A Ship of Theseus held together by shallow references to greener pastures-- Tunic serves as a reminder that form towers over function in the eyes of many.

Tunic, I've found, serves as a sort of Rorschach test.

You probably discovered it like I did, at one of the many directs that every company seems to throw these days. There are enough out there that it makes my head spin: Sony State of Play, Nintendo Direct, Xbox Developer Direct, Summer Games Fest, Capcom Showcase, Ubisoft Forward, Annapurna Interactive Showcase, Limited Run Games Showcase, Tribeca Games Showcase, EA Play, Devolver Direct, and of course, the titan above them all: the almighty Wholesome direct.
I'm being cheeky rattling off every single one, but consider this for a moment: do you remember where you first saw Tunic? It popped up at a lot of these directs--hell it's probably popped up more than any other game ever has. And considering its seemingly endless promotion followed by immediate success both critically (just having won a DICE award at the time of writing) as well as commercially, it's easy to see Tunic as one of the newest flagbearers for the indie games movement.

But back to the Rorschach test. When you saw one of those thirty direct trailers, what did you think? Did it seem cool? Cute? Atmospheric? Challenging? Or…god forbid…comfy? Your instant reaction to Tunic says a lot about you…But I'll leave that thought as an exercise for you. Well, you and some other loquacious (now that's a billion-dollar word) reviewer. One that'll cite 18th century Irish philosophers and end the rantreview by calling you a pervert for enjoying the game or something. I won't know your secrets, but I'll tell you mine: I thought Tunic looked like derivative trite that masked its shortcomings behind a cheap veneer of cute nostalgia.

And so, at least for this review, I've become that guy.
You know the one.
The guy who dislikes the games you love. The dude unwilling to hear your game out on any level, even on its greatest strengths. They'll boil down everything you adore about a game into saying something like "it's just Dark Souls meets Earthbound." Don't you just hate that pedantic bastard? I know I do.

Overworld
So take heart. I'll give Tunic some credit before we begin the fireworks. The game looks nice--at least at a surface level. The music is fine in a vacuum (but even then, it hardly carries a sense of adventure). And beyond that…I suppose the game is all-around functional. I didn't fall through any floors, nor did the game actively try to murder me in real life--which is a plus. Finji and director Andrew Shouldice haven't congratulated my playthrough by mailing me a pipe bomb…although God help me if they ever manage to read this review. In total, you aren't getting scammed out of your money if you buy Tunic, but I'm sure you already knew that.
I recognize that it's a very low bar I’m setting here...but if you asked me if there was anything I actually liked about Tunic…then the answer would be a definitive No. There's really only things that I so deeply hate.

But still, much like how Halo and Manhunt share the same 'M' rating, I wouldn't say that Tunic deserves as much ire as say, Bioshock Infinite or Final Fantasy XIII do. After all, you can only hate a bad indie game so much. It's not like tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of overworked manhours were wasted here. There's nothing insidious or despicable here from a commercial standpoint. One guy started this project wanting to make his dream a reality--and after several hard years (plus the assistance of a small publisher) he (well, by this point, they) made the dream come true. And that's fine and all, good for them. But there are still many things that I find Tunic stands for in the greater context of the gaming--particularly indie gaming--ecosystem we live in. Both on the side of those who create, as well as those consume and critique…and I guess also the bastards who put on 'directs' too. I might not take issue with the director of the game (please don't mail me a pipe bomb), but the rest of this, I will take issue with.

To start, we should probably deal with the elephant in the room: originality.

It's a given that art shouldn’t have to strive towards pure innovation. Everything we create was inspired by someone else's work. And even before there were artists to take inspiration from, our ancestors merely imitated the natural world around them. Sure, there are those special works that do change the game, but you and I understand the gaussian nature of art: if everything was "special," nothing would be.

So every game can be boiled down to "Skyrim with guns." But good art--the stuff worth going out of your way for--still needs something special about it. There has to be something to separate it from its artistic realtives, even if it ultimately fails to escape its influences.

And it's here that the Rorschach test kicks in again.

Clearly this isn't a hang-up for many people--developers and players alike. How many Castlevania, Mega Man, Dark Souls, Animal Crossing, and yes, Zelda-likes have you seen next to Tunic at these online events? Were you excited for that new quirky Earthbound inspired RPG with a dark edge? That wasn't a rhetorical question: were you? Because if so…that's fine. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Stop reading this review and go play Tunic, you'd probably enjoy it. And that's a good thing. You should enjoy more things--provided you aren't getting anyone killed in the process.

But for those of you who are like me--scratching their heads at why someone would want to play a worse version of an extant classic--then you probably also see Tunic as one of the most desperate indie games of the lot. Everything about it--from a surface (and therefore marketable) level--was custom-fit to make you think of better games. For Christ sake just think about the title of the game. Take a look at its box art, it's on this very same webpage right now! I haven't seen an indie game this transparent since the developers of Oddity flat-out named their project Mother 4. It's clear as day that Shouldice wants you to think of Zelda when you buy his game--so I'll be thinking about that while I review it too.

Once you actually see the game in motion, you'd very quickly understand Tunic's other major design pillar: Dark Souls. Not even just in terms of combat--parries, dodge rolls and all that--but instead also in terms of narrative design, world building, and holistic gameplay design too. Hell, if it were just knocking off the dodge rolls, then I'd only charge it with the misdemeanor of ripping off Bastion. But merely taking minor inspiration isn't quite Tunic's style. We are stripping the walls down to the copper here.

Hints on How to Destroy Creativity
So yes, Tunic is in essence Dark Souls meets Zelda, with some other obvious influences thrown in as well. You might think this combination is sensible--both are fantasy/action-adventure games after all--but closer scrutinization reveals fatal problems when merging the two.

First and foremost is a sense of tone. Dark Souls and Zelda might belong to the same genre when you squint, but they are polar opposites in holistic presentation. Sure, graphics and art style are one obvious comparison, but we can go further than that. Zelda games are often beloved for their quirky and memorable NPC cast while Souls games are mainly (and intentionally) devoid of life beyond a scant few characters. There's certainly been a few NPCs that have managed to gain traction--you can probably guess the one in particular I'm thinking about, but you're mainly playing a Souls game to experience the lack of community, not the presence of it. Compare that to iconic Zelda titles like Wind Waker or Majora's Mask and you'll start to see the point here. Even Breath of the Wild, which clearly takes after Souls games, still has a metric ton of NPCs and character interactions that drive a clean narrative.

Tunic is taking from Dark Souls here wholesale--meaning we're dead-on-arrival when it comes to building a real sense of the 'world' or the characters that occupy it. Locations are primarily empty and filled with text we can't understand (well, without a lot of elbow grease, but we'll get to that later). If you're lucky you might also find an NPC... who you also can't understand.

The entire world of Tunic feels incredibly sparse and dull as a consequence. It certainly doesn't help that it's lacking in the depth of lore that keeps a Souls game interesting and, more importantly atmospheric. I don't feel like I'm trawling through the solemn ruins of a civilization fallen from grace--piecing together the forgotten past like an archeologist wandering onto Troy. Instead, I feel like I'm wandering through a legion of half-empty rooms fit for nothing but tedious dodge rolling.

The game also fails to capture any true sense of 'adventure' that most beloved Zelda games have. Without any characters or clearly understood stakes to drive us, there's no real motivation for most of the game's runtime. Are we saving the world? Saving 'the princess?' Protecting our friends? Finding ourselves? There's just nothing. What little drive we do get comes too little and too late--a decision that feels more like rubbing salt in the wound than anything else. Even the original The Legend of Zelda gave us a text crawl and a plot insert in the manual to prep players for (what was at the time) a grand adventure. Tunic instead opts to backload everything way past the point of initial interest…all in the name of preserving its godawful manual…A manual that we'll get to in due time.

The Legend of Zelda ABCs
But now that I've described in world of Tunic in concept, how does it actually feel when you're roaming through it? Frankly, it's yet another chaotic mess. The game manages to combine the worst of Zelda's ideas with some of the most uninspired and underbaked indie isometric game design principles I've ever seen. It's genuinely nothing short of stunning. I have to commend the developer for making the world feel so miniscule yet such a chore to navigate at the same time. A feat that's doubly impressive when you consider just how small Tunic's world is.

The game is, of course, displayed with a 3/4th isometric perspective. This is a design choice with a long list of well-understood strengths and weaknesses--the style has been around nearly as long as the entire industry has. And yet…it feels like Shouldice failed to take any of that into consideration when designing Tunic.

The game aspires for the best of 2D Zelda's world design--the Link to the Past and Link's Awakening type of world. But its isometric qualities, combined with some head-scratching design choices, create a chaotic world that quickly becomes a pain to explore. If you want a basic overview of what I mean, pull up the Tunic overworld and compare it to the overworld from Link's Awakening while I talk.

Beyond the immediate difference in size, one thing that should catch your eye is just how vertical Tunic is compared to Zelda. And sure, you can certainly get much higher in Zelda…but when you think about the ratio between flat ground and elevations shifts, Tunic has it beat tenfold. Combine this with the fact that many paths are dead ends, and you get some of the most frustrating world traversal I've ever seen. You often find yourself walking from dead-end to dead end, or staring at the path you'd like to go down, only barred by the slightest difference in elevation you can't reconcile. It's completely lacking in all the finer nuances that makes exploration in a Zelda game feel so natural. Once again made impressive considering how tiny Tunic's world actually is--even compared to a Game Boy title from 1993.

You eventually receive a hookshot-esque ability to aid in world traversal, but that's only really a band-aid for the problem. For one, it doesn't magically reconcile the frustration you feel when you don't have the hookshot. For another, it doesn't fix the harsh truth: flat Tunic's overworld is dull at best--usually featuring only a few uninspired enemies to fight and basic structures to explore. It's not something you're going to be remembering like your first time in Hyrule.

