Surprisingly smart little game! Uses Link's Awakening's skeletal structure as a somewhat perfunctory platform to host Tunic's core puzzle-solving strengths, which come from the way it delicately divulges new information to the player for them to intuit and patch together. The in-game manual conceit really is an enlightened touch, what a wonderful way to avoid tutorialisation by lightly suggesting mechanics and prompts in a freeform way. A new star in my eye forms every time a game nudges me into realising a shortcut or mechanic has ALWAYS been there, I just wasn't aware yet. The combat serves as an occasional hurdle against progress in a way I just found detracting to the experience. For as rough as it is, it neither needs to be as present nor as bafflingly demanding lol.

Still, I enjoyed this a lot. The closest comparison I can think of on a whim would be Fez, another game filled with micro and macro puzzles that near-wordlessly demand intuition and perception on the part of the player. Lifeformed is on the 1s and 2s for this soundtrack btw! Mostly just ambiance without the Dustforce killer, but I missed that guy.

The presentation of Tunic is unassuming, initially looking like yet another flat-stylized medium-sized indie game (see: VR games), but slowly I realized that it's not "just another", but is extremely intricately designed where every little detail that does exist does matter. It's masterful in art direction and sound design, quickly rolling its way into my favorite soundtracks as well.

I'll split gameplay up into two distinct sections here as many do, but I want to clarify now that this is as deliberate from me as it is from the game.

Combat-wise it's somewhere between any Zelda or Souls, feeling more like the former with some mechanics of the latter (stamina management etc.); actual encounter design is pretty firmly in the middle, at first feeling very much akin to something like Link's Awakening but evolving into something a bit meaner and a lot more thoughtful like Dark Souls or Elden Ring. (further elaboration in log notes, those will contain outright spoilers for mechanics just forewarning) This is one thing I've seen begroaned fairly often and I just don't get why? It's honestly pretty solid and opens up a lot as the game keeps going, though by the back half it then becomes kind of irrelevant; which, not to sound all "just trust me" but it becoming basically irrelevant is not at all a bad thing, it's just not the focus anymore, and I'd be willing to bet it was a deliberate metanarrative decision to reinforce this next segment. Before that though, worth noting that somewhat recently(?) they added better accessibility options in regards to difficulty; before it was basically default or god mode, but I think 2D Zelda fans refusing to level with Tunic will be happy they got their wish with the infinite stamina option. (In all seriousness, settings like these are great)

If you look at my log dates, you'll see I started Tunic over a year prior to what I'd consider my actual playthrough from Nov. 12th-16th, because frankly I find most puzzle games to be daunting. Not because I think I'm incapable of solving them, I eventually will for most things aimed at general audiences, but because I can never really escape feeling anxious around them. Tunic was different though, its navigational puzzles were always welcoming to get into and felt like natural evolutions. But I knew there was more, the entire language (which is no mere alphabet swap), the drip feeding of some key word info. Truthfully, I had hints at about 4 points, but like 3 of those were me somehow missing a manual page in plain sight like 10 hours ago and a friend chiming in where it was. I felt very out of my depth at the beginning, but once things started to click, it kept rolling and was exciting; frustrating at times, but nothing some deep breaths and short breaks didn't bring me back around to fixing.

My favorite part of the game though, enough to make stingy ol' me want to break a habit or beg for a bday present, is the in-game manual. The manual is an absolute masterstroke of game design and I refuse to elaborate further. I cannot stress how utterly incredible it is, made with such care by itself that most games blush at the task of detailing something so much while also giving it so much purpose. I wish I had a physical copy of the manual.

And now we reach the point where I feel talking about things much further would be too spoilery, and I had to keep things vague in other areas I normally wouldn't like doing in so as not to ruin the mystique entirely. Maybe just an excuse, I don't know; I feel Tunic deserves more words, though. It has this absolutely unparalleled sense of exploration and discovery, which will likely take even the most experienced puzzle game enjoyers by surprise. Barring only a couple puzzles that lack even a clue to their solution aside from "that one thing you forgot you could try 10 hours ago", the rest of them hit it out of the park and the game punched surprisingly well thematically for me.

One last thing, HLTB clocking in "12 hours" makes me mad and people who've completed the game will know why... They will never experience transcendence...

In one word: Knowledge.

Favorite tracks (3 hour long album btw, awesome.)
Redwood Colonnade
This Is The Wrong Way
Crouch Walker
Snowmelt
<spoilery 1>
<spoilery 2>
<spoilery 3>
<major spoiler>

Tunic is the game that bridges the gap between Zelda and Dark Souls. In terms of vibes, it's all Zelda -- just look at that little fox's outfit! -- but the gameplay borrows from both influences evenly. I see it as a spiritual brother to Death's Door. Death's Door leans a bit more Souls, Tunic leans a bit more Zelda.

The real star here is the world design. Every area is well considered, neither too big nor too small, and they all feel like part of one big place. It's true that the map itself is a clear riff off classic Zelda, complete with a mountain to the north, but hey, if a developer can take a good design and make it feel fresh, who am I to complain? I also love how the isometric design is used intentionally to hide shortcuts in plain sight. If you like Dark Souls-style shortcuts, you're gonna love some of these.

Much hullabaloo has been made about the in-game manual, and I must agree that it's an awesome addition, especially to gamers like me who used to flip through NES manuals like they were sacred texts. In a lesser game it could come off as a gimmick, but in Tunic it feels like icing on top of an already delectable experience.

Why only four stars, then? Well, combat is serviceable rather than great. The lock-on system feels a slightly at odds with the isometric POV -- it's a bit too easy to get locked onto a distant enemy when there's one right in your face. Given that the player can have both melee and projectile weapons equipped at the same time, I can see why it works this way, but that hardly makes me feel less annoyed when my sword swings in the wrong direction.

The other issue for me has to do with pacing and the true ending. Simply put, the basic ending is unsatisfying, while getting the real ending involves solving an intricate puzzle that delves too far into Fez territory for my liking. I can't knock the game too much for this, though, because the puzzles are well designed and I respect the amount of thought the development team put into them.

