Tunic is awesome and I wish more people talked about it
Tunic is awesome and I wish more people talked about it
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.
To me, the unspoken premise of the game is that you're a kid in 1986 with a parent or cool uncle who went on a business trip to Japan and brought you home a Famicom and a copy of the original Zelda - months before the console even launched outside Japan.
The whole game is about replicating that sense of childish fascination and wonder.
The 'Alien Language' game manual is supposed to mimic the feeling of trying to read the Japanese manual that came with the game, muddling through as best you can with the pictures, and a few random English words they included just because English is 'cool' in a gaming context.
It's a very fun mechanic, and my favourite thing about the game.
Eh that was me playing games in English before understanding a single word. Sooo many Amiga games where I went forward just by choosing stuff at random.
That was me playing Pokemon red. Got it without knowing a bit of English, took me a lot to realize that dialog was important sometimes and it took me several days to figure out how to teach and use the HMs. Later my dad got me the official guide so I could follow the pictures and use a dictionary to figure out some words
That’s the feeling it evoked in me: a childlike sense of wonder and discovery.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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've heard people describe games like this as "Metroidbrainias", which is the dumbest name ever, but the point is that it's a game where progress is blocked not just by obtaining in-game power-ups, but by learning how to use abilities that you already possess at the beginning of the game. The player is the one who levels up. I love that.
I will point out that (IIRC) Tunic does have significantly more mechanical progression than some other examples, like Outer Wilds or Toki Tori 2, but they're all lovely games
It's more of a "souls-lite" meets Outer Wilds for sure. You gotta be relatively on top of things mechanically to beat it, and on top of that in the second half of the game it switches to puzzles that are (IMO) infuriatingly grindy and will take hours to complete after you've figured out the mechanic.
Which is perfectly fine for those who like that, but I was sold "knowledge base game like Outer Wilds" which doesn't accurately capture how disgustingly grindy Tunic really is IMO. That's like saying Elden Ring is an "open world walking simulator with gorgeous graphics and compelling combat". I mean, yeah, it's all that and it's a great game. But that's kind of underselling the fact that if it's your first Souls you'll probably break a couple keyboards after meeting Margit.
I have heard them called "knowledge-based games". While not catchy, I think it's accurate.
Knowledge-gated progression perhaps.
I kind of enjoy the abstruse, tortured jargon of "metroidbrainia", but I would never use it in a respectable conversation.
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.
The soundtrack is also amazing. Lifeformed did a great job with it, just as they did with Dustforce.
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.
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!
If you liked this game or miss it, there's another really great game with some similarities out there: Death's Door
i've said it before but i don't think i've ever bounced so hard off of something i thought i would love.
i love cryptic, deep worlds, deciphering languages, discovery and exploration. but the combat blocked me from doing any of it.
i died to the first larger enemy (a white blob thing) like five times. i switched the combat to easy mode, and subsequently died five more times, just slower. then i looked up if here was something obvious that i was missing, but no. people were basically describing what i was already doing. dodging, rolling, watching for tells. only there are no tells on those first blob enemies. they just attack. later enemies, like the big spiders, have tells, and those i can sort of do. but the first guys just maul you.
the combat is honestly ass, at least as far as i got. its difficulty is not in line with the theme of the game, and it adds very little to it other than being a roadblock for the puzzles.
Yeah, combat is it's weakest point. I'm sorry that held the game back from you, because the overall "puzzle" of the world/game is very rewarding.
It now has two options that make it a lot easier (at least on Steam)
- infinite stamina (Dodge all you want)
- infinite life (just enjoy the world and puzzles)
Hmmm, something isn't adding up here. While there are a couple places where the combat is annoying, it's really only the bosses and maybe a few enemies in the endgame.
The blobs absolutely have tells, I can't remember what they are but they exist. If you've played literally any action game before you should be able to beat that enemy pretty easily, it sounds like you were pressing the wrong button to dodge or something.
so i got past them by ignoring them, got to the little village of orc-things and while it was a struggle i managed to clear it, so i thought "okay i think i get how this works now", went back to the blob things and got wiped out.
i was obviously doing something wrong because the feel of the combat was just absolutely awful. sluggish and spongy and takes way too much time.
once i got to the graveyard i just said "fuck it" and gave up. it was only frustration.
Loved it, but absolutely hit a wall with it until they released the "take half damage" difficulty patch. Then I found it fun again. I love a challenging video game, but the "slightly loose dodging controls" and the requirement for basically perfect execution to defeat the bosses didn't sit well with me. The Garden Knight was bad enough, the ones that come after it were just silly.
I have it on humble, is there a way to know if they've updated my copy to the latest version?
Think there should be an 'accessibility' option in the settings menu? I remember it being pretty decent - god mode, slow down, item highlighting, and the 'half damage' option were in there.
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
I really liked the puzzle elements, but the combat was way too hard in places. I didn't feel bad about turning that down.
You should never feel bad for turning difficulty down.
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".
Thank you for sharing!
Added it to my todo list!
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.
It's also one of the best sonic youth songs
I hope your post inspires more people to play the game. It is absolutely fantastic!