I recently finished the game Tunic, which is sort of like A Link to the Past + Fez + Dark Souls… And it’s amazing!
I actually owned the game soon after release but bounced off of it due to being busy with work, picked it back up the past few weeks and finally sat down and enjoyed it. Despite looking like a straightforward and cute adventure game, it gets REALLY deep the further you go in. There’s so much to discover and the game gives you just enough hints on what to do and where to go.
Tunic ticks all the boxes for me. The graphics are gorgeous, the combat is fun, the world is fun to explore and rich with secrets, and progression was very satisfying.
The most unique part of the game is that you slowly find pages of an instruction manual containing maps of areas and secrets, explanation of mechanics, and guides on how to play… except it’s all written in an alien language, so you have to figure out what it’s telling you by paying attention to all the pictures and context clues.
Understanding the manual is a bit rough at first but lead to so many “A-ha!” moments when you try something and it actually works. It even foreshadows future bosses and things you’ll encounter before they happen which is brilliant. My best advice to someone just trying the game: Pay attention to the manual, seriously!
I won’t spoil any more than that, but I really wish more people talked about this game. It’s not for everybody, the game is intentionally vague and needs some critical thinking if you’re not following a guide, but I think it’s absolutely brilliant if you’re into exploration and discovery. One of the most unique games I’ve played in ages.
Nah this game got covered by many of the indie gaming channels, the game dev channels, was all over Reddit and even 4chan… It was received pretty well. The difficulty filters out some people but besides that it’s pretty good.
Spent a lot of time with this game on the steam deck traveling. Great game.
I wanted to like it, couldn’t really get into it.
I see what it’s going for, it’s just… not my thing. It never clikced with me moment to moment and the self-congratulatory aren’t-we-smart information discovery stuff just doesn’t work for me in most cases (this applies to Fez and The Witness, too).
I’m not mad that people do like it, though. There’s nothing in there I find… objectionable, or poorly designed. I just didn’t get into it and that’s alright.
For me the end-game was the wrong ratio of grind-to-payoff. Everything after unlocking that one secret ability got quite repetitive. I watched a video essay from someone who praised it specifically because they’re a hardcore gamer who loves the grind and pouring sweat into it and the accompanying feeling of accomplishment, but after I discovered 90 % of the secrets of the world it felt really annoying to spend the second half of the game scouring every nook and cranny of the game for the remaining 10 %. Some of these puzzle have very long solutions with absolutely zero feedback if you do even one tiny thing wrong and that’s absolutely infuriating. I think I would have preferred it if credits had rolled at the halfway point.
However I loved Outer Wilds because while it’s huge and full of sometimes very difficult puzzles, it never gets grindy. Either you get it or you don’t, the game never presents you with a “congratulations you understand the mechanic, now go stare at every wall in the game for the next 3 hours”. I get that some people love that but it clearly wasn’t for me.
I thought the combat was too dull. That said, I’ll cheer for Zelda-likes any day—they at least try to innovate harder than the average indie.
It never clikced with me moment to moment and the self-congratulatory aren’t-we-smart information discovery stuff just doesn’t work for me in most cases (this applies to Fez and The Witness, too).
I think the word you’re looking for is “puzzle”.
No, I don’t think so. I love puzzles. Hard puzzles, even. I really, really like Return of the Obra Dinn, I spent the 90s fawning over point and click adventures. I have zero problems blasting through the Portal games and a bunch of their derivatives.
For some reason it’s specifically this setup of “figure out the rules of the world and peel off the layers of the game” thing that misses me. I don’t know what to tell you there.
You don’t have to like it, but out of curiosity, why is this different from a 90s point and click adventure? Isn’t Myst and Riven and stuff basically this, but first person and without combat?
Because I was thinking of being a mystified child staring at Myst on my friend’s computer more than once while playing Tunic.
Hah. Wasn’t into the “multimedia” era as much, either.
But still, I’d say context is important in that distinction. Old point and click was a AAA genre, through and through. Big, cinematic visuals and storytelling were at the core of that.