Though it wears its influence on its sleeve, Tunic still manages to feel unique, like more than just a tribute. It strikes a perfect balance between nostalgia and modern game design. Don't miss it.

Tunic, cobrindo-se de simbologia nostálgica, ressignifica a experiência de seu gênero através de uma exploração genial sobre a comunicação jogador-jogo: escrita em uma linguagem própria, não só charmosamente remete aos tempos em que tinhamos que jogar jogos obtusos em línguas que não sabíamos, quanto usa disso para criar um enigmático trilho de migalhinhas de pão, induzindo mas nunca empurrando o jogador em uma aventura que lentamente descascará todas as camadas da cebola: segredos, geografia, narrativa, lore, mecânicas - nem o menu está a salvo da barragem de revelações a cada esquina.

Certamente obtuso em partes, especialmente se você quer alcançar o “True Ending”, o que Tunic fez de diferente para com que eu, famoso cérebro de lagartixa, me motivasse a tentar descobrir tudo sozinho? A resposta é dura para a concorrência: tudo. O jogo é lindo, bem polido, tem uma ótima trilha sonora. Aliando esses fatores com a supracitada trilha de migalhas, constante e bem pensada, que não me fez ousar abrir o Google e digitar “Tunic spoiler free tips reddit” pelas primeiras 14 horas, eu nunca tive vontade de nada além de seguir em frente. Pelo contrário, até depois do True Ending, ainda sinto vontade de me debruçar sobre seus mistérios até chegar no 100% - cada migalhinha restante, exponencialmente mais críptica, mantendo o gostinho na boca.

Não sei porque decidi começar a jogar Tunic - sua casca é uma isca que proclama o “indie Zelda com bichinho fofinho” #infinito - e fui surpreendido com uma das experiências mais divertidas, engajantes e profundas que tive em um bom tempo. No começo desta entrada não disse que Tunic reinventou o gênero de jogos de aventura, e sim entregou uma experiência que te faz apreciar cada pequeno detalhe que os compõem, e que, emulando o nostálgico, os dispunha para serem vistos com outros olhos. Em um tempo em que sempre busco pelo que um jogo está tentando falar, encontro um que ativamente rejeita palavras, e através disso transcende barreiras de linguagem, te reduzindo a sentir. Adorei.

Jogue sabendo o mínimo possível.

Annoying and not fun combat gets in the way of exploring a beautiful world full of intrigue and puzzles.

Tunic has a bit of an identity crisis - is it Fez? A 2D Zelda? A Souls-like? It attempts to answers all of those questions with "yes" and then trips over itself while trying to deliver one cohesive experience. If this were a 2D Zelda with Fez-like puzzles to solve, this would be a dream. But for whatever weird reason, the devs decided they wanted this to have ultra challenging combat encounters that are frankly just not fun.

Across the board, every podcast I listened to recommended two things with the game.
1. Don't look up any guides if you can help it
2. Put the game on "No Fail" mode.
It's a pretty wild that the best way to experience this game is to not engage with 50% of the mechanics in it.

I loved bumming around the beautiful world finding stuff and solving puzzles, even if sometimes the weird geometry of the world made finding secrets more about running into every hidden corner and less about carefully studying the world to discover things. There were a few moments in this game where I figured something out and I openly laughed out loud at the brilliance of it. It's got some incredibly cool stuff in it especially if you like solving puzzles but boy do I wish I could make the combat easier without simply making myself invulnerable.

+ Beautiful world
+ Incredibly satisfying puzzle-solving
+ Fantastic soundtrack

- Bad and overly difficult combat
- No variable difficulty settings - it's either hard or you're invincible.
- Finding secrets can feel random

Policy

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The manual mechanic is amazing but this game really falls apart in the 3rd act (the ghost arc) because they nerf your character, but the issue is the first pickup you get after beating the cathedral is stamina, when I think it probably should have been health or defense since the enemies on other areas kill you in like 2 hits and might give you a false sense of confidence you can kill the final boss, wasting all your materials in the process. The poison mechanic also sapping max health is silly, but it's especially silly they through it on the final boss' second phase as well. Meaning if you don't have gas mask equip you are just going to be brutalized, which sucks especially hard if you waste all your resources on the 1st phase only to go grinding for more. There's other issues to like the stamina UI being too small and out of the way, when the penalty for running out is you cant dodge until it refills to full. The sword hitbox feels too small so you can't really get close on enemies either. So you're probably going to die a bunch, but I don't know why they bothered with the currency loss death mechanic if they were going to have the numbers be so small. It just feels like its there to be trendy and try and build arbitrary tension when me losing 20 Bits means literally nothing to me. In fact at any point you could just grind and I imagine if you just grinded for 10 minutes you would make as many bits back as you lost throughout the whole game without pickups. Its just a strange choice, though I do appreciate it staggers enemies and bosses on pick up so it has some utility there. But as a result of the messy and unappealing combat design I turned No Fail mode on a few times without feeling too bad about it, and honestly I would urge you to do the same if you're feeling worn out.

The music is also strangely exhausting for progressive ambient most of the songs seem to be fighting and distracting themselves from pacing piano jittering back and forth like a keychain. There's exactly 1 song I feel nailed it and its the most intense song in the game, The Siege because the piano interludes actually feel more threatening, you have no clue what this giant machine is about to do next, so your holding your breath and the music halts with you. In general they nailed the Siege fight to such an extent that it's almost worth playing for that moment alone, but the music outside of it is just irritating. There's no intensity or sense of direction. Imagine somebody blasts Satie's Gymnopédies in your ear while your trying to play Zelda. The confusion and general inability to focus because of the twinkling aimless chords is kind of a sinkhole on my patience with the entire game. Other people may like it, but it just left me fatigued.

