o be a whole meta-game behind it, with very well hidden secrets, like the Golden Path meta-game, which starts at the very beginning of the game, and you need to keep track of it until the very end. Not to mention the unique dialog/language which the community tried to translate to english in order to reveal it's secrets. So if you are into these kind of thing, this is, surprisingly, one of the best titles out there.

This is going to be more of a ramble for my personal record more than a review, so I'll leave a few notes for people who don't want to be spoiled. First off, if you're already looking at this, you're likely going to buy or play the game, it's not the type of game where you 'look into it' and then don't play it, so I'll just reiterate that you shouldn't use guides, but also, do not let yourself get stuck unnecessarily.

If there are three things to do, and you're stuck on two, just do the third, no matter what that requires of you. The downside obviously is that you're going to be retraversing the map slowly a lot, that just comes with the territory. Ultimately, the game is not without flaws, but most of its real content is make or break, if you're not ready to no life it, don't start it until you have the time to do so.

Alright, for my real thoughts.

I think the game is just too much, spread too thin, and not optimally mixed together. It is a curious mix of Zelda, Dark Souls, abstract puzzler, meta gameplay-ey, with a really surprising habit of making in groups. I'd heard from multiple people that it was a must play, with the same advice I just gave of not looking at a guides, but ultimately I don't think that's really for the best.

Balance wise, the game is sort of all of over the place, being balanced AGAINST the expectation that you'll cheat the progression or cheese/run away from fights and bosses alike, but ultimately I think that just sort of masks that there's not a whole lot of combat and traversal variety that's super fun to engage with, with the exception of instakilling things with the tether or freeze-stalling enemies which then makes the swordplay redundant.

It's also unbalanced content wise, while the game has a lot of those different genre components, none of them are really filling the needs of that genre's fans. There's some Zelda, but not an entire Zelda game, there's some Dark Souls, but really only for the first couple of hours and then the last couple of bosses, and even then you're spending more than half your game time on just puzzles. Similarly, if you're in it for puzzles, a lot of them are make and break environmental riddles where any hints ruin them but also 90% of it is realizing a puzzle is there, not doing 'puzzly' thinking.

I want to highlight that the first half does moderate the Soulslike formula enough for me, a skeptic, to enjoy it, and there are so few games that give you that 'bigger picture' realization open world puzzle feel first shown with wall kicking in Metroid, but that doesn't leave a whole lot of genuine, grade A actual game play to spread across this otherwise very very long experience.

Ultimately, the game needed more bosses, better unlockable fast travel and ways to track your shortcuts and discoveries, a nicer intro difficulty curve in the first area, another couple of zelda-style dungeons and items with traditional zelda puzzles, and meta discoveries introduced a bit earlier and done in between these other large tasks with fewer rote Holy Cross puzzles to do overall. Currently, the game is like eating each piece type of trail mix in a row until its done before eating the next.

But I get why it has this reputation, I feel the game and its ideas growing on me even now, a day after I've finished it, it's settling into something that I can appreciate more in retrospect than in the moment.

Also, other than the thematic feel, I don't think the language barrier really added much that couldn't have been worked around otherwise. It was fine and fun this time, but I'd hope they'd avoid using the same concept again in future games and I don't want to see it infecting other indie darlings unless they're going to give you in game translation tools

I think most people only did the first, platforming half of Fez, which is why it seems so few people connect this game to that one. But trust me when I say, Tunic is very much like the second half of Fez, where you embark on an almost archaeological expedition of language translation and puzzle solving. I absolutely loved this part of Fez, and it pained me that it seemed so many people got to the "end" and then immediately began to excoriate Phil Fish on twitter.

Tunic really does make this gameplay element more apparent, but strangely it layers it underneath a Dark Souls clone, so, it hardly makes it more accessible. I really enjoyed the puzzle aspects of this game, but the only way that I could manage the combat aspect was to use the accessibility features, made which me feel a bit like I was cheating.

One of the standout portions of the game was the art style and execution.The in game "manual" looks completely real pen marks and all.

I didn't necessarily find the story to be as compelling as Fez, so there was a point near the end where I felt like the puzzle solving elements weren't worth the story that I was getting. Ultimately it was this feeling of general dissatisfaction with the story that contributed to my three-star, “liked it” rating.