I’m not saying that’s better or that I like it more. In fact, I’d say I’m less into that kind of thing these days. But it was a different moment in time to get hold of one of those compared to an indie release overcomplicating the self-revealing world concept from Myst.
Why I haven’t been into that idea since all the way back in Myst is harder to parse for me. Maybe I’m just less metatextually enamoured with the idea of self-revealing games as a flourish than I am about having the reveal be a fully functional narrative? As I said above I adore Obra Dinn. There’s a lot of the same connective tissue there, but maybe I’m just more in touch with it when it’s a medium for a good, old-timey gothic horror story than when it’s this abstract world-in-code thing.
Well if you’re going to give them another shot, you should try the Outer Wilds.
Much less abstract puzzle solving, and it tells quite a good narrative (no combat).
Oooh, Outer Wilds. Did a couple of puzzles, I think I got around the loop once or twice, bounced right off.
I swear, I don’t know what it is. The sense of wonder just isn’t there. Maybe I’m too aware that all the pieces are put in by the designers and that withholding some pieces doesn’t inherently make the puzzle more interesting or even harder. I guess I find myself tapping my foot playing first person Lunar Lander while I wait for the thing to get around to the real game while I do rolling ball puzzles or whatnot.
Have you tried Blue Prince?
It’s an absolutely beautiful love letter to Zelda, and I wish I finished it while it was still free on PSN. So much thought and attention went into every little detail you see and hear. Tunic teaches so many lessons about game design that I wish AAA studios would hear.
No link to said game?
The soundtrack is also amazing. Lifeformed did a great job with it, just as they did with Dustforce.
Oh, an absolute all time great. Fantastic background music when you’re focused on homework or something, but equally enjoyable to sit and focus on all the nuance and details.
But the best part is how perfectly the music aligns to the overall tone and atmosphere of the game. Hell, it even does a tremendous amount of storytelling itself!
I emailed Lifeformed back in 2020 to ask permission to use their music in a video and they were so nice.
The Dustforce soundtrack is so good, and the Tunic soundtrack does such an amazing job at elevating the game.
Thank you for sharing!
Tunic is a great little game. I can’t think of any other game that captures that feeling of playing a game for the first time and slowly testing the boundaries of what you can and cannot do. Definitely one of the better love letters to the old Zelda games out there. My main issue with it was the fact that the end-game is mostly just puzzle-solving. It kind of felt like the game had changed genres on me, especially since I had seen it recommended so many times as “Zelda meets Dark Souls”.
Tunic is one of my absolute favorite games. An absolute joy to play and the sheer whimsy that the game exudes is refreshing.
It’s also one of the best sonic youth songs
This game is on my list but i already have plenty of other games to play, so i can wait for a super sale lol
I looked it up, you play a furry. So yeah no.
If you liked this game or miss it, there’s another really great game with some similarities out there: Death’s Door
I loved this game too! I haven’t finished it yet. I get distracted sometimes but I really do love it. It’s so unique but also kept the right tropes in the genre. Plus it’s cute.
I got stuck at either a boss or miniboss. Game’s a lot of fun and has good spirit but I didn’t have enough mana to fight a flying wizard. I don’t think that’s too much of a spoiler. This Zelda-like game has flying wizards and you can cast magic spells.
I either couldn’t backtrack or didnt trust my ability to return to that arena to advance the game. Whatever the case was after stalling out and putting it down I have found it difficult to get my head back in the game. At this point I’m waiting until I forget more of the game so I can start fresh again one day.
There are accessibility options now because the flights can be really hard.
You can have infinite stamina or infinite life if you just want to figure out the manual.
There’s a LOT of toggles for difficulty/accessibility in there in case you get stuck and don’t wanna grind, just fyi
Thanks. I’ll have to try my hand at it with cakewalk settings and see if I can make any progress. Now I’m hoping my game saved before that fight and I don’t have to find my way back to where it is. No difficulty slider can make that easier.
Also consider trying it again, but use items. The items completely break most of the fights if you just use them.
I know that sounds like obvious advice, but my personal inclination is to never use items, and usually items aren’t that great, so it was novel to me that when I got stuck, the answer was just: use items.