It's funny seeing people refer to all the 'puzzles' in the game, because sure there are puzzles in the post game (most of them amount to Konami Code gimmicks from my understanding). But there isn't really many before that at least I would probably refer to them more as environment gimmicks than puzzles. Not in a negative sense, just the fact that exploring an area to flip 1 way switches is not really my idea of a puzzle. Although you could refer to the map interpretation and general book as well as a meta puzzle for the practicalities of the game, in my case that primarily just boiled down to reading maps and figuring out what spot in the dark corner I missed to go forwards.

I thought the book manual itself being in a different language was incredibly unique, I like that the book is so incredibly useful at every phase in the game and its really nice to look at and see as your protagonist starts scribbling stuff in as you play. As a central gimmick of the game this in particular is EXACTLY what is going to keep me somewhat fond on it despite all my drawbacks. This manual was so intricately designed because it feels exactly like one of those incredibly useful instruction manuals you would find inside a box of your favorite games, but with nintendo magazine style secrets already there. It takes a lot of the design philosophies of these often discarded and ignored pieces of gaming and embellishes the memory of it. Not to mention how brilliantly to scale the maps are, this game somehow didn't have to 'cheat' on your location in a 2D rendering of the 3D space. I feel like it's worth dwelling on just why this is so beautiful, for one it actively reminds you that the world is a game in a way that engages you further, it becomes a toy, something to play around with. The nostalgia trigger here is also great because this is exactly how this would have worked for somebody playing through the first zelda game, flip from screen to book back and forth SHOULD dissuade you from the game as an immersive space but for some reason it doesnt. In a way just playing a game without any physical intervention can be draining and create ennui poisoned tunnel vision. When you treat a computer game as a primary object to get lost in it can be something that weakens or frusterates you. An in game manual gives attention to that and I think comments on an incredibly valid nostalgia of that. I don't think this is an accidental piece of the puzzle, overtime our relationship with games have turned more into digital product for consumption, getting a key instead a running a disc, having it in a systematized inventory steam folder or itchio page with your dozens or hundreds of other purchases, etc. With this small central gimmick, Tunic dares to comment on all of that, and how it can in a sense be preserved by having a utilizable 'guidebook' within the confines of the game. But it does it through doing the concept justice through its tactile pleasantry rather than condemning digitization outright (although it does do this through the quarry energy enslavement reveal, I doubt people are going to pick up on the metaphor outright). Overall I don't think Tunic as a text hates digitization so much as it simply ask what is missing or what is sacrificed in the process, and how do we go about trying to get it back? Encrypting the book with a second language is the touch it needed to keep it balanced between this childlike memory and not just making the whole game easy/disenchanting the memory (after all we never read ALL of those instruction manuals anyway we just liked how they looked).

The main drawback I have about the language mechanic is that when you go to pick something up a non diagetic popup is asking you if you want to pick the thing up in its language, but I feel like you could just replace this popup with the phrase 'pick up/buy?' in our language and lose nothing. It's really more distracting because when I see that sort of popup I assume the protagonist is the one having the thought, and I also assume we interpret the same language by the design. So why is there this other language obscuring the characters own mind?

The lack of dialogue works highly in the games favor because how ultimately simple the story it was trying to tell is. Had the merchant I ran into said DID YOU KNOW THIS LAND IS LOCKED IN RUIN FOR 1000 YEARS BY A GREAT KING I would have been annoyed. Instead the merchant is an eldrich dragon skeleton who says nothing.

I mentioned in my Hollow Knight insight I wouldn't have a great time combing that game for secrets, but I'd much rather comb that game than this one. Some of the puzzles seem dense and a lot of secret chest being hidden in dark corridors is even less engaging in a 3d space. There's no way to mentally just mark off in your head you searched an area already in 3d space because there could just be a prompt you missed, it would be like losing your keys in your house, no matter where you think you looked its possible its still there, its a very sickly feeling combined with the lack of indication. Like, there are a bunch of dark staircases I missed in front of me trying to progress the game normal, no way am I going to be asked to uncover all the secrets.

The only other thing I have to say is this games post game content unpleasantly feels like its begging you to play it, you finish and get after an incredibly grueling bossfight an ending where you get chained up, only to tease you that you 'missed X pages' after. I get the general mood of the game is somber but it feels way too cute to leave you on that kind of note. Maybe I would have felt better just having my character be able to walk away as the world crumbles or something...

Wait, why do I feel that way? Oh yeah, it's because it's exactly what Hyper Light Drifter did! That game handles its cozy ambience and moments of severe melancholy way better than this one, and also has a world with no talking. Let me end on a good note, I'll throw a few more recs out:

If you would like a difficult game with a challenging but fun puzzlecore post game, try Environment Station Alpha or go play an actual puzzle game that develops concepts like Baba is You or The Witness.

If you want to try and play an emotionally difficult but artistically beautiful experience with much better dodge functionality try Lucah: Born of a Dream (I also have to finish this one).

If you're a furry try Dust an Elysian Tail, a fairly easy but incredibly cute voice acted experience.

Hope those suggestions balance out my curmudgeon attitude towards Backloggd indie darling of the month :3

STOP THINKING ABOUT YOUR GAMES AS GIMMICK FIRST! GAMES ARE SYSTEMS, NOT PARTY TRICKS. THEY HAVE TO WORK WITH CONCERTED FORCE.

I'm so utterly exhausted with these indie teams thinking they've skirted the curve by coming up with a non-direct approach to game design because of their one tiny inversion to their genre's formula. Like, yes, it is better to put thought into your game's intellectual play, committing its expression to something expressively unique and utterable only within games - but if you design from an academic's abstract perspective first, as though your mechanics are the rosetta stone for dissecting why people gravitate towards any individual game, then you're sacrificing your art to the altar of skinner box games just the same as all the devs who sell out to work on live service trash. Games are play forward; the interaction is what translates the design to us, not the other way around. It is in transforming the play through nuance that the nuance sings - in Tunic, the combat being poorly implemented and simplistic does not shockingly transform when it becomes poorly implemented and complicated. The same with economy, the same with traversal, the same with puzzle design.

