Reviews from

in the past


another one of those indie games. don't waste the hard drive space.

While I haven't completed Tunic just yet (Am currently doing cleanup on items/secrets before I do the endgame boss stuff), I think I have a clear opinion on this.

Generally, be it for good or bad, most games give you an idea of what to expect when playing a game. Tunic looks and feels like a indie take on classic Zelda but on playing, its a lot more concerned with combat and the occasional bit of sneaking vs puzzle solving. Thats not to say Puzzles are completely absent but instead they are more in line with something like Fez than Zelda.

You see, the game doesn't do much in the way of hand-holding. There's a lot you need to uncover yourself by either paying close attention to environmental details, hugging every nook and cranny like your life depends on it and by finding pieces of the games 'Instruction Manual' which is filled with little clues, hints and pictograms teasing and showing the sorts of things you need to do to progress.

As such the game is FULL of little Eureka moments and every so often you'll uncover another thing that's been staring you in the face that'll bring on a sheer rush of adrenaline as you realise what else you can do. Its charming and downright clever in its execution.

That said, this game does require you to take more than a few leaps of logic to reach places. Shopkeepers that seem threatening, essential stat upgrades not made obvious and teleport/fast travel points, hidden in plain sight. It all leads to a game where the first hour or so can be quite rough, especially with its combat.

Ah the combat. Tunic does a pretty good job of having a souls-lite combat in play, at first seeming daunting as hell but later opening up and being pretty easy to work with thanks to an array of magic items, power ups and techniques... Then comes the point near the end of the game where a rather nasty twist hits and the difficulty shoots back up for a bit. Owtch.

Like Fez, its certainly a game perfect for those who want to fully explore somewhere and uncover a wealth of mystery and even now, im still spotting things, curios and secrets hidden away, waiting for me to pick at the wallpaper to reveal more.

I don't know who came up with the idea of these f*g turrets, but congratulations - you've successfully made me ragequit, uninstall and most likely never come back to this game again.
Comparing this game to A Link Between Worlds, which I absolutely love, it’s very unwelcoming. You appear on some island literally out of nowhere, you have zero sense of what your goal is, everything (even your inventory) is in some unknown language, and one kind of collectables are pieces of a manual, containing info on how to do something you've learned by yourself by now (they are also mostly in a weird language).
What I hate about the gameplay is that I generally found myself just walking around the map looking for a space in a wall I overlooked somewhere. What's funny is that some of the areas crucial to progress are hidden the same way as those where you can only find some collectables. There was a moment where I found a key to some house, and only after I went there for the second time, I realised that there was a whole in the wall, through which I could go. I also hate how enemies always respawn after you return to an area, but it's pretty much standard nowadays, so I guess it's just a me problem. The basis for combat are alright, but they don't work me when you fight a group of enemies (which is about 80% of the time). Basically you can only target one enemy at a time, and to target another one you have to leave that target mode and get to it again, which does not guarantee targeting the enemy you want either way. And it's especially annoying when there are two or more turrets present.
When I went into this game I expected Link Between Worlds type of game, but what I got was shitty Dark Souls with just similar aesthetics. No interesting puzzles or dungeons, just boring combat and exploration based on walking to every wall and possible space between rocks, trees, etc.
Also I don't know if it's just my monitor, but I can't see shit when there is any kind of a shadow or a dark area.

I have a rule that I don't put a star rating on a game unless I play it for at LEAST two hours. I gave up on Tunic after about 90 minutes. This game is like going back in time 15 years in the worst ways possible.

The gameplay is incredibly basic. It's like they took Souls games and said "hey, lets make this not at all fun." Very little character customization, very little in the way of progression. Which would be absolutely fine if the gameplay was fun. It's not. Swing, roll, swing, roll. And your stamina is so limited you just stand around waiting for it to recover every 5 seconds.

They took design from the last ten years that said "if we point a light at a door, or use a specific color to indicate where a player can go, that can help" and threw it out the window, replacing it with incredibly difficult to navigate areas. Right after the first boss, there's a pathway behind a pillar that you MUST travel behind to get to the critical path. What the actual hell.

Just...a baffling game. Obtuse for obtuse sake, difficult for difficulty's sake. Bleh. At least it's on Gamepass.

Being a kid was pretty rad huh?


A love letter to Zelda, Souls and Fez.

Tunic is a gorgeous isometric action adventure game filled with secrets. Its one of these rare games where you cant look at the level design the same way twice with the mind blowing shortcuts you uncover. There's huge difficulty spikes in some areas but its stays fair, and most importantly, fun. It can be enjoyed by everyone since its accessibility options provide a No Fail and Infinite Stamina mode.