And so, we once again return to the conceptual problems of cribbing the world of a Souls game without actually matching any of its interesting qualities. There's nothing to do, no one to see, no interesting places to visit, and no stakes to be had through exploration. The world is merely a vehicle to perform middling dodge-roll Bastion combat and solve "puzzles"--something you and I are going to have to tackle here in a second. Simply put, there is no adventure here, only frustration and boredom. An extra demerit for a soundtrack that is fine, but ultimately uninspired indie-game fanfare--ill-fitting for inspiring player wanderlust.

Basic Wisdom
But if there's one thing that any fan of Tunic will never fail to bring up, it's the game's oh-so-inspired puzzles and game manual. For many, this seems to be the game, or at least all they're willing to actually talk about from it. But it's here, maybe more than anywhere else, is where that Rorschach test comes in. More specifically, how each and every one of us interprets the concept of a puzzle as well as what we value in terms of interactive 'challenge.' So let's get down to brass tacks, shall we?

Tunic's puzzles are, in two words: purposefully obtuse. Which might make you scratch your head if you haven't played the game. Why would a developer want their puzzles to be perceived as obtuse? Isn't that usually seen as a negative trait? To understand, you have to go back to the root of Tunic's design philosophy: it mindlessly mimics what it thinks are the 'best' traits from other games. People love the classics--or, more realistically, pay lip-service to actually loving them--and everyone says hose games are Nintendo Hard, right? So if everyone loves Zelda, and Zelda is apparently obtuse, then we need to be obtuse too! Right? Well obviously Shouldice was wise enough to know that wouldn't quite fly in 2022. So once again, things were altered to fit the Tunic mold: for the worse yet again.

Tunic's puzzles are obtuse in ways that attempt to mimic the supposed 'spirit' of retro games, while giving you affordances to ensure you can feasibly solve them better than a kid in 1989 stuck with a copy of Simon's Quest. What sort of affordances you might ask? Well, mainly just a copy of Nintendo Power. Or to be more specific, the shittiest issue of Nintendo Power ever produced.

Players can collect 'pages' of the game's own instruction manual while exploring the world, (in theory) building up their knowledge of the game's mechanics and world as they adventure. But, as usual, Tunic shits the bed with the same mindless design quirks as before. For one, the manual isn't actually written in English (or your language of choice)…well at least not always written in English. It's written in English when it feels like it. Otherwise, it's written with the same cryptic language the NPCs and world signage use. And when I say 'otherwise,' I mean most of the fucking time.

So you're given this manual, that's apparently trying to mimic the feeling of cracking open a new Nintendo Power back in 1988, and you can't even read the damn thing.

Why? Because Tunic can't help itself.

You ever play one of those shitty indie horror games? I'm not going to name any names, but you know the ones. They're usually inspired by Creepypasta, found-footage cinema, and more recently Analog Horror. Consequently, much like their often amateur influences, these games can't help but pack in 'spooky' moments even when they don't make any goddamn sense. They're more focused on getting a cheap jump out of you than they are in designing a coherent (and frankly, engaging) world. Just think about all the Analog Horror videos out there. How many of them ruin what might be an otherwise interesting premise with some of the stupidest attempts to scare you with spooky text and freaky faces every five seconds? Even when those moments totally kill the mood, tone, or general pacing that would have greatly benefited their project? They just can't help themselves.

And in that same spirit, Tunic can't help itself either. It decided that it needs to pay homage to retro games ('pay homage' having more quotes around it than an antisemitic rant on 4chan) in every way possible. And it its mindless and desperate pursuit of this goal, all coherent design considerations get caught in the crossfire. So fuck it, the manual is apparently a bilingual disaster moonlighting as Schrodinger's instruction manual.

Have you considered the philosophical considerations here? The manual is…inside the game? When I pause the game, I see myself playing the game through a CRT? Why are there handle scribbled notes in the manual sometimes? Are we doing some postmodern meta-narrative play here? If so, why? What are we trying to say? Or better yet, what does all of this meaningfully give me as a consumer of this art? Well don't you worry buddy. I'm sure I sound like a broken record by now…but luckily for you, Shouldice seemingly failed consider any of this shit, so I guess you really don't have to either.

But I think you know the real answer as much as I do. It's the same 'why' used as a means for all of these godawful ends: nostalgia. Or to be more accurate (and to paraphrase James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem fame): "Borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties." It's meant to make you feel 'warm and fuzzy' inside. To give you some bastardized sense of wonder from your childhood. And for that, I truly hate Tunic. It's bereft of any real or admirable qualities. Its only real aim is to imitate and remind us of other, better things. It truly has nothing to say with its own merits, on any level.

And you gotta understand, I agree this would sound nitty-picky as fuck if not for the fact that the entire fucking point of the game is the goddamn manual. Without it, we only have yet more uninspired indie slop that lies somewhere on the Bermuda Tringle between Bastion, Zelda, and Dark Souls. So we're going to have to scrutinize the game for these elements--god knows the combat design offers nothing worth mentioning. So anyways, back to the actual puzzles.

When I said 'purposefully obtuse' earlier, I didn't just mean that you'd require a game manual to solve puzzles--although you will need the manual to solve the most important puzzles in the game. I also meant it in the sense that Tunic's puzzles will challenge critical players in ways they probably haven't been challenged in for a long time. Not because the puzzles are particularly difficult. I mean, the notion of a puzzle's 'difficulty' is incredibly vague and abstract to begin with. But instead, I mean that these puzzles will challenge you because they'll make you consider why we even have game puzzles in the first place.

Think about that for a second. Genuinely. Why do we even have puzzles in games? How come I have to figure out which wall to bomb in a Zelda dungeon? What torch to light? What lever to pull? What exactly am I getting out of these experiences--both from the perspective of recreational play and critical engagement? There's no correct answer to this question--it's for all of us to decide. But I think it's important to consider your own reasons why, and how games like Tunic (do or don't) fail to live up to those expectations.

For some, the fun is in the art of the puzzle itself. It doesn't really matter the context--the how or why of the thing. All that matters is how much you have to wrestle with the bastard to suss out the answer. For these kinds of people, the joy of the puzzle is all about the thrill of the hunt. You probably aren't one of these kinds of people--but you definitely know at least a few folks like this. The kinds of people who do complex logic puzzles, crosswords, riddles, and whatever else on a daily basis. The kind of person who'd probably also annoy you with those puzzles on a daily basis too (sorry Joel, but I know you ain't readin' this shit anyways). Sometimes this kind of person grows up to be a good mathematician or scientist--and that's cool. We all oughta respect that desire and pursuit for the unknowns of human knowledge.

But I don't fit into that category, despite my background in mathematics, language, and computer science--all fields fraught with these sorts of people. At least, I don't fit into that background when it comes to how I value games. Let me explain why.

I find that puzzles are often the weakest part of any game I play. And no, it's not because I get my ass kicked by them…although sometimes I do get my ass kicked by them. It's because nearly all puzzles are, by definition, built upon layers and layers of arbitrary societal constructs and very fuzzy logic. Puzzles are made by humans, for humans. Which means that many of them will have lots of local cultural and societal values inherently encoded into them.

How to Make an Adventure Map!

You ever heard of Nuclear Semiotics? Now there's a real interesting puzzle if there ever was one. If you're not aware, I'll clue you in real quick. Sorry to turn into the guy I was just describing above, but this'll all make sense in a moment.

So we've got all this nuclear waste that we've been making over the last century. Obviously that stuff isn't going anywhere anytime soon--and we're probably going to keep making more of it too. You obviously know nuclear stuff is extremely deadly…but how did you know that? Are there any actual innate traits of nuclear waste that tell you that it's deadly? No, there aren't. You only know it's going to kill you because someone else told you that. So let's say its eight thousand years from now: everything you know and love is gone--all the language, culture, beliefs, and (most importantly) scientific knowledge…gone. Some blokes go digging where they shouldn't and end up stumbling upon nuclear waste. How do we, the great people of 2023--kickin' back at home and playing Tunic--leave behind messages to warn people waaaaaaaaaaaaay into the future to stay the hell away from nuclear waste and not get everyone killed?

It might sound like a simple problem to you, but it's actually a damn hard one. You could give some simple answers like using 'basic symbols' and 'universal warning signs' to deter people, but what the hell is universal or basic? We can't even begin to predict what culture is going to be like thousands of years from now. Want to use a symbol of a skull? There are already cultures that associate skulls with positive concepts. A nuclear radiation symbol? We made that shit up in the 40s--it has no clear or inherent meaning baked into it. For all intents and purposes, the people of the far-flung future might as well be total aliens to us. And when you sit down and try to actually tackle this problem, you realize how difficult it is to get across just about anything without a clear sense of shared culture that bind together meaning.

So let me tie this back to video game puzzles. Think about that one puzzle you fucking hate. You know the one. The one that kept you going for hours. The one that pissed you off so much that you wouldn't even look it up. That bastard was challenging you--and you were not about to back down. Maybe after hours of trying every possible solution, every possible option, you finally get it…at long last. Maybe you overlooked some now obvious part of the puzzle, or maybe it really was just total horseshit.

But consider this: even if that puzzle was totally unfair to you, was it really bullshit for everyone else? Even for the person who designed it? Obviously the answer is "no." That puzzle made perfect sense to someone else. I bet if you had a friend in the room watching you struggle, they probably figured the damn thing out in ten seconds. Hell, you've probably been in that seat before too. Puzzles are a part of our collective culture. They only start to make sense when you can intuit how the designer might be thinking. You have to be on the same wavelength. Obviously we're never synced up with perfectly, but there's enough overlap to make everything work, even if it means there's a lot of jank in the process. But without shared culture, almost all puzzles begin to fall apart. Remember: even logic itself is an arbitrary human construct--one bound by cultural and societal understandings. Remember: numbers ain't even real. Only the most brilliant of puzzle games (Tetris, Portal) can come close to escaping these issues--because they rely on basic human intuition (geometric and physical, in this case).