If you wouldn't want to to do it without the gimmick, then it isn't worth doing.

In some ways, Tunic is one of the smartest and most beautiful experiences i've had in a game in a long time, but the reality of actually playing it leaves something to be desired for me, but never enough to outright diminish just how exquisitely crafted the world and the game 'experience' feels. The atmosphere of this game is outstanding and though a tiring comparison, does feel reminiscent of dark souls with how you venture out as a lost and lowly 'face' without much purpose only to discover your grand purpose and fulfil your destiny. Also the vibe of the world, the isolated feeling and looming ambience are spot on and the ultimate goal of the game is not unlike dark souls or hollow knight, but similarly you have control over how things play out.

Fundamentally, the game's runaway success is the instruction booklet both as a feature and as a piece of art in itself. The art inside of this little booklet is stunning, evoking a feeling of old school game manuals, text guides and retro game magazines like nintendo power. The delicately handcrafted nature of the art combined with the cryptic application of the information it divulges into tunic's own game systems is ingenious and a masterpiece by itself. Its rare to see an idea so original and so well designed and applied to the game experience, from finding your place in the world with its intricate maps and diagrams, to uncovering uses for items and upgrades as you have to decipher this kind of alien language and make pictures make sense. This is best done in the first half of the game where I felt particularly isolated and confused, as the way the manual intricately teaches you the game and helps you along as a constant companion allowed me to develop an attachment to the game and its mechanics in a way I had never seen before, its just so smart.

I don't have many problems with the cryptic nature of the game or how it seeks for the player to uncover things for themselves, I think I just find it more difficult than a lot of people and it doesn't come naturally to me. Also, once you put the guide down and start actually interacting with the game after you understand its basic mechanics, I find that the game is an actively lesser experience. This is why I find the 'idea' of the game better than the game itself, as once that guide is down and you're set off on your adventure, I realised how little depth there actually is in the gameplay. Now, this is an indie game developed largely by one guy and I need to give credit to that because that's incredible, what an amazing achievement. However, I do find playing this a bit of a chore, most secrets are found by lazily walking against walls in an isometric perspective once you realise how many hidden paths there are. In the beginning, this is dope, when you find out how the world interconnects through its hidden bridges and shortcuts, again not unlike the first half of DS1, but eventually it became tragically tedious as I constantly found myself circling the edges of an area to try and find my way to a chest or secret - usually successfully, but not in a way that felt all that fulfilling.

I also take some issue with the game's combat, which feels somewhat stale and derivative and less interesting than some of its counterparts, there's also such a short range on attacks meaning you need to be right up against an enemy to hit them and a general 'heaviness' to the overall feel of combat, with almost every action in combat feeling slow and clunky. The depth of field is a cool cinema effect that adds to the games' aesthetic and adds layering to the world, but in combat i'd rather it were toned down since I just find it overwhelming and frustrating since it blurs everything including enemies, attacks and projectiles, making translating what is on screen tricky at times - its particularly noticeable during the siege engine boss fight. I also find dodge rolling quite sluggish and ineffective a lot of the time since the long animation means you're vulnerable for a lot of it and enemies will lock onto you mid-roll and hit you with an attack even after you roll behind them - you will dodge through an enemies' first attack perfectly only for their entire body to turn 180 degrees instantly and hit you again, its not heinous or anything but it makes dodging feel worse than just putting your shield up and makes combat feel less dynamic and engaging as a result.

Stylistically I think this is awesome, evoking the wonder of old school exploration games and top down zelda games while also putting its own spin on things. I think I preferred death's door for the most part but tunic's general atmosphere is unmatched, with a beautifully calm and delicately ambient soundtrack and a cute and charming low-poly artstyle. The cover of this game doesn't do it justice at all I don't think, they should have used the type of art taken from the game manual, its not what I expected at all. I didn't know much about this game going in but I was positively surprised by how it turned out, since I was expecting something more akin to ocarina of time but instead it takes more influences from zelda games pre-ocarina. I understood the developer's intentions a lot I think, since I felt the need for the player to uncover things for themselves and experience a feeling of wonder, it just doesn't always work for me since I value really strong, faster-paced gameplay (DS1 being an exception) and an engaging narrative told through gameplay and cutscenes - instead, tunic favours a slower-paced feeling of patient discovery and a story that encourages putting the pieces together and then interpretation, but instead of the souls' approach of finding things out largely through visual storytelling and lore-soaked environments, tunic leaves a lot of it to pages in a manual and an indecipherable language that is cool, it just doesn't do much for me. That said, exploring the inside of the ziggurat and seeing the foxes trapped inside obelisks and deciphering what might have happened to this fox 'civilisation' is intriguing enough by itself.

I do find the game falls off pretty hard in the last third for me, I genuinely would have preferred if it just ended after you got the keys since by that point I was ready for it to be done and I don't think the last third adds all that much since you're kind of just retracing steps, but in terms of pure 'vibes' its definitely a really humbling moment and meaningfully changes how you see the world. In terms of what it sets out to achieve I do think its successful and a great achievement as an indie game, but it leaves a lot to be desired in the gameplay for me personally, I think there's lots of games that have done this kind of stuff better but the art, soundtrack and that manual system invigorated me, that stuff is worthy of the highest praise on its own.

I enjoyed this game in the first few hours as a simple Zelda clone and if that's all it was it would have stood its own against Nintendo's flagship series. But after the meta game puzzles begin revealing themselves to you it becomes so much more.

It's a love letter to not only 2D Zelda, but to retro game nostalgia itself. If you grew up in the 90s and have fond memories of sitting in the back seat flipping through the game manual of the game you just bought with your allowance money on the ride home from the mall video game shop, this game is for you.

Make sure you grab a pen and paper, you will be taking notes.