This is a hard 2 to give, but Tunic was an experience that was much more than I expected only to be brought down by being exactly what I expected.

I don't tend to watch trailers or follow pre-release footage outside of an initial reveal, so I had no clue about the instruction manual aspect of this game or the fact that it was all in a fantasy language. I loved this part of Tunic. The manual artwork was superb and really nailed the feeling of the old Zelda chibi art. The way information is dealt out was very nostalgic, and just as a concept, I love it so much. 5 star stuff. I grew up with a bunch of floppy drives with a ton of NES and SNES roms and combing through the JP releases was one of my favorite things to do. I don't speak this language, and I don't know what is going on, but I play a lot of games so I should be fine, right? And after some trial and error, yeah, I could pick up on that stuff with context clues and intuition. Tunic does such an amazing job of recreating this feeling.

Visually, the game is amazing. Soft shadows and lighting combined with a super strong art design goes a long way. I was in awe of some of the locations in this game (Blue Key area especially.) Likewise, the music also shines. Lifeforced is such a strong composer with Dustforce being one of my favorite game OSTs ever. The track that plays in the East Forest is so reminiscent of an alternate reality "Secret of the Forest" it gave me goosebumps. Every track did such a good job of setting a mood without being too ambient.

The puzzles are so clever. I was filling out a notebook in a way I haven't done since I played Fez and this completely caught me off guard. I had no idea the game was going to go this way and I was so for it. I don't want to spoil too much, but there is one mechanic that gave me the same feeling cracking the Rosetta Stone did all those years ago. I solved the obvious ones then found one of the secret ones, and then I was hooked. I had to 100% this, I had to solve every riddle, I had to complete this.

But I didn't. And that's because I have not talked about, well, playing the game. This game takes heavily from Souls games, more-so than Zelda, honestly. Block, parry, rolling i-frames, stamina, Estus, corpse runs, punishing combat encounters, the works. And okay, cool, I like those games a lot too. The issue is that Tunic..... just doesn't fit that style of gameplay. The controls are very loose... It's hard to describe, moving around feels tank-ish? Like you have a pretty substantial turning radius, so moving about in precise combat just never felt good. I'd constantly find myself dying due to get stuck on geometry or just trying to run past an encounter just to overshoot the path and then be stuck in a corner. Enemy AI at points is relentless and sometimes outright broken, and I mean in the sense that it wasn't functioning correctly, not that it was too hard or something. There's one encounter in West Garden where a bunch of flying enemies come swarming in from halfway across the map, even though I had never even been near them. Like I knew where they became active, it wasn't even remotely close to where I was, and yet the AI would become active and just flyover at hyperspeed like they're trying to catch up. Also, for those particular flying enemies, you aren't really equipped to handle them at that point. The game does a pretty good job about giving you items and consumables, but you don't get a projectile weapon until the end of that area. They weren't hard or anything, so why even have them? They were just annoying, having to wait for 20 seconds for this thing to get it's pathing right and not get stuck somewhere for you to just kill it in 2 hits.

The camera was another big issue for me. The game is pretty cheeky and hides paths that you can't see due to a static isometric angle. And then it does it 50 more times, like it's being clever. It got tiring very quickly and the annoyance was only exacerbated by how often I found myself clipping into the geometry. I constantly found myself asking, "Is this a hidden path or am I just stuck in a cliff again?" I don't even need like a free camera, but just a simple 90 degree rotation would have made things so much less frustrating.

I have a bunch of other minor grievances like the stamina system sucks, the rules the game sets seem inconsistent and it breaks them at seemingly random times, the lack of (good) fast travel in a game about exploration is frustrating, and they all just came culminating to a point where I didn't want to play anymore. I'm missing 2 pieces to the Mountain Door puzzle and maybe half a dozen secret puzzles left and I am super curious about what I left unfinished. But I'll probably just look up a longplay and see if I can solve them without having to actually play the game. This is a game I should be gushing about non-stop to people and honestly I probably still will, just with a big fat asterisk at the end.


This review contains spoilers

Bon et bien que dire de Tunic. Un principe génial avec une notice qui t'apprend des choses sur le jeu, des secrets cachés depuis le début qui te mettent juste un coup de pelle quand tu les découvres et où tu te dis "attend, je pouvais faire ça depuis le début?" et des combats franchement bien timés et bien sympatiques.

Mais malheureusement sa deuxième partie est bien moyenne, avec un boss rush inutile d'ennemies qu'on a déjà vu, du backtracking un peu artificiel (alors qu'il aurait pu être tellement mieux amené avec des zones qu'on réexplore).