So consider the nightmare scenario: a game where every single puzzle was one of those puzzles for you, and only you. Your buddy beat the game in six hours while it takes you sixty. Let's call this game Kings Quest. You can probably take one or two of those types of puzzles in a game--even if it greatly detracts from your enjoyment--but do you think you could really stomach a whole game's worth? How would you even review it? Would you just spend the entire write-up saying the puzzles were 'unfair' or 'arbitrary?' What will you have to say when KingsQuestLover77 leaves a snide comment implying you're a 'fucking moron?'

I'm making a worst case scenario here to illustrate my point, but let's also consider the opposite case too. Imagine, if you will, the Perfect Puzzle. Capital P and all. What exactly does that puzzle look like to you? Maybe you can't picture the actual puzzle itself, but we can flatten the question down into a lower dimension to make things easier: What does the difficulty curve of the Perfect Puzzle look like to you? How long would it take you to solve it? How much would you have to struggle to make it feel worth it? What parts of your intelligence is that puzzle challenging? What's your reward for solving the puzzle?

It's not hard to understand why I'm so critical of puzzle design when you think about these conceptual launching points. Puzzles are a minefield with infinite pitfalls. A real philosophic nightmare. You might be starting to wonder how I manage to stomach any games focused on puzzles. I mean, I've given plenty of Zelda games the five-star rating--how does that make any sense? And more importantly, why do those games get a pass while Tunic gets the unhinged review? I think the answer is pretty simple. Zelda games (and the like) don't actually have 'real' puzzles--they just make us think we're solving puzzles.

Zelda is--obviously--an adventure game series set in a fantastical world. That distinct sense of grand fantasy and adventure helped Zelda stand out from the crowd back in the day. You could probably say the same thing about similar successful competitors like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy too. Jumping around as Mario or doing sick flips in Excitebike was cool, but it was undeniable that audiences would want something deeper. Something more…immersive. Games are an expression of play, after all--and it would only be a matter of time before role playing took off in the (home console) video gaming space too. But Zelda, of course, was different. While DQ and FF had you fumbling through turn-based battles and RPG stat screens to enact a sense of heroic combat, Zelda immersed you directly into the fights. It certainly wasn't revolutionary in this regard--it stood on the shoulders of greats like Tower of Druaga and Hydlide--but it presented the action role-playing game with a level of ease, polish, and immersion that we hadn't seen up to that point.

In other words, Zelda took something that was inaccessible to us--being a bold adventurer braving uncharted territory--and allowed the average joe to really pretend they were one. It's easy to understand that we're not actually kicking ass when we press a single button to engage in life-or-death combat (although goddamn it, it can really feel like it sometimes). But it's perhaps a little less obvious to understand how Zelda has crafted dungeon puzzles to elicit the same response from us. Instead of requiring any true problem solving--like we'd consider a good riddle or puzzle would--Zelda (and its derivatives) only ask you to go down a (very short) list of possible answers for any given problem. Take Ocarina of Time for an example. When confronted with a problem, the answer is always going involve one of a few things:

1) Bombing a wall
2) Lighting a torch
3) Hitting an object
4) Pressing a switch
5) Moving a block/object
6) Killing an enemy

With this very short list, we've probably cracked 90% of the puzzles you'd find in any Zelda game. If you expand the list to ten possibilities (to include a few of the funkier edge cases) we'd probably get nearly every puzzle in every game in the entire franchise.

Obviously all puzzles in a computer game exist within a bounded set of possible answers--(real) computers aren't infinite after all. But Zelda has successfully maintained decades of broad appeal (critically and commercially) by basically removing the critical thinking element from the equation. Just as you press a single button to slay your foes, you don't actually find ingenious solutions to puzzles--you're just role playing as a guy who does.

And so, Zelda pulls off an impressive hat trick--It makes you feel smart for solving puzzles, but in reality, you were performing a very shallow knowledge check. A knowledge check so simple that even a small child could figure it all out. This might be exactly why you aren't into Zelda…but wouldn't you agree that's the beauty of the series? It's a franchise that just about anyone could enjoy. It solves the philosophical quandaries I laid out by essentially side-stepping the question entirely. They aren't really puzzles--or at least not really good puzzles. They just require you to learn a simple design language--one that's so intuitive that just about anyone could become fluent within hours. Kids and casuals and get on board easily, perhaps finding a moderate challenge, while hardcore players can enjoy the simple and smooth satisfaction of blastin' through puzzles like you're some kind of gamer Einstein.

My distinction between Zelda puzzles and a 'good puzzle' might still seem fuzzy to you. Let me try and elaborate with another point. A 'good' puzzle wouldn't be something everyone could solve…right? If a puzzle had a success rate of near 100%, then we'd all probably find it too trivial to enjoy. A good puzzle is non-trivial--meaning that plenty of people are gonna get stumped in the process. Let's say for the sake of argument that…I don't know…the puzzle has a solve rate of 40%. This would be all well and good in real life--but what about in games?

Think about it for a second.

Imagine you're back in the time period Tunic wishes it were found in. Maybe you're too broke to afford a copy of this month's Nintendo Power and you don't have any friends at school who bought the same wack-ass Zelda knock-off you did. No one is going to help you when that almighty 40% filter makes you call uncle. So what do you do? You either drop the game entirely or suffer until you brute force a solution--maybe coming to hate the game in the process. This is, by most game designers' account, a failure of a puzzle. Now imagine a game that's filled with 'em. Suddenly, you're back to the nightmare scenario I laid out just a few minutes ago. When you get stumped by a puzzle in game…that's it, game over.

When you chew on this thought for a second, it doesn't take long for something to become obvious: Non-trivial puzzles--which must contain 'good' puzzles as a subset--are a self-destructive aspect of any genre of video game.

Consider this: which genre was the poster boy for 'real' puzzles? There's only one good answer: the point-and-click/adventure game. If you're somehow reading this review fifteen years from now, I wouldn't blame you for missing the answer. You probably haven't played any games in the genre. Why? Well, because as the legendary Old Man Murray (later known as the writing duo behind Portal) pointed out in their 2000 writeup Death of Adventure Games, the adventure game genre "committed suicide" about twenty years before my time of writing. How? By endlessly aspiring to greater heights of puzzle complexity--pissing off nearly everyone in the process.

This isn't to say that games can't be bereft of conventional puzzles--but they often have to take a clear back-seat to other elements that strongly draw gamers in. The short lived point-and-click game revival of the 2010s was carried on the back of recognizable properties (Walking Dead, Back to the Future, Fables, Minecraft) and a heavy emphasis on narrative--not puzzle-based qualities. Sure, Gabriel Knight certainly had a narrative…but I think I know why most people were playing Walking Dead instead. Even then, it only took a few years before this entire ecosystem also collapsed in on itself. It seems at this point that the only games completely able to escape this black hole are the Ace Attorney, and Danganronpa series. But once again I'd argue these games are being carried entirely by a vivid cast of characters and memorable narratives, not their puzzles. Forget sex--fandoms sell, baby.

It's clear then that I'm saying Tunic doesn't follow that Zelda formula, right? Right. Instead, understanding its puzzles requires us to confront the final third of Tunic's influence brew. Its secret sauce, if you will: Fez.

Go North Young Man!
Man, remember Fez? It's been over a decade since that game took the industry by storm. And when I say 'by storm' I mean like a goddamn hurricane. It feels silly looking back on it now, but you'd swear Phil Fish's short and tyrannical reign on the throne of indie gamedom was going to blow away everything not welded to the foundations. Of course, Fish's antics--combined with the toll that Fez took on him--would lead to his self-exile. But it's wild to think about just what sort of state the gaming world (and the internet at large) was in back then. Considering the heinous shit we've seen from other 'old man indie' luminaries like Notch (Supernazi) and Johnathan Blow (Antivaxxer) in recent years, it even makes me nostalgic for the time when the most controversial thing to come out of an indie dev's mouth was "suck my dick."

But anyways…Fez. Do you like Fez? I really don't. Well, to be fair, I haven't played it since launch--and I wasn't even a teenager then--so who knows what the hell I'd think about it today. But outside of a charming art style (one teetering on the edge of fatigue in a 2012 indie game era), I really didn't take away much from the game. But no matter who you are--a Fez enjoyer or not--I can guarantee you'd agree that Tunic is no Fez. Much like the other two key pieces of this puzzle, Tunic barely manages a pale imitation of Fez. On average, Tunic's idea of exploration and puzzle solving is to just have you walk behind objects that obscure your vision (thanks to the isometric perspective) and…whabam! You found a thing! Sometimes it even breaks its own rule--randomly rotating the camera when you get to an arbitrary location to reveal a bunch of hidden stuff where you couldn't see it. It doesn't really make sense in isolation--considering you have no meaningful control of the camera anywhere else in the game. But when you consider the Fez angle, it starts to make a lot more sense: the game is half-assedly biting Fez just like it half-assedly bites Zelda and Dark Souls.

Of course those are just the trivial puzzles--not the real star of the show. For beating this game…really beating it, is going to require a lot more out of you. Much like Fez, Tunic turns to proper puzzles and bona fide code deciphering in its final hours. And here, we return to the problem of the proper puzzle. Many of Tunic's greatest brain-busters are puzzles for the sake of puzzles--not puzzles for the sake of gameplay. Most of them require you to recognize cyphers described both within the game's manual and within the game's world--making you connect the dots between the two in order to solve a given riddle. It might sound interesting, but it usually just adds up to recognizing that a door, material, or wall has a geometric pattern on it. Then you stand by the pattern, input that same pattern on your d-pad (a-la an old-fashioned a cheat code) and…puzzle solved. It might sound trivial, but it's often not--requiring you to hyper scrutinize details of the world in order to infer the patterns required for solving the puzzle.

And don't get me wrong, if you're a fan of real puzzles then you'll probably get a kick out of this--much like you probably would with Fez and a handful of other games. But I still think there's a catch, even if you actually are one of those people. I'm almost certain you'll find the puzzles ultimately lacking compared to ones you'd find outside of video games. Frankly the fact that it is a video game is what holds them back. Not to say that a game couldn't achieve those pure and spectacular puzzle 'highs' that you desire--but it probably wouldn't have nearly enough mass appeal to get the game made in the first place. Games ultimately have to water themselves down in order to see any real release. After all, if the puzzles don't have a high solve rate, then people will probably hate 'em. I know I probably will.