Enmascarado en un clon de Zelda, con espada y escudo en mano, Z-targeting y un mapa a explorar, Tunic se presenta como una de las sorpresas de marzo para mí. He de admitirlo, con ver un par de avances era escaso mi interés por el juego. Tanto bombo había a su alrededor que parecía que había algo ahí que no debía estar viendo. "Nah tonterías, low poly y un zorrito vestido de verde, es fácil que enganche". Pero si que me quedó la espinita.
Tendrá sus cosas, noto cierta falta de originalidad en su planteamiento, no hay ninguna mecánica que no hayamos hecho todos ya en decenas de juegos y a algún despistado se le podrá ocurrir que ya jugó este juego sólo con verlo por un minuto. Las primeras horas fueron así para mí, otro Death's Door, otro Minit. Pero mediante iba avanzando iba adentrándome en su mundo, que a primera vista está servido para el jugador y completamente guiado, a ser una caja de secretos. Un lenguaje desconocido, en códigos orales como interactivos. Combinación de elementos del inventario y leer más allá del escenario. Las pistas que te da el juego (con un guiño muy carismático a los antiguos manuales) las tenemos que interpretar por nuestra cuenta. Muchas veces intuyendo qué puede haber en esas páginas perdidas.
Terminé el juego tras un par de tardes de inmersión total. Y grata fue mi sorpresa al ver que Tunic toma más de la escuela de Fez que de Zelda.
Ahora, ojalá todo fuera bueno, porque como está implementado el combate, la stamina y otros elementos no terminan de acompañar la aventura heróica que es desvelar los secretos de la isla. Pero aún con sus cosas y gustandome con bastantes reservas, si que al menos es un juego que voy a recordar.

A lot of very cute tricks and brain teasers assembled around a novel gimmick, but the game itself is middling and the interplay between those two halves is not very well-constructed much of the time.

At some point after you hit the big "ah ha" moments (which, it must be said, are quite good - especially if you figure them out before the manual just force-feeds them to you), you realize that the secrets mop-up you've been looking forward to after you've gotten all the items and the knowledge necessary to really do it is going to be a nightmare because of the asinine worldmap and the fact that, for a game that has an in-game instruction book that comes with pre-written notes on it, you actually need to be taking a SHITLOAD of notes SEPARATELY yourself to even begin to remember all the stuff you need to go back to or even where shortcuts are. I love a good Figure-It-Out-'Em-Up and especially one that wants me to write things down, but I didn't realize that to be successful with this one, I essentially needed to be drawing another set of maps on top of the ones the game gives you as like, it's whole thing, and by the time I realized it, it was a bit too late.

But anyway, some fairly big points for effort. Especially the language - although I am conflicted with how that whole thing is integrated, too.

At first I thought of it as an equivalent to Hollow Knight for top down Zelda-likes, but I think that’s over simplifying it. It’s closer to something like Outer Wilds in how knowledge itself is a part of your progress, you learn things that you realize were there the whole time. What really makes this game unique though is the manual feature, how you find pages of it out of order, with only bits of it translated for you at a time. It gives you that feeling of when you were a kid, playing games with manuals, just jumping in without reading it, maybe going back and skimming over it, learning what you can do way later than you should have, then scanning it more thoroughly, learning hints and clues towards it’s hidden secrets, something the game is loaded with. The game’s graphics as well evoke the feeling of an old Playstation or N64 game, looking how you remember them looking in your mind, rather than how they actually looked, and especially with the in-game manual containing screenshots of the game taken through a CRT filter. All I have to complain about is the floaty combat. There’s a weird delay after most actions you perform in the game, but the animations don’t really do a good job conveying it so, especially with how aggressive the bosses can be, you find yourself in these awkward spots where your inputs don’t seem to be registering and you get screwed over because of it.

Overall a very unique, very creative, very quality game. I marked it complete because I beat the (apparent) final boss and got the basic ending, but it definitely feels like there’s a lot more the game is hiding from me, I don’t think I’m done with it yet.

Veredito: Um zelda-like MUITO FODÃO... até chegar no final.

De forma brilhante, Tunic ressuscita algo que se perdeu nos jogos modernos: a necessidade de ler o manual enquanto joga. Aqui as páginas do manual são itens colecionáveis, e sem ele você não chega em lugar algum. A coisa é tão bem feita que até o idioma do manual é desconhecido - simulando perfeitamente o sentimento que eu tinha quando criança de ler manuais e jogar jogos numa língua estrangeira - o que obriga o jogador a se guiar pelas ilustrações e pelas poucas palavras conhecidas.

Genial. Absolutamente genial. Por favor, gamedevs do futuro, tomem notas e aprendam.

As partes técnica e criativa também não deixam por menos. A câmera isométrica é aplicada de forma MUITO inteligente, escondendo secredos que em retrospecto parecem óbvios. Os visuais são lindos, as dungeons são incríveis, os itens são perfeitos e, ao contrário do que dizem, o combate é sólido para um senhor caralho. Inclusive este jogo tem alguns dos melhores chefes que já enfrentei na vida.

Mas por que...

...POR QUE...

...o último 1/3 do jogo é TÃO mal feito?

Maluco, é impressionante. Você passa o jogo INTEIRO tendo ótimos momentos eureca a cada 10 minutos, se sentindo mais poderoso, mais manjão dos paranauês quanto mais avança e quanto mais consegue interpretar o manual e o mundo à sua volta. Tudo é milimetricamente calculado pra ser uma delícia, e Tunic passa com louvor em todos os testes.

Então tem um ponto de virada na trama que introduz o último ato, e daí pra frente é só ladeira abaixo. Momentos eureca? Nunca mais, agora eles são momentos "finalmente consegui abrir essa merda dessa porta, aleluia". Dificuldade alta porém justa? Porra nenhuma, agora ou tu morre do nada ou está sempre superpoderoso, sem meio-termo.