No esperaba que Tunic me la jugara así, su premisa de no darte instrucciones, de jugar con el "manual" de juego y de convencerme de no buscar salidas fáciles por internet me han llevado a entrenar la paciencia y las dotes investigadoras... Llegar al final (y al final verdadero) me ha sabido genial, sus mecánicas han sido muy sencillas, pero con un gusto por la innovacion desde lo simple que me pilló con la guardia baja.

Inesperado, visualmente bonito, agradable de jugar y con un desafio que acabas aceptando sin darte cuenta... poco a poco y complicándose más. Recomendado porque como experiencia es de las más interesantes que he tenido ultimamente en videojuegos.

I was really looking forward to this game. I'm about three hours in and incredibly disappointed. The game looks great, but the feel is all wrong. Your character moves like molasses and the combat is simply dreadful - your attacks knock enemies back, but you move incredibly slowly, meaning every encounter, you hit an enemy, then have to close distance to hit it again.

The world design is... all right? There's something odd about the blocky art style though - it's very difficult to tell what connects to what. Several times I've been trying to walk across something, only to hit the 'shift perspective' button and realize that what I thought connected to the platform I was standing on is actually twelve tiles away.

There are lots of good ideas here but the game badly needed some playtesting to adjust the combat mechanics and flow. Unfortunately, I'm finding it a bit tedious.

At first glance, this game looks like a modern take on A Link To The Past, which it directly pulls inspiration from and is apparent in many aspects of the game. One thing that did not get mentioned enough early on and may deceive many players is the difficulty. This is souls-like difficulty hidden within a cute zelda like art style. This game really kicked my butt early on, as I've still been unable to get into any of the souls like games. After a few hours of dying over and over (thankfully the death penalty is much lower here than in the souls games), it finally clicked for me. While still struggling in some areas, I managed to beat the second boss of the game on the first try. From that point on I didn't have TOO much trouble (except the Monastary, which can f*** right off). Thankfully the game has some accessibility options, such as no fail mode (you do not take damage), and no stamina drain. I'd take a half star off for the Monastary area as while the difficulty seems fair for the most part, that area is ridiculously and unfairly difficult.

The story itself is told in a very good way, drip feeding you information slowly throughout your adventure. The best feature of this game though is the 'manual'. You will find pages of the manual to the game spread throughout. These pages are in the games language, so you cannot read it, but it contains tips, tricks, hints, secrets, etc via context clues you string together. The manual itself is very reminiscent of the old NES style manuals. If you look carefully at the pages, you can learn of secrets and abilities the game does not explain otherwise. It took collecting these pages from what could have been an annoying collect-a-thon, to an exciting scavenger hunt.

The areas are just diverse enough, and the information drip fed enough that it does not overstay it's welcome. Playing on Series X, I completed the game 100% (though a few achievements missed) in just over 17 hours. If you are on the fence about this game, I highly recommend checking it out, especially if you have Xbox Game Pass. You can always turn on the invincibility and still enjoy your time!

One more day until the Xbox Summer Game Fest Demo Event. One more day until I can play some more Tunic. And play a demo of Sable. And 38 other mostly indie games. Here are some details pulled from the blog post (linked above):

Starting June 15 and running through June 21, you’ll be able to try out over 40 demos of upcoming unreleased games for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One!

A few things to keep in mind:

• These are not normal “game demos.” Typically, the demos you see in our Demo channel are created after the game is completed (or nearly completed) and represent the final version. Many of these demos are early, and some are for games that won’t be out for quite some time. Think of these as akin to “show floor demos” and not necessarily indicative of the final product. What that means is that you’ll get to experience these games early – some way early – which is awesome, but you should also note that these games will continue to evolve and be polished as they near release.
• These demos will only be up on the Xbox Dashboard for a week. Some might be re-published to the Demo channel later, but many will simply evaporate at the end of the week, so make sure to check them out while you can.
• The developers would love to hear what you think. Hit them up on social media or through their websites. If you like the game – tell them! If you have constructive criticism, they would love to hear that too.

Looking at treehouse footage of Link's Awakening, I can't help but think about Tunic. I was hoping for some Tunic footage or news around now this year but apparently it's all still in progress but under wraps. Anyway, for anyone curious, here is footage from E3 last year:

P.S. I love this track from the game. It gives me serious Chrono Trigger vibes, and I love that the people working on Tunic are likely fans of some of my favourite games of all time.