But at some point Tunic's puzzles start to teeter on absurd for the rest of us. I'm out here scrutinizing the patterns of flowers on the ground--furiously mashing inputs into my d-pad trying to guess exactly what the hell the game wants out of me. And the whole time I'm thinking…

"All of this is in service of what, exactly?" Why am I trying to decipher nearly every object in the game for arbitrary patterns that may or may not exist? What am I actually getting out of this?"

It's not making me feel more like an adventurer exploring some mysterious dungeon, nor is it making me feel particularly smart either. It's a puzzle for the sake of the puzzle--and I'm just not into that, nor do I think most other people are either.

This all culminates with perhaps the most ridiculous puzzle I've ever encountered in a game--the final puzzle needed to unlock Tunic's 'true ending'. In essence, it requires you to examine every single page of the manual for a symbol that looks like an arrow sign (or some other indication of directionality). After discovering all one hundred of these symbols, you need to stand before a door and input all one-hundred directions in a row, perfectly. That might not sound that bad to you…but when you're sitting there, trying to actually input the answer…it really sells the absurdity of it all. It'll start to make you go insane if you're not careful.

I'm the kind of guy who gets mixed up if I have to pull a specific digit out of a string of ten numbers. Imagine trying to make sure you didn't misinput direction number fucking 74 out of 100. Moreover, imagine accidentally writing down the wrong direction for only one of the fucking hundred you need input. It's nothing short of pure madness.

Seriously, it's the kind of puzzle that'll bring your faith in gaming to its knees. You'll wonder what you're doing there. You'll wonder why you're struggling through all of this. You'll wonder what the gain is. And I don't just mean some sort of superfluous in-game reward--you'll start questioning what the hell you're doing manipulating a plastic toy when you've only got so many seconds left on this fleeting earth. And for that, I'm almost impressed in Tunic's ability to induce a gamer existential crisis like it was David Lynch's Rabbits.

Bravo.

And so, it's here that Tunic fails more than in any other design category. The puzzles are either too trivial or too arbitrary--with both ends of the spectrum being a shittier version of Fez. More importantly, none of the puzzle solving is really being done in the name of the game--it's being done for the sake of the puzzle. Of course, most players--including many fellow reviewers on this same page--will never have to reconcile with any of this. They either played the base game (without attempting to get the proper ending) or simply looked up solutions with a walkthrough. I've certainly used my fair share of walkthroughs before--sometimes it'd be a fool's errand not to--but you have to ask yourself something here. If I'm not playing Tunic for these puzzles--the entire purpose of the game's manual, it's central gimmick--then what the hell am I here for? The boring and uninspired world? The hyper-derivative and banal combat? The cute fox? In every sense, Tunic has failed me.

The Magic and the Mystery
But to simply fail would only get you so much ire--at least from me. There are plenty of failures that won't illicit my backloggd version of the Ninety-Five Theses. Tunic goes one step further. There's something deep in there--something that reviles me beyond its collection of underthought influences. It's really the entire framing of the thing that sends me over the edge.

Tunic isn't just another indie game--although it is also just another indie game. Tunic is really a twisted ode to retro gaming, childhood wanderlust, and nostalgia.

And I say 'twisted' because Tunic doesn't operate with the premises underlining the real retro games it seeks to emulate. It's instead based on the underinformed perception the general public has of those games. And when I say general public, I don't just mean your mom and pop. It seems this category has grown to encompass people within the gaming industry that I hoped would know better--professional critics. Hell, based on the response on this page, it looks like it also includes much of the enthusiast community as well.

A common selling point I've seen thrown around is how Tunic brilliantly interweaves its manual into the game--something we tackled in the previous section. But another point of praise I've seen rewarded is how it so authentically captures the magical feeling of being a child playing an NES game like Zelda. It 'understands' the retro gaming condition and masterfully interweaves it into the game's world and puzzle design. Tunic, in a sense, becomes retro gaming. Or perhaps it even goes beyond retro gaming and becomes a towering love letter to the 'magic' of gaming.

This line of thinking makes a sort of sense. But it falls apart when you scrutinize it for more than five seconds. Let's try to consider for a second where this supposed 'difficulty' came from--that dreaded Nintendo Hard.

Console game designers were primarily coming directly from the arcade industry--and the veterans among them came from the electromechanical amusement industry, a group preceding video gaming itself. It comes as no surprise then that arcades absorbed the concept of difficulty curves from their big brother electromechanical games. Specifically, EM games taught video gaming about the art of the quarter-muncher. No good carnival game lasts more than a few minutes--and neither would Pac-Man if you weren't particularly good at it.

The very early days of console gaming saw mainly arcade ports, but designers would start to overhaul their design language as they realized the virtues inherent to home gaming. This great transition would be a time of reckoning for many--as game designers were unsure of what was 'too hard' or 'too cryptic' considering the sharp change of venue. After all, if you were essentially being given infinite 'free play' access at home (once you bought the damn thing at the local Sears), so how much difficulty was really too much? It was a venerable wild west--one that would rise and fall roughly during the height of the Famicom's success. Or--to be more American-centric--during the introduction of the NES to innocent, unsuspecting American children.

One thing was certain though--a lot of games from this period were total junk. There really wasn't much in the way of 'baseline' quality for many consumers (and designers), so just about anything went. It wasn't just the fault of publishers like LJN or Konami's shell company Ultra Games either. Nintendo's own games sometimes wouldn't make the cut for international release. So if even developers like Tezuka were going insane, then who would stick their neck out for the little guy? It ended up being the marketing and PR department's job to smooth over these rough spots. And so, publications like Nintendo Power (or the now-infamous Nintendo Power Line) were created, mythical figures like Howard Philips and Gail Tilden were immortalized, and game manuals were fastidiously designed to support kids and provide the last line of defense from angry parents demanding refunds.

But you gotta remember that these games--the types that James Rolfe and co. would later immortalize--were really more the exception than the rule. If you don't believe me, go check any list of the best-selling NES games and how many games you find associated with this mythos. Hell, the king of them all--Simon's Quest--couldn't even crack the top 75 best-selling NES games. The reality is unfortunately a lot less interesting: you'll find five Excitebikes or Kung-Fus for every Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. More importantly, you'll see fifteen Ice Hockeys for every Zelda. The world of 'retro game' that Tunic invents--and that players swear to remember--didn't really exist as a cohesive ecosystem in the first place. Games outside of Zelda that get associated with the 'magic and mystery' of fantasy lore--Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, etc.--basically sold next to nothing in the states. Dragon Quest, (or Dragon Warrior as it was retitled in the US) did so poorly that Nintendo of America had to start randomly shipping copies to kids for free in hopes that they would get hooked on it. I'm sure you can guess how well that strategy worked.

But you know what? Maybe that's being a little too nitpicky of me. Zelda did exist, after all. It's one of the ten best-selling NES games too--despite getting it's ass whooped by Duck Hunt and being given a run for its money by the likes of Dr. Mario. So why don't we narrow down the lens of scrutiny to just Zelda then? Tunic is just a few slight visual changes away from being charged with copyright infringement anyways, so let's pit the two against each other in the ring.

If you're still reading, it won't surprise you to hear that Tunic also fails to reasonably emulate the Zelda experience in any notable way. If you want to get a better idea of what I mean, pull up the Legend of Zelda game manual and the Tunic manual too.

There appears to be a lot of similarities from a surface level--both manuals start off with a plot overview, basic controls, and some general mechanics. But, if you're old enough to have enjoyed game manuals you'll probably recognize that's nothing particularly unique to Zelda or even adventure gaming.

Things start to get interesting in the later portions of the manual. In the case of Zelda, a lot of time is spent painstakingly explaining nearly every aspect of the game in clear prose--the overworld, dungeons, enemies, items, interactions, etc. It might seem like overkill now, but you gotta remember: this was a different time. It was a time where customers might have never touched a video game before slapping down $49.99 on yours (that's nearly one hundred and forty big ones today!!). You kind of had to pour over each facet of the game in meticulous detail. And so, Zelda clues you in on every single enemy--what they are, what they do, and how they're gonna fuck you up. Not to mention info on how every single item works in clear English. There is no mystery here, it's damn near encyclopedic.

But of course, items and enemies are only one part of the equation. The exploration is where it's at anyways, right? Well, yes and no. In truth, Zelda does what every other adventure contemporary did in this era. Fearing a negative response from novice and confused gamers, the Zelda manual just straight up tells you exactly where to go and what to do for a sizable chunk of the game's content. The locations of the first two dungeons are spelled out for you perfectly--as well as complete maps of those dungeons: locations of items, enemies, and all. The overworld map is nearly filled out in its entirety. It even shows you the location of about half the dungeons and almost every other location of interest.

Of course that isn't the whole game--it's perhaps 70% of a game guide--but I think the difference is clear. Zelda is about immersing yourself in the role of a hero on a grand adventure. The series has continuously updated and expanded every facet of itself--just compare Zelda to Ocarina to Breath of the Wild--but it's always been oriented around that core idea. Everything Zelda does is in service of that idea. And don't get me wrong. Man, does it often stumble to reach those great heights. Be it the tedium found in Wind Waker's sailing or in being forced into Link's boot wardrobe every five seconds in Ocarina's infamous Water Temple. But despite all the hangups, I've never once felt that Zelda has deviated from that noble goal. From the characters, to the worlds, to the dungeons, to the combat, to the puzzles--Zelda has only found meaningful competition through its clunkier, nerdier western cousin The Elder Scrolls.

And yet, with Tunic, I feel none of that. I only feel an insistence on a meta-awareness of gaming itself. A juvenile postmodern framing. A smokescreen that tries to distract from the game's clear shortcomings.

But here's the rub…what really gets me:

Tunic's referential nature only serves to position criticisms of the game--narrative or mechanical--as a feature of retro gaming itself.