Pra fechar com chave de estrume, o jogo tem 2 finais, e o "verdadeiro" exige TANTO atrito merda pra resolver TANTOS puzzles bostas que eu liguei o foda-se e fui olhar guias. E eu sou o cara que PLATINOU Road to Gehenna no braço!!! Mas tudo tem limite. Olhei guias mesmo, sem vergonha nenhuma. Pau no cu daquela porta na montanha. Caguei.

Pelo menos o chefão final é excelente, assim como todos os outros. Mas naquela altura do campeonato já não tinha mais redenção possível. Não para um jogo tão bem costurado, com tanto carinho até quase o final, pra chegar no último ato e ele estar praticamente colado com durex.

A lovely homage to the early Zelda games that’s well polished, and has its own unique spin on the top-down adventure that makes it stand out despite its influence.

The best way to describe it is vague. It doesn’t tell much of anything about itself, and it just sets you off without direction with only a stick to fight with. Then you’ll see the game’s text isn’t actually readable, and any information you’ll want to know about its mechanics or hints on what to do is found through missing pages of an old school instruction manual.

The manual is a neat concept since it’s still cryptic and you’ll have to pay close attention to its drawings to understand it. The level of detail in its visual design is both cool to look at and essential to navigating through the game’s areas and finding obscure secrets.

The art and ambient music are also wonderful, and the level design is excellent. There’s so many clever shortcuts and paths hidden in plain sight that can actually bypass much of the game in hindsight. Most of it isn’t gated either, so progression can just depend on if you know it’s there or not which was awesome.

Though combat isn’t really a highlight since it’s simplistic and kinda floaty, which doesn’t really match with how aggressive the bosses can be. And the other gripe I had was its final puzzle felt excessively obtuse to me on a mechanical level compared to the rest of the game. But overall was super impressed with Tunic.

the ultimate smooth brain game mixed with the ultimate galaxy brain game

Tunic starts out with a simple premise: it's like an old Zelda, but ~different~. it's purposefully more cryptic, its combat and design more like dark souls, and its whimsy is more whimsical than its influences. this charm pulls you in, but the idea that there's something more to the world keeps you going through the more "where do i even go/what do i even do" parts.

the chests and walls hidden by the isometric camera are fun, a repurposing of old classics. the language of the game is genius, a joy to solve. the deeper secrets are the same, another delicious treat to stumble upon in your own way. even as i finished the game, i KNEW that there were still more bigger mysteries to solve, but i had my fun with Tunic and i knew it was time to break the cycle.

an absolute joy

Tunic is a much better Fez than Fez and a much worse Dark Souls than Dark Souls. The combat has its moments, but they're spread thin between frustrating fights with clashing systems and exacting technical demands. But the puzzles... oh, the puzzles are so good. I spent my first four hours of this game barely "playing" in the traditional sense, only making enough progress to get more text so I could decode its pervasive script.

I felt like a genius once I cracked it, but there was so much more to uncover. My discord full of pals and I bounced theories and ideas back and forth among ourselves, eventually uncovering a close enough approximation of all there is to uncover to leave us basking in puzzle euphoria. Everything fits together so cleanly, all part of an organic whole, with each a-ha moment shedding new light on everything you already know.

There's plenty of room to play this game how you want, but if you want my recommendation: find a few friends, hop in voice chat, and just disengage from the combat challenges by enabling no-fail mode.

Even though its references are obvious at first glance and more obvious once you start playing, Tunic doesn’t feel at all like any of them. And contrary to what you might think, that’s a bad thing. Let me explain.

Yes, it plays like a Zelda, and Zelda 1 has been referenced many, many times by other texts for obvious reasons like the lack of gimmicky dungeons, the hidden secrets, the apparent simplicity of the gameplay… it even tries to replicate the experience of playing with a manual and taking notes in order to progress and have a better understanding of the whole thing. But it fails so miserably. The world is over-designed, abusing connections between locations, teleports, save points… The sense of discovery and adventure vanishes when there’s hardly any sense danger except for bosses and occasional fights and, in case of trouble, you will respawn in the latest save point activated (which by the way you can use even when surrounded by enemies) so there’s virtually no loss of progress.

Tunic also never gets close to the feeling of having to figure the hell out of your path in order to your destination. There’s no hidden doors or passages that are necessary to progress through any of the dungeons or important locations, all the layouts are straight forward and it ends up feeling more like a modern Zelda just without puzzles to solve. Instead, there’s always locked doors with a handle next to it and at most you’ll have to fight a bunch of minions or reach it from a different place because the path is locked. What’s most worrying for me, though, is the fact that even if the dungeons themselves don’t have puzzles or gimmicks in the traditional sense (except for one that I can recall), the world itself is built around those gimmicks in a really gamey, artificial manner, hiding rewards and blocking your progress behind unreachable places if you don’t have the necessary items or power ups like the hook or the dash.

You'll also see people talk about Dark souls but honestly at this point it seems like a joke to me that people think of the game when something has stamina, bosses and bonfire-like save points. FEZ has been said to be closer to what Tunic wants to dobut this is not as mystic, magical, obtuse, imaginative, with its craziest puzzles and challenges being better integrated into the world, less gamey. For instance, both the famous Golden Path and the mechanism to activate the mysterious monoliths and doors spread throughout the world (by following a sequence of d-pad presses that have no other utility, quite underwhelming) are revealed in the manual at some point. Which brings me to the next point: why is it there in the first place? What sense does it make in the context of the game and its world? What’s fun about having pages giving you hints or sometimes really clear explanations about where you are, where to go, how its systems work, which buttons do what, how to perform certain actions or where to find things? Wasn’t the point to explore a mystical world with lots of secrets to find and emulate the old experience of exchanging information with other people, taking notes, having to figure out things… ? And why is it both in our language and the game’s language, emulating a lost manuscript that you have to gather by exploring and overcoming challenges, in a way that doesn’t feel natural at all? The point of having a manual is being able to understand it, the point of having old manuscripts is not being able to understand them, but this in-between with words written in both languages, plus the bland foreshadowing, button mappings and game system explanations, handy little hints every once in a while etc just doesn't make any sense.

But there’s great stuff like The Quarry. Everything about that zone, from its perspective-shifting presentation (very cinematic) showing the giant door you have to reach. The place is full of enemies who attack you from different ranges and heights and show different behaviours when you approach them. They all gather around corruption, some weird purple-ish liquid that’s either just there or emanating from ancient monoliths, and that corruption shrinks your health bar (yes, your health bar, not your hp) making you play safer, experiment with the different items and power ups, manage the distances and so-on. Everything’s cool except for the existence of certain item that grants invulnerability to corruption unless you touch it. It was too good to be true.

Apesar da nota, eu realmente considero Tunic uma verdadeira masterpiece, é só que eu apenas dou 10 para jogos que me proporcionam experiências mais marcantes, jogos que eu mais amo. Mesmo Tunic sendo uma obra prima pra mim, eu lamento muito que eu seja BURRO e PREGUIÇOSO, e consequentemente não pude desfrutar de tudo que o que o jogo pode proporcionar, por não ter coragem de jogar ele como deveria ser jogado, traduzindo o idioma do jogo e tentando desvendar todos seus segredos. Então perceba que o ponto é que "O problema fui eu".

Ao mesmo tempo que eu gostei, também achei que ele se estendeu demais. Talvez porque eu fui burro, não necessariamente culpa do jogo. Por conta disso não fiz o final verdadeiro, nem to muito afim de fazer.

Os chefes tem um nível de dificuldade bem destoante do resto do jogo. Eu estava esperando só um zeldinha básico, mas fica complicado se tu não puder usar bombas incendiarias (fica a dica).

Trilha sonora é boazinha, não incomoda, mas também foram poucos momentos que curti ela. Quando a poeira baixar, vou reescutar as musicas pra ver o que se salva.

Agora o resto do jogo eu amei, trás muito bem aquela sensação de "ah, era assim que chegava aqui", bem característico de Zelda-likes e Metroidvanias. E claro, o protagonista é fofo.

I think its OK to cheat at video games. Probably not chess (#magnusisinnocent) or other competitive ones, but like, I think if you're stuck on a puzzle, and you've given it the old college try, I think there's nothing wrong with googling "spoderman how do i shot web" every once in a while. If you're legitimately stuck, what else are you going to do otherwise? Just drop the game? That's dumb.

I tried really hard not to cheat at Tunic. Really hard. I did succumb, a few times, and a few more times than that, I tried to succumb and just look up the answer but I failed to phrase it right and didn't find anything out. What's cool about Tunic is that it plays into the impulse of looking stuff up by giving you that nice old Manual. Making you find that manual, piece by piece--you have to literally build your understanding of the game page by page. Once you've got it all together, you can figure out what questions you're really asking.

Tunic sells itself as a Zelda or Soulslike; moreso than those it is a Fezlike, but even more than that this game is a Flower, Sun, and Rain-like. The game doesn't really begin until you are reading through the manual, back and forth, digging for secrets. I don't really have any idea what any of the lore in this game meant, or what any of the weird runic language is saying; what I do know is that I beat this game, and what it means to do that. And figuring that out ruled. The puzzles in this game are labyrinths, and what a joy it is to walk them.

So I needed something to cleanse the palate after 100,000 hands of Balatro and this did the trick nicely. Beat the game in 10 hours-ish and now going back to find all manual pages.

Stuff I really liked: The manual of course. Its so goddam cute, and a nice way to give hints and maps to the player. The music is superb, with some absolutely gorgeous tracks (between this and Cocoon, we're in a great era for indie soundtracks). I like how it rewards the player for exploring every inch of the maps, as secret rooms are often out of sight and obscured.

Stuff that was ok: graphics are nice, but not jaw dropping. Combat is basically Dark Souls-Lite, you got attack, dodge and then items and magic to use. Pretty basic, but serviceable. The game is pretty hard, and you will get more than a few very cheap deaths because the combat is not refined enough, and also the camera is too pulled back for really precise combat. Level design is ok, and the way the maps all connect is cool (and once again very Souls).

Stuff that got old, fast: cheap combat deaths, annoying enemies. Bosses are pretty hard, but mostly because of how spongy they are and how easy it is to get hit because of the imprecise controls and camera not being close enough to the action. Backtracking and not knowing where to go next. The manual gives you just enough hints, but man there is so much random wandering around and backtracking through areas, over and over again. Constantly pulling up the manual to check the maps to see where to go, just to get to the fast travel nexus area, to get to another area, just on the off chance there is some treasure or some room that wasn't accessible the first time through, but now with new abilities might be.....yeah that aspect of the game is tedious and boring.

With its Zelda inspired aesthetic and Dark Souls mechanics, this was a lot of fun. I like how getting the manual pages are so important, because without them you are basically wandering blindly through this world. Cute graphics, great music. Really good game, and with a few tweaks could have been a classic.

Edit: an extra 5 or so hours to get the Plat. The puzzles you need to decipher to get the secret treasures and fairies, not to mention getting all the manual pages and opening that friggin' mountain door tho.....ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. Took me about 5 hours using online guides, without those it would have been about 50 hours, if I could have done it at all. Really obscure crazy "how the fuck did anyone work this out?" kind of logic. That input to open the mountain door is just bananas on its own. I kinda respect it, but at the same time, I don't wanna have to use guides to work this shit out. If anyone got the Plat without using a guide or getting any help, I call bullshit.

For a very long time I was never a fan of ‘arty’ games. Games that try and present meta commentary about themselves and the medium as a whole. In fact, until recently, I would consider my disdain for them to be almost hostile.

That is not to say I had a real ideological opposition to the concept. No… my grievances with them were petty and personal. You see back in my youth I had very limited access to money, a sentiment I am sure many of us share. One day, young and so very impressionable me stumbled into a fortune. TWENTY Dollars! TWENTY $DIGITAL$ Dollars! This discrepancy is important. In these formative years of mine I had just recently been entrusted with a Debit Card. I had grown older, wiser, more responsible. Soon I would become an adult. Achieving autonomy and independence as a person. But not yet, I was but a child and I had a lot to learn about the world. About fiscal responsibility.