It's not that the story is underbaked, or that the world is non-existent, or that the combat is tedious, or that the puzzles are trite--it's actually just a reference to a different video game! Of course, don't ask Shouldice, Finji, or their lawyers what those specific references actually are…but I think you get the idea.

It's actually pretty crazy when you think about it. Not only were these adventure games not even that representative of retro games as a whole--Tunic fails to even represent the few adventure games it claims made up the era. Hell, more than that: what it takes from those few games are the worst elements of those games and the surface-level aesthetics that bind them together. It's as if Shouldice saw the infamous Tornado puzzle in Simon's Quest or Link's roleplay of Moses in The Legend of Zelda and confused his 'how (not) to make a good game' notebooks.

But now that I've laid all this down, lets return to my original question: why do we even have puzzles in games? Based on what I've said, I think the answer for Zelda is clear--it's to deepen the fantasy/adventure role-playing experience. You could argue that Tunic is also using puzzles to perform a sort of role play though--the nostalgic role-playing experience.

That's right. If games like Zelda and Dark Souls are all about stepping into the shoes of an adventurer exploring a grand world, Tunic is about stepping into the shoes of a child exploring games like Zelda or Dark Souls for the first time.

That's kinda fucked, innit? It's culture eating itself--the worst elements of lazy postmodern art. It's metanarrative without anything substantial to say or any real emotions to explore. It just wants to abuse the monkey part of your brain that reminds you of your childhood--or at least the good parts of it. I don't know about you, but I hate that shit. What would you rather be: Link, rippin through Hyrule and kickin' ass? Or a child failing to input a one-hundred fucking string cheat code just to see an ending about how your fox mommy loves you? I'll take the here-and-now over the cheap nostalgia any day.

As full-time mob boss and part-time gamer Tony Soprano once said:

"'Remember when?' is the lowest form of conversation."

Bet you weren't expecting to see a fucking Sopranos quote in the middle of a Tunic review, were ya?

Underworld
Beyond being trite, Tunic manages to bring down retro gaming too. It reifies a rich and complex history into a few minor points that read more like slights than praises. It also fundamentally misunderstands what makes the classics classic: the intelligent use of abstraction, the immediacy of gameplay, the mechanical focus, the player/avatar cohesion/immersion, and the constant desire to break boundaries.

A great game is like any other great piece of art--it comes with no reservations. It doesn't matter that Metropolis is a near hundred years old black and white silent film, or that Ferdowsi wrote Shahnameh a thousand years ago--good art is good art is good art.

Contemporary media can often give us tunnel vision. There's a reason historians like to wait for their subjects to be 'good and dead' for analysis. But underneath all of the pomp and circumstance is a set of mechanical, thematic, aesthetic, and narrative ideas. Doesn't matter if you're dodging a big ape throwing barrels or clawing your way through Seattle on a crafting-based-stealth-action-open-world-narrative-heavy-third-person-over-the-shoulder-shooter revenge quest in Ultra-8K 144FPS glory. One is Donkey Kong and one is Space Invaders with many…many coats of paint thrown on top.

Don't get me wrong, that isn't meant as a dig towards modern games (although there's a billion other reasons to slight The Last of Us: Part II). There's still plenty of new games that I would call high points --albeit found more-often-than-not in the indie scene. I'm more slighting the notion of a 'retro game' in itself. It's a notion that I think most people--casual, hardcore, and professional--have bought into hook, line, and sinker. A notion that often boils down many great pieces of art as 'old, plain, and simple.' The type of game Nintendo throws in for free with your online subscription. The ones you'll load up and play for five minutes before going back to whatever rouge-like-open-world-gatcha-survivors-asynchronous-battle-royale-souls-like-idle-dad-based-narrative-as-a-service game you're into at the moment.

And so, Tunic becomes a Rorschach test one last time:

When you look at 'retro games,' what do you see?

When you look at 'modern games,' what do you see?




I want to make it clear that I'm not complaining about the state of things. That's just as pointless as Scorsese (or whoever's done it this week) complaining that Marvel movies aren't 'real' cinema or whatever. I understand that some people are gonna care about the good shit--regardless of its provenance--and some people are only gonna care about what they can buy at Gamestop. That's fine.

My problem is when games like Tunic come along, and actively misrepresent gaming. When they boil it down and present a reality that never truly existed. Or when uncritical professional voices champion that misrepresentation on the written record and inadvertently canonize it. It's a trend I've been seeing a lot in new metacontextual media. Final Fantasy VII: Remake and Half Life: Alyx literally re-write their canon in real time too--shifting public perception of those original games as they go. It's a damn shame for a medium as young and historically misunderstood as our own.

But it's a cycle most people are more than willing to play into. After all, you were there also--watching one of those shitty directs just like I was. I hope you're looking forward to the next uninspired Zelda and Dark Souls 'retro-throwback' that'll have nothing to offer you but some shallow aesthetic pandering and puzzles ripped from the 'MENSA Exam Prep' workbooks.

I also hope the critics out there have just as much fun writing and talking about those games as I presume you and I do reading and listening to them.

Actually side-note: do you really read professional game reviews? Or do you just scan the metacritic page? I'm actually curious who reads these full IGN etc. reviews anymore. These days I feel like I'm more inclined to see what random strangers have to say here than from gaming's fourth estate.

But hell, who am I to talk? I'm doing this shit for free. I just pray in twenty-five years we aren't getting "retro throwback" games based around the indie game golden age that Tunic is proud to be a part of.

But if we've learned anything today, it's that gaming history is more 'doomed to repeat itself' than it is to actually understand itself. So, I'll do my best Laura Palmer impression in the meantime:

I'll see you again in 25 years.

aggressively boring visuals meets aggressively generic rtx lighting meets aggressively generic soundtrack meets aggressively simple wait-and-see gameplay meets gorgeous, charming in-game instruction manual that outshines legitimately every other soulless aspect of this adventure meets aggressively tedious backtracking meets aggressively cowardly lack of writing, dialogue, and environmental storytelling whatsoever meets aggressively cute gator enemy meets aggressively one-note enemy designs otherwise meets thirty fucking dollars.

Had an absolutely wonderful time with this game. Although at it's core it's "just" a 3D adventure game, it has so many features unique (as far as I know) only to Tunic. Providing a digital game guide highly reminiscent of those found inside Game Boy games is cool. Having it written in a constructed language system so it's (at first) impossible to read, but possible to interpret is clever. Having the pages of this guide scattered throughout the world is genius. And it doesn't stop there, but in a game built of secrets it's more fun to let them stay secret.

I generally liked the combat, although I found that I had to rely on the most powerful weapons and lots and lots of dodging to get past the bosses, as parrying is not worth it most of the time (and can be a bit fidgety with the button combo requires). I also abandoned most of the unique weapons early on as they didn't quite hold up to the sword, and magic was extremely hard to come by, or requires saving up precious blue berries to try to consume mid-fight.

The ending (B ending) was refreshingly painless (unless you consider puzzles a pain but come on). I later watched someone complete the A ending and yeah wow, no thanks (for multiple reasons). I think the lore of the world is actually pretty remarkably compatible with the gameplay itself and was awesome to unravel. For example, the lore behind the Lost Echoes is quite interesting, and makes them an especially cool enemy concept.

And yeah, Tunic is absolutely beautiful. It plays on the isometric view so extremely well, the game simply wouldn't work any other way. I love the locations and the constant uneasy atmosphere that something taking place here is wrong.

So so so clever and wonderful. Probably my favorite game of 2022 as of yet.

Tunic prepared me for a lot of things by wearing its influences really, REALLY prominently on its sleeve. The internet helped by preparing me for the kind of fiendish, higher-level puzzles that I associate with like, Fez and shit. What I did not expect was the degree to which they just put Dark Souls in here too. Like the first thing that happens is you find a big closed door and get told to ring two bells on opposite sides of the map to open it. Combat has the same weight. Boss fights are the same ur-DS boss that you circle strafe and block. This taught me a very important thing: that I'm still so fuckin sick of Dark Souls you have no goddamn idea. Holy shit I was so annoyed with every time I had to fight a boss. They aren't too tough it's just the cadence is grating to me.

Luckily, it's not just Dark Souls. It's also a bunch of other games I've already played. Primed for that kind of heavily referenced gameplay, I thought of Zelda 1 specifically. I thought of The Witness. I thought of Hydlide for a bit. The Fez comparison ultimately didn't bare out, and it's not really trying to be that. There's a language here, and I am pretty sure you can figure it out, but I don't care about that. The plot is clearly not intended to be interesting in any way that I care to learn and I got the good ending without needing to intuit a single word. I'm more interested in the text as a recreation of being a child with low/no reading ability, only able to slightly comprehend these simple video game worlds through context. Because that's what it is! Even without being able to read it, the manual clearly lays out the games big secrets for you directly. Tunic is pretending to be a simpler game than it is, kept from you by factors inherent to your outside-the-game existence. That's like the whole entire gimmick.

And god, it works. Manual pages are like, top-tier video game pickup to me. Each one is a little treasure trove of cute art and gameplay tips, and even the occasional little cheat of functionality that makes no sense, like the map pages actually showing your current location. Yeah a hookshot is cool but have you considered: a picture of a little fox doing a roll? I highly recco

So, while Tunic was all very nice and good, I do think it lacks that final oomph of real personality to be truely one of the greats. It's ultimately just a nostalgia piece, trying to recreate a feeling that never quite existed, at least for me. The time before I could read good was certainly not a time where I'd have had the level of patience needed for this. It's a charming puzzle box. I enjoyed the hell out of it while it was in front of me and now it's over and I'm not going to think super hard about it from here. Great gamepass game though I'll say that. Damn I love having a machine that can play real ass games.

I was born in 1991, around six years after the original Legend of Zelda was released for the Famicom and NES. I lived and grew up in a world where Zelda already held a deep meaning for a large amount of people as a world of adventure and wonder. Each person as they grew up and found love in that series, had a Zelda they could call their own. Mine was Ocarina of Time for the N64 but the story of my joy for that comes another day.