So of course, I immediately spent my life’s savings on a videogame. You would all have done the same. But no… not just any game! I had seen ads. I had read the glowing reviews. With these TWENTY dollars I had bought… something grand. Something profound. That which would flip my perspective on what videogames meant. What they could become. I was promised something beyond a childish gaming experience. I had purchased… ART!

I had spent all the money I possessed on ‘Braid’.

To say I was… disappointed, is an understatement. Not to disparage the game but young naive idealistic me expected so much more. Braid was advertised as perfect. The greatest thing I would ever play, and it was certainly different. The game was short, the puzzles weren’t especially difficult or novel, and the twist at the end? Meaningless droll. So what if it flips the perspective on what the game was about if I did not engage with that original perspective in the first place? I had spent TWENTY dollars on a game that barely held my attention for a day. A game so pretentiously full of itself that it includes one puzzle that expects you to sit and wait idle for TWENTY minutes as a platform slowly meanders across the screen before finally allowing you to grab a collectible.

Jonathan Blow? More like Jonathan Blows!

And so young (did I mention young?) impressionable me had learnt an invaluable lesson that day. Games were not only not art, but they SHOULD NEVER STRIVE TO BECOME ART. The concept of art was a pretentious blight upon the medium. Compromising the experience instead of enhancing it. Games should be gameplay focused and nothing more. It would be nice to have a good narrative and atmosphere alongside the dopamine high of overcoming challenging (but fair) obstacles but that should just be an extra detail. This pretentious meta introspective nonsense was a fad that surely not even the author believed in.

It has taken a long time for me to grow out of this perspective. I have played many games since then and have grown older and much more appreciative of games that try to explore the medium in different ways. TWENTY dollars meant so much more to me then than it does now. A paltry sum and yet the ultimate cost to me was much more severe. Even now I still am adverse to try ‘arty’ games and given the choice between playing some meta commentary puzzle introspective adventure or like the next game trying to emulate the tight tailored gameplay design philosophies of say Zelda or Dark Souls I would have to be tricked into choosing to play the former over the later.

Huh? I was supposed to be talking about Tunic? Oh… strange. What a weird unrelated tangent I went on. Well, I recommend this game to people who enjoy the tight tailored gameplay experiences in the vein of Zelda and Dark Souls. This game does not hide these inspirations and is very successful in both emulating these philosophies as well as branching out into its own identity. It is quite the tricky game. It has allowed me to forgive Jonathan Blow.

Tunic inicialmente se vende como um clone de Zelda, mas isso cai por terra depois das primeiras horas de jogo. Sabe como era jogar videogames nos anos 80/90? lembram como era antes da internet? Bem, Tunic tenta remeter a isso, usando da estrutura de jogos clássicos pra comentar sobre videogames.

Por vivermos em um país pobre como o brasil e com uma grande cultura calcada nos empréstimo e alugueis, pode não ser uma realidade tão próxima para muitos a experiência de abrir um jogo de SNES com aquele cartucho pesado, mas principalmente, um manual. Item esse que era muito amigo de jogadores daquele tempo, que por vezes davam dicas de como passar certas partes dos seus respectivos jogos.

Um dos sistemas principais de Tunic é o manual do jogo, coletar as paginas é ditar de como sua progressão do jogo ocorrerá, não sabe pra onde ir? que tal folhear o manual? não sabe resolver um puzzle? talvez tenha alguma marcação em uma pagina que possa te ajudar.

Mas devo dizer, que mesmo estando apaixonado pelo jogo, eu consegui ter mais respeito a ele quando pensei sobre o alfabeto rúnico dentro do jogo, e a minha tese vai pra: Era super comum jogar títulos em outras línguas. E acreditem, todas as escolhas da direção de arte tem alguma proposito, tipo o fato do heroi ter um túnica verde ou o escudo lembrar um Hylian Shield, pois se entende Zelda como uma franquia sinônima com videogame.

No fim das contas, é uma experiência incrível, é mais um videogame que fala sobre videogames? Sim, mas ele usa da nostalgia de um tempo e traduz isso pra mecânicas e sistemas in-game. E uma dica, se jogarem, façam o 100% e compartilhem a sua sabedoria, pois ela pode ser libertadora (serio isso é um tema do jogo, vai jogar).

I had a lot of fun playing Tunic, with its cute artstyle and simple but addicting gameplay. Exploring in this game is done really well, with hidden paths and areas everywhere. Constant progress through new key items, or stat upgrades. It really felt like there was so many paths to take at any one time, yet I rarely seemed to meet any dead ends. I don't know exactly how linear the game is since I know some abilities are definitely required for some parts, but for a game with as much freedom as it gives, I never seemed to run into roadblocks. Instead it was a case of getting a new ability and getting excited to try it out on all the old places I've already been.

And even in the times I did get lost, it didn't feel like a complete waste of time because every enemy I killed brought me one step closer to paying for that next upgrade.

The game manual is obviously the biggest thing that gives the game its identity, and most people love it or hate it. I liked it overall, I thought it generally gave enough info to at least beat the game without having to dig deep. But some of the optional stuff is insane to expect people to work out by themselves, even just being able to get the true ending.

I think what I'd have liked was a way to get the text translated in-game. So many ways they could have done this, either by having each letter be a hidden collectable so you slowly build it up, having a translation be a prize for the final boss, so only in new game plus could non-super devoted players get to understand it, or if they really wanted to make the players do it, allow them to enter letters for each symbol that automatically turns every symbol into that letter. Never telling the player if they got the right letter, so it'd be just the same as writing them down on paper, but without the need to constantly cross-reference.

The majority of the game is just perfect. I can only really criticise some of the decisions to make some aspects near impossible without an online guide, or more time dedication than necessary.