Counter to that, I was well into my adult life when the Soul's series of games exploded into popularity. Dark Souls was something I tried briefly but only truly grew to enjoy in the wake of trying the game Bloodborne. This combined with going back to finish Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and going on just this year to finish Elden Ring, even to drink in Bloodborne PSX, has infused me with a euphoria of sorts that is special to me; a fantasy world where my identity and self is mine to craft and the story ahead, the world is what matters.

Tunic as such, is an odd thing indeed. It combines two things I am unfamiliar with; the stylings and world of the original Zelda I, complete with an homage to its famous manual and some of the combat mechanics and difficulty that now perhaps unfairly, we attribute to the Souls series, considering resources for attacks and planning out action and response carefully. It is an oddity, combining the two aspects of both I either am unfamiliar with or care little for; the combat seen in Souls and the completely left to your own devices exploration of the first Zelda, which feels daunting for the way I perceive and take in information.

So it is with joy that I find Tunic captures me, and delivers to me a feeling I've been searching for, maybe not as powerfully as I expected, but one that I know I've been hoping to find in games like this; wonder. I've a memory of days long ago when the idea of seeing the fields of Hyrule was overwhelmingly exciting, or when witnessing the spookiness of the ruined Hyrule Town filled me with dread. Tunic once again makes me feel a little bit, like the child who looked at a video game and saw in it a world completely contained within my TV, something that is magic and wonderous and should be explored. I admit, it is one that to finish it more fully, I sought help and guides in doing so. It was something that was so freeform, to seek an ending that could give me answers to whether it was worth it, it feels like the help is needed. I struggle to parse date or puzzles the same as others and my real life exhaustion meant Tunic just for me, was asking a bit too much of me to log and understand every corner of its world. But much like one of my other favourite games, Outer Wilds, the joy of discovering things, especially when it relates to its scribbled in manual and the hidden depths it holds, are what matter so much to me. It genuinely doesn't punish me for seeking help and it is a world that is resplendently curious as it disguises it's exploration through menu's and language that hides things we might see as obvious but encourages us to study and parse, to engage with our own wonder rather than be dazzled by it senselessly. It's easy to fill your world with beautiful things that you are amazed by, but it is another to get us curious enough to engage with them and to want to understand them. I think Tunic balances well by using it's manual's visually expressive art to indicate in places while balancing it with untranslated text in places where you can innately assume it's use; e.g. the pause in the pause menu is untranslated, therefore our brain fills in the gaps. Certain pages in the manual will have one or two words in English which you can use to infer the rest. It's a quite joyful push to understand everything that's going on.


At its core, combat is not exactly my favourite thing. It could be down to a lack of mastery, but learning the intricacies of combat has been a bit of a mess and the game's basic sword combat consists of a three hit combo system where if you commit to three, you end in a lunge that takes you forward a bit and tracks. However, it's hard to guess when to mash and when to hard stop as certain bosses have aggressive dodges they can enact that make it feel a bit like your buttons could be read and the stat system included in game almost feels like a barrier to doing things rather than a necessary thing to invest or spec. As such, it doesn't really feel as versatile as perhaps the Soul's series levelling systems and again, more 'you must be this beefy to fight this boss' kind of deal.

At its core appeal, Tunic is about mystery and having the courage to ask questions and explore. It's engaging with the world and challenging yourself, both physically and mentally, to understand it and in part, your own part in it. It's a breath taking adventure that even if has small hiccups, it is an experience I whole heartedly recommend. I hope this returns some joy to you, the way it did me.

Contrary to what you'll find looking at my account here I've played hundreds, if not well over a thousand video games at this stage of my life so when one manages to come out of nowhere and can still suprise the hell out of me, igniting that spark of childlike wonder of what's going to be around the next corner all the way, well then I have to be impressed.

Tunic is a game built on secrets, it's been a while since I've played something that rewards you so consistently for being curious. There's something hidden around every corner and the most invaluable item you can find in the world is pages from the game's actual manual. How novel! Each page gives some really cool insight into the very obscure world and further works to help you piece together the game's untranslated language and intended route progression in a way I've not seen done before. And all of this culminates into one of the most well kept, involved, and original puzzles I've ever had the pleasure to crack.

If only we had a real manual in our hands to take it to that next level, though I suppose that would open the player up to a slew of spoilers and unintended gameplay pacing so scratch that idea.

The Zelda inspiration is so obvious here it needn't even be commented on, our green tunic sporting, sword & shield wielding main character wears that on their sleeve. Certainly a healthy dose of Soulsian inspo in play too, with a touch of Fez (though I think that mainly comes from secrets hidden behind perspective and not much else). All of this works to excellent effect, creating one of the most surprising, addictive, and best Indie games I have ever played. Wonderful time, and other than a fairly bland OST along with some areas/sections that could've really benefited from being tightened up; an easy recommendation.

Whenever I play a game, one of the questions that pop up occasionally is "Is there a point to playing this as opposed to another, similar game?". In most cases, I am able to find stuff that makes the game stand out, and the question goes away. And to be fair to Tunic, there were times playing this were I genuinly felt myself getting impressed with some of the design choices. Unfortunately, those moments were constantly interrupted by a quite different, more negative feeling, and it led me to be kinda…meh…on the experience as a whole.

First of all, let's talk about visuals. The artstyle is cute, the textures look nice. I do think that this type of simplistic cutesy style is starting to bore me a little bit though. It's impossible not to draw connections between this and Death's Door from last year, and in terms of visuals, I think they stack up pretty evenly. Still, even though Tunic's graphics are kinda unoriginal, the game is pleasant to look at, and that's what matters most. Another thing I liked was the focus on visual storytelling. The lack of dialogue made it even more important to get character animations and expressions right, and I think they did a good job. The way the game communicates different things isn't always perfect, but it was kinda nice to not have to understand a bunch of cryptic dialogue in order to progress.

By far Tunic's greatest strength though, is the level design. The world is very compact, feels mostly good to explore, and I really liked how a lot of the shortcuts are present from the very start, just very difficult to find from the wrong side. It's a feature that's gonna help trim the fat on subsequent playthroughs, as well as reward meticulous players going through an area the first time. Granted, I am not a person to play games multiple times, and I don't think I ever found one of the shortcuts early, but the inclusion of them is really cool. As for the individual areas, they're fine. Some of them look kinda bland, and even the more interesting ones fall right into already existing archetypes. The bosses you encounter is the highlight of the game. Even though some of them are kinda similar in theme, they all feel nice to fight, and they all require different strategies, Which I thought was nice. The enemy designs are also good, and there is enough variety to keep things fresh for the majority of the game.

When it comes to the combat, I could probably fill an entire review just talking about it alone, but let's just say it's not good. First of all, it's all taken straight from Dark Souls, but with none of the nuance. It's very sluggish, it takes your guy forever to swing and enemies are staggered for about 0.2 seconds. The slow roll makes it kinda hard to time your dodges. It's also very annoying how enemies will show a stagger animation when you hit them but it doesn't interrupt their windup, making it much harder to judge when to dodge if you're attacking them in the middle of a windup, which you'll almost always do against bosses because they have almost no rest time between attacks. The stamina system is the worst part though. Stamina regeneration pauses while drinking from the healing flask, but combat does not, so god help you if you're low on health and stamina at the same time, because there's no way you'll be able to drink and then regenerate enough stamina before the next attack hits. And you can't use your shield while tired so you're basically dead if you're up against an enemy with a large attack. The fact that you take more damage when you're out of stamina is a terrible mechanic, as running out of it is basically a death sentence. And you'll end up doing that a lot, because the game loves to put you in situations where you're hit with a lot of consecutive attacks, and fuck you if you get hit by the very last one, because it's likely to take away at least 60% of your health, and often more against bosses with harder attacks. I like stamina management, but at least make it fair.

The most important original idea in this game is the manual, and conceptually it's very clever. Building your own helper's book by finding pages throughout the world rewards exploration and meticulous backtracking, and visually it's really neat. I like the way it's structured, I liked the little scribblings and coffee stains, as if it was an actual, irl manual. Unfortunately, while the manual is a good idea, its implementation could have been a lot better in my opinion. This is a game where figuring things out without any help is borderline impossible at times. That's why you have the manual, so you can look at hints. My only question is this: If the manual is so crucial to understanding the game, then why the FUCK is the order and way you find the pages so random? A lot of the time you'll end up accidentally figuring out the different mechanics on your own, and you have to, because the game doesn't give you the right page until in the endgame, and at that point the page has basically been reduced to a collectible. Granted, you are required to find all pages before completing the final puzzle to get the true ending, but the fact that a lot of the information ends up being completely useless really got on my nerves. The opposite effect is also sometimes true. Some of the puzzles are absolutely unsolvable by yourself, but because the pages are scattered seemingly at random, your basically forced to wait until you stumble upon the right page, and at that point you're likely to have forgotten the puzzle in the first place.

Storywise this game really could've used some refining. First of all, the structure of this game literally could not get more boring. It starts out by ripping off Dark Souls and other games by making you ring two bells, one on each side of the map. Then, once that's done, it immediately goes over into Zelda territory by making you collect three magic keys, colored blue, red and green. On top of that, the pacing gets progessively worse as you get further, and the endgame just felt tedious, I found no fun at all in going around restoring your body.

What's worse than the bland structure though, is how the game never really managed to make me care about the story. I think a lot of it has something to do with the lack of characters. I feel like games with a lack of designated story-progressing cutscenes need to have good characters, because it's through them we as the players end up connecting with the world. Death's Door wasn't perfect, but at least it understood this. This game has nothing to latch on to, the game expects you to connect to the lore with no motivation at all, and I'm sorry, but the worldbuilding simply isn't good enough for that. On top of that, the game has the audacity to not even give you a final boss when you get the true ending. This is probably the game's biggest missteps, because as I said, the boss fights are the best parts of this game, and not giving you one when you've gone out of your way to complete the manual felt outstandingly lame, and resulted in me not leaving the game on a high note at all.

So Tl,dr: Tunic is a game with solid graphics, some good level design and a neat way of giving you information, but it's also plagued from beginning to end by a forgettable story and annoying combat. Sorry for the wall of text, but I really wanted to make myself clear here. I didn't hate Tunic, it does quite a few things right and some ideas are definietly worth exploring further, but the final product ended up being a very mixed bag with a lot of frustrating design choices. I can't really think of many reasons to play this over some of the classic Zelda style games that have been out for years, and I doubt I will think much of this after posting this.

Tunic has a lot going for it. Especially the first couple hours in the game work very well, shrouding basically the entire game and it's mechanics in mystery. Nothing is explained directly, you will have to find pages, that are written in an unknown language, often times leaving you deciphering the illustrations that go with them. I love that idea, even though I'm just not patient and intelligent enough, to stick through so many layers of puzzles on my own. Usually I play those kind of games in a group, here it started feeling tedious at some point. It wasn't the biggest issue though, for me that was the fighting, or maybe not the fighting itself, but the way you are forced to battle a bunch of tough boss fights, when the fighting mechanics just somehow don't feel right. I didn't feel powerful after levelling up stats and getting new weapons, I always kinda felt 'held back' by the limitations of everything.
But with those criticisms in mind, I still enjoyed my time with Tunic a lot. The Soundtrack is an absolute banger, and the environments are beautifully designed.

Captures a lot of things I didn't know I wanted out of a video game.

Started Tunic thinking, "This will likely be a 4 to 5 hour long game that I'll remember for its artstyle, possibly its soundtrack, and not much else".

As I started playing it, I realized I was wrong. Halfway into the game, I realized I'd fallen head over heels for the exploration, the environment, the visual storytelling -- I finished the game and realized I was in love. Then I kept digging.

Tunic is equal parts Dark Souls and the first Legend of Zelda (the only Zelda game I've completed so I'm allowed to say this), later evolving to incorporate much faster-paced Soulslike gameplay elements and much, much deeper puzzles.

The final challenge, that is, "the Golden Path" culminates in one of the most engaging puzzles I've ever seen in a video game. It's not for everybody, but if you commit to seeing Tunic through to its very end, what you'll find is a deeply rewarding experience that I've yet to find anyplace else.

My 2nd favorite game of 2022 and it's very close.

Tunic is a mess. It's an extreme puzzle soulslike zelda 1 mix that uses an antiquated gimmick, an in-game manual, as the main progression mechanic.

Tunic is too hard of a puzzle game if you want to play a soulslike, and too hard of a soulslike if you want to play a puzzle game. The Zelda comparison is fair, but only if you're talking about The Legends of Zelda, first of its name. I spent hours being lost not having a single clue where to go only to find out that I was simply walking past a door or a turn I was supposed to take.

The puzzle design in Tunic is frustrating, because the entire game is based on purposfully obscuring or not giving crucial information to the player. If you were to beat the game legitemately, you'd have to go through a lot of trial and error, not only on the soulslike part, but also on the puzzles. The game has 0 feedback for most puzzles you do, only vaguely indicating what you're supposed to be doing in the manual. The true ending, without a guide, is IMPOSSIBLE. There is no way someone can possibly find everything needed for the true ending without spending endless hours looking through every nook and crany of the map. Some people are into that, and it's their type of game, but I'm definitely not.

There's a crucial difference between Tunic and games like Outer Wilds. Outer Wilds guides the player via a command board that recaps not only what you already know in clear english, but also indicates connections between things you know in case you've missed them, while also guiding the player where to go explore next. You can look at the board, and figure out a destination. Tunic doesn't tell you where to go, only giving you slight hints, in a cryptic language in the manual. At some point, this becomes very discouraging, and I personally just used a guide. I'm very happy that I did so, because I would not be able to figure out what I'm supposed to do without a guide. To add insult to injury, after getting everything required for the true ending, the game bugged out and gave me the regular ending.

The soulslike elements of the game are lackluster as well. There is no variety of weapons, equips or items. There are a few useful items, and a few spells, and one sword. The equips you get are either gimmicky, either completely useless, either so good that you'll only be using a few given equips the entire game. Without the damage up defence down equip, I wouldn't have beaten the game in the time I did. The equips don't have a description, to fit the gimmick of the game, and are only vaguely described in the manual. This is a very bad thing, as most of the time you're unsure whether an equipment is even working properly. The bosses are all uninspired, the only boss I found enjoyable was the final boss. There are 0 humanoid fights, meaning that most of the time you'll be running around dodge rolling until the boss eventually lets you attack it. Only on the final boss do you get the chance to weave in attacks and dash out mid-combo when needed.

Overall, the game is just frustrating. It feels like it wasn't playtested enough, and has rough difficulty spikes and confusing puzzles all over. It felt more like I was fighting against the game the entire time, rather than playing it.

CARA! QUE OBRA DE ARTE GENIAL ESSE JOGO É!!!

Tunic conseguiu construir uma forma única de progressão de jogo, misturando aspectos de descoberta e aprendizagem de gameplay de diferentes eras, que deu MUITO CERTO. Isso sem falar de toda a parte artística do jogo. Tudo é perfeito: a ambientação, o clima enigmático, os visuais, os designs, as artes e, em especial, a soundtrack. Cara, as músicas desse jogo são belíssimas!

No entanto, é necessário dizer que Tunic não é um jogo para qualquer um. Ele é um SoulsLite cujo nível de exploração e dificuldade (principalmente da metade do jogo para frente) estão bem além de um nível casual. Então, se for jogar, já se prepare para vasculhar cada cantinho dos mapas e lidar com algumas batalhas bem complicadas.

Mas, ainda assim, eu recomendo fortemente dar uma chance ao Tunic (e insistir nele, mesmo que pareça complicado) porque, pra mim, ele foi de longe uma das melhores experiência de jogo que eu já tive!

I am NOT kidding in the slightest when I argue that this is the most creative game I've EVER played in my life. It starts out as a little Zelda Dark Souls thing, but you don't know how to play? It just drops you in? What? And you can't understand the language? huh?? And then slowly but surely, Tunic reveals its hand to you, leading you inch by inch deeper into its secrets.

Every level and dungeon is so intricately designed. THE GAME MANUAL that you slowly find page-by-page is SOOO MIND-BLOWINGLY COOL. The fact that the developers created an ENTIRE FICTIONAL LANGUAGE just to recreate the feeling of playing NES Zelda as a child and not knowing how to read is INSANE. Slowly learning about features or mechanics that have been available the entire time genuinely made me FLIP OUT AT THE SCREEN.

And that's not even mentioning the crazy difficult but immensely satisfying bosses, the mind-boggling meta endgame puzzles, the LUDICROUS puzzles and hints and secrets that the community took years to track down, the GORGEOUS soundtrack I'm going to constantly be playing on loop, the (i am being fully serious right now) disturbing and shocking story revelations, the WILD speedrunning skips, or how even things like the CAMERA PERSPECTIVE get turned into a puzzle. THE CAMERA. THE. CAMERA.

I adore Zelda, but this game single-handedly goes out of its way to push more creative boundaries than Zelda has done in its ENTIRE existence. The only thing holding it back for me are a few stupidly hard puzzles and basically everything in the "true ending" path being obtuse as hell...I felt so guilty using a guide for some of that. BUT DESPITE THAT! It's so endlessly imaginative and EXACTLY the kind of thing I want developers to make. I'm probably gonna be thinking about this title for the rest of my life! And I played this for free?? FOR FREE? ON GAME PASS???

PLEASE PLAY THIS GAME. IT'S SO GOOD. I AM NOT THE SAME PERSON I WAS BEFORE TUNIC.

Tunic segue uma premissa aparentemente humilde: ser uma homenagem aos Zeldas da era 2D, como A Link to the Past, mas com gráficos 3D em perspectiva semifixa tal qual Link’s Awakening. Não é salutar usar comparativos com outros jogos como descrição, mas me refiro à parte estética aqui.

Mas mesmo assim, quando a proposta é reproduzir algo já existente, se torna difícil não buscar nas referências os elementos que se quer utilizar seja para criar, seja para analisar.

Nessa linha, Tunic é bastante consciente que almeja seja um “zeldinha”, como carinhosamente se chamam os Zeldas 2D. O design segue a linha de exploração de um mundinho cheio de segredos a serem descobertos via exploração e resolução de quebra-cabeças, com masmorras e cavernas, templos e construções antigas repletas de mistérios.

Mas contudo, Tunic não se limita a copiar as referências. Muito pelo contrário. A proposta aparentemente manjada toma cores extras quando se adiciona elementos de outros jogos na mixagem e uma única ideia nova é capaz de trazer inovação suficiente pra não aparentar ser uma mera iteração de uma franquia.

A estrutura basilar do jogo segue a linha de Zelda, mas temos a adição de um combate mais mortal e metódico, que naturalmente faz lembrar jogos como Souls. Há energia a se gerenciar ao bloquear ou esquivar, além do HP recuperado com poções finitas recarregáveis em altares que reposicionam todos os inimigos comuns derrotados. Se lembra Souls, tem fundamento. O funcionamento é similar às famosas bonfires, as fogueiras que se tornaram um pilar característico dos jogos souls e similares da From Software e de outros títulos que se baseiam nesse modelo.

Temos então em matéria de estrutura e design um misto saudável de Zelda e Souls, duas franquias absurdamente aclamadas e idolatradas por fãs ao redor do mundo. Como então criar algo novo com tanta bagagem e olhos famintos?

Andrew Shouldice, designer de Tunic, teve a brilhante ideia de incluir no jogo, como metalinguagem e como mecânica, um manual de instruções que lembra os que outrora vinha como encarte nos jogos físicos. O manual contém instruções de como jogar, descrição de alguns itens e detalhamento de mapas e progressão no jogo, além de segredos.

Mas…que língua é essa? Ao invés de estar redigido em uma língua conhecida, o designer optou por criar um alfabeto próprio para o jogo. Ele segue uma lógica própria que cabe à comunidade (impossível solucionar sozinho, a menos que vc seja um linguista) traduzir por completo. Mas isso não é necessário para compreendê-lo.
Shouldice teve a genialidade de desenvolver o próprio manual como um grande quebra-cabeça, onde algumas palavras chave são escritas em línguas conhecidas (aí vai depender de que língua vc está jogando) e se misturam com ícones e demais símbolos que carregam significado mesmo sem recorrer à verbalização propriamente dita.

E é por meio de uma interação constante com o mundo virtual de Tunic e com o manual que está desmontado e incompleto que o jogador precisa avançar no jogo para coletar mais e mais páginas e obter mais pistas de como progredir. Talvez essa tarefa se mostre demasiadamente árdua para jogadores que não gostam de quebra-cabeças e prefiram algo mais leve.

Isso porque o nível de quebra-cabeça é relativamente alto, o que colabora para que o jogo tenha momentos “eureca” constantes e extremamente gratificantes, ao custo de alienar aqueles que não conseguirem solucionar seus enigmas. Isso não impede de se divertir, porque mesmo que o jogador não consiga resolver por si só, no ambiente de jogo moderno é fácil pegar dicas ou respostas diretas com inúmeros guias ou comunidades, além de ter a própria progressão nas dungeons que envolve combate, exploração e alguns quebra-cabeça mais simples.

Com dois finais possíveis, Tunic oferece ao jogador um encerramento mais doloroso por meio de combate, ou algo diferente caso ele se disponha a desvendar os maiores segredos do jogo. Para tanto, o próprio dev fez anotações e escondeu à plena vista dicas e pistas para conseguir triunfar.

Alguns desses desafios são mais complicados de se solucionar sozinho, então quem é averso a buscar ajuda externa talvez tenha uma experiência não tão agradável pela natureza de alguns enigmas. Colegas de crítica apontaram que a dificuldade dos quebra-cabeças na parte final do jogo lhes trouxe frustração, então se eu puder deixar uma só dica ela é: não se envergonhe de buscar ajuda, nem que seja pra receber conselhos indiretos. E na dúvida, pegue a resposta mesmo.

This is not a game that I can say I would have played were it not offered on GamePass. But boy, what a great experience Tunic ended up being. This game won me over with its fantastic art style, great mixture of Zelda & Souls concepts, and fantastic exploration.

Tunic's big gimmick is throwing you into this world with little to no context as to what is going on, or even what the mechanics are. Even the signs and little NPCs for you to talk to are written in an entirely foreign language that you cannot understand. Instead, the game encourages you to build up a game manual that gives you hints and guides as to what to do. This makes the experience of Tunic one of a kind. If you decide to play this game, DO NOT USE AN ONLINE GUIDE, at least for most of the adventure. The game is meant to be experienced in this way, and it is truly magic when it all works.

What struggles to work though, is the combat. Tunic's combat doesn't really click until it is nearly almost over. While it isn't awful, there is a certain clunkiness to it that doesn't feel quite right. The game is decently difficult as it is, so the clunky combat just makes dying feel more cheap. Dodge roll timing always feels a little off, and your character is a little too slow to capitalize on punishing your opponents (particularly bosses). Almost at the end of the game, you get a fast dodge that can get you across gaps. This ability feels 1000x better than the dodge roll. It feels as though this should have been implemented sooner to help alleviate some of the issues of combat.

Progression is also done extremely well in Tunic. Abilities and gear are introduced at a good rate, and never feels overwhelming. The game always fills you with a great amount of curiosity to figure out what items do, and encourages experimentation.

Puzzles are very complex in Tunic. Well, at least the late-game ones, and particularly finding fairies. I won't spoil anything else in regards to the fairy puzzles, but if you were to use a guide for this game, this is the only justifiable part to use it for. Other than that though, the puzzle solving and traversal were easily my favorite parts of Tunic.

I do have some nitpicks here and there that don't affect my overall score. For one, I do with that the game manual was introduced a bit differently. Having it be an old school game manual was neat to see, but the part it plays in the story was very strange. If this had been more of a map or book that was made in the context of the game's world, that would have been a bit more immersive imo. But that is hardly any reason to dislike the game or the manual's amazing purpose in the game and story.

Tunic was a surprise for me. I thank the developers and Microsoft for putting on GamePass, otherwise I would not have played this fantastic little game. If you're looking for something to play in these slower months of releases, give Tunic a shot. I don't think it'll be everyone's cup of tea, but I for one thought it was great.

Tunic se inspira bastante em Zelda, mas sem dúvidas tem sua originalidade.

A progressão baseada em coleta de itens e descobrimento de locais é ótima, com sua quantidade de secrets grande dificilmente te cansa, pois a forma que você os pega é bem inteligente, por ter uma câmera fixa, muitos baús estão na sua cara, mas você precisa ter noção da área para abri-los, as localidades se abrem de acordo com os upgrades e armas que você adquire, obrigando o jogador a explorar para progredir, na maioria das vezes, blind, pois o mundo tem uma língua própria, o único jeito de saber onde ir e o que fazer está no manual de instruções, com suas diversas páginas espalhadas pelo mapa, só que até o manual não é claro, se utilizando apenas de ilustrações e poucos textos traduzidos, emulando o sentimento de estar jogando um clássico do NES quando criança, sem saber o idioma. Uma mecânica única. A exploração orgânica é o maior mérito de Tunic.

Falando de seus Puzzles, olhando por fora, parecem bem simplórios, no entanto, a inventividade aqui é absurda, porque muito dos segredos estão escondidos dentro do próprio manual, com um dos Puzzles mais insanamente complicados que eu resolvi nos últimos tempos, veja bem, atualmente na indústria Puzzles são usados como passatempo, exigem pouco do jogador, você pode perder alguns minutos ou até 1 hora naquilo, mas não é feito pra ser desafiador e sim, para te envolver por um curto período de tempo, já em Tunic, desafia todos os seus limites, são detalhes especificos que te entregam a solução e mesmo que aprenda o padrão, o jogo sempre tem uma forma de varia-lo, eu queria muito poder falar do incrível Puzzle da página 49 ou de dois segredos que passam completamente despercebidos, mas quero que você veja por si mesmo, só saiba que o Funji deu um passo além de qualquer outro jogo em anos nesse aspecto.

Claro que o jogo tem seus problemas, a começar pelo combate repetitivo, os desenvolvedores até tentam diversificar com magia e bombas, mas é pouquíssimo, o cansaço é iminente, perto do end game eu só passava reto por mais que os inimigos fossem atrás de mim até os confins do inferno. A dificuldade é muito desbalanceada, boa parte do jogo é fácil, só que as sessões finais elevam o nível de uma forma desproporcial, afetando até mesmo os bosses, onde um específico é muito mais difícil que todos os outros, não existe consistência.

Como dito no começo, o estilo artístico bebe bastante da fonte de Zelda, pelo menos no papel, pois o jogo não deixa de ser original, com cenários lindos, uso de iluminação excelente, uma atmosfera sombria e misteriosa em sua Dungeons, tudo isso acompanhado da lore interessantíssima e uma narrativa bem interpretativa e pessoal. Não sou muito fã da OST, a intenção é ser calma na maioria das vezes, apenas utilizando trilhas pesadas em áreas e momentos que trazem um tom para tal, não é um uso ruim, pelo contrário, o Sound Design é muito bom, só nao faz meu estilo.

Espero que Tunic não fique no esquecimento em 2022, pois merece ser jogado.

Quem me conhece sabe o quão chato eu sou com spoilers as vezes, há certas ocasiões onde não gosto das menores coisinhas sendo reveladas em trailers e vídeos e etc, porque a experiência através da própria mídia sempre será melhor do que vista de outras formas. Isso é o que mais passava pela minha mente enquanto eu jogava Tunic, uma obra que me fez muito feliz de ter essa mania boba que eu tenho, seu mundo digital praticamente te implorando para explorar todos os seus cantos e descobrir todos os seus segredos.

E que segredos, hein mano... Tive muitos momentos em que a progressão me lembra a de um Metroidvania onde você pega um item, pensa "Carai mané isso muda TUDO" e fica rodeando o mapa igual um pateta re-explorando tudo de novo. Se parasse por aí já era do meu agrado, mas Tunic é um mágico que não parava de tirar coelhos da cartola, é tanta coisa escondida a céu aberto que eu fisicamente fiquei boquiaberto duas vezes em minha jogatina. Se você baixou esperando um "Zeldinha fofo" você já é vítima de suas travessuras mirabolantes.

É difícil achar um jogo hoje em dia que fala comigo como esse jogo falou, mesmo através de sua língua críptica e esquisita. Só espero que, com essa recomendação, ele também fale, e que você se apaixone como eu.

Tunic is the result of former Silverback Productions developer, Andrew Shouldice’s move to totally independent game development. It’s one of those games that make you think “Wow, one guy did all this?” And you would be wrong. There were more artists and composers that really made the game shine. But Shouldice made something special with Tunic.

I’m no stranger to the flawed game comparison simile. My elevator pitch recommendation for the game has been isometric Zelda meets Fez discovery. That feels mostly right but the sum feels greater than its parts in this case. Tunic is an isometric Zelda-like game with all the combat and puzzles you might expect. What really sets it apart however is the game’s emphasis on perspective and the unique implementation of an in-game manual offered to the player piecemeal through their adventure. At first, this mechanic serves as table setting and does little to truly inform your playthrough but it quickly becomes a lifeline in the strange world of Tunic. The game’s tone and scope shift and it offers much more than initially meets the eyes. And, this may seem like a small praise, but I love the length of the game. It’s only around 12 hours for a full playthrough. Longer for a 100% completion but not much so.

To have so much depth in such a small package is truly special.

Mais um bom jogo de raposinha de 2022. Pra quem assim como eu curtiu The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Tunic é um prato cheio. Lore misteriosa e gameplay ora desafiadora, ora relaxante são oferecidos aqui.

Reta final deixa um pouco a desejar, porém é um jogo satisfatório, ainda mais se conseguires o final verdadeiro que é bem fofo. E o mais importante: você joga como uma raposinha! Acho que nunca falei aqui que amo raposas, mas eu amo raposas.

Nota Final: 70/100