Mais malgré tout, je ne peux juste pas dire autre chose que ce jeu m'a subjugué avec sa notice, ses secrets (fées et objets dorés), et tout ces moments où tu as un éclair de génie et où tu comprend le tout, les mécaniques ou l'histoire qui se retourne. Et qui vaut le coup d'explorer même avec le mode Invincible d'activé.

Derivativo, pero sabe perfectamente de dónde beber de sus influencias de Zelda y los Soulsborne. Un juego lleno de encanto, con un diseño de niveles y mundo muy ingenioso y muy bien logrado y mecánicas y gimmicks también muy buenos que explican muy bien todo su mundo y sus mecánicas. Los jefes son simplemente geniales y espectaculares, hacía tiempo que no me encontraba enfrentamientos tan bien pensados.

Artísticamente super bonito y jugablemente curioso. Tiene problemas serios en la curva de dificultad pero lo compensa con sus opciones de accesibilidad.

I went in only excepting another Zelda-like game with a super cute Fez-like aesthetic. I came out with one of the most exploratory-rich and rewarding games I've ever had the pleasure of mastering.

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

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

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

an absolute joy

This game embodies the feeling older gamers have told me they felt in the OG Zelda games. Feelings that I never connected with due to how those adventures have aged. But playing Tunic, I feel like I finally get it. Tunic is an addicting, exciting quest. Discovering and decoding its world is as satisfying as slowly unraveling a complicated knot, pull by pull.

The only obtuse moments come in the post-game, where the game becomes most ambiguous both in plot and progression. You REALLY have to think outside the box to deduce the final endgame elements. I myself had to turn to the internet for clues, and given how few complete walk-throughs there are to date, I imagine many players are still figuring this all out.

Having defeated the primary foe, relished its beautiful world and SUBLIME soundtrack, and made my own guesses about the overall narrative, I'm fine stepping away from this without the "real ending" and declaring it one of the best indie games I've ever played.

Two things:
1. Turn on no fail mode, the combat isn't good enough for how often it shows up and the real joy here is the puzzles, because
2. Tunic is Fez 2. No, really.

Link to the Past + Dark Souls + Fez

Besides those three games, I can’t believe anyone bothered making games that weren’t Tunic when Tunic was still waiting to be made.

Pretty decent so far! I'll update once I get further in the game.

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

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

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

(9/10)

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

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

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

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

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

Beautiful, clever, charming, wonderful.

Gorgeous art-style with some jaw-dropping vistas and a soothing, synth soundtrack but, of course, the real winner is the instruction manual - so full of love and care. I never got tired of exhaustively looking every last bit of detail in its pages.

This is a world that is not only a joy to explore but one that almost invites you to with its numerous nooks and crannies and its dense shroud of secrecy.

Loved the Fez-like endgame, knowledge-gated progression and the overall overflowing cuteness of it all.

Like playing your favorite game when you were kid for the first time.

A love letter to the 2D style Zelda games was the thing I didn't know I needed on 2022.
It has some performance issues (at least on my pc) but other than that I loved every single part of the experience, even if it was hard as nails.

Fez (conlang puzzles) meets dark souls (precise and demanding fights that start you back at a bonfire), but a handy "no fail" mode makes this the first soulslike i have finished.
there's.... some stuff to like. the existence of the manual as both extra-game artifact (notes scribbled in it from a fellow player, coffee rings, etc) that shows the game in a low-res blurry mess in the background, but also an in-game Thing (an important collectible that reveals key information to you at gated points and has Implications). and for the most part, barring a few cliches, i liked the way the plot was revealed. the music is fantastic.

but also there's stuff i don't like about Souls and a cute face and an accessibility option don't take away the pain of enemies and hazards that drain your max health, or boss fights with precise and unending patterns, or opaque next steps.

this is a hard balancing act. i don't want the camera to swing towards my next objective every time the state of the world changes, and i don't want my character to mutter "need to get to the armory" every 30 seconds. but also i don't want paths blocked by geometry or to be stuck for an hour because i made a wrong turn and i don't know what to do next and none of the online guides have caught up yet. that's a hard balance. does this game achieve that balance? who am i to say!

Tunic is close to being an all time great, but doesn't stick the landing.

Although I can't read the developer's mind, I think Tunic is designed to make you feel like you're 12 years old and playing a big adventure game for the first time. You don't know what the manual says, the in game text makes no sense, but by god if youre not gonna see the game through to the end.

That feeling of wonder and excitement whenever you discover the games' many secrets, solve its puzzles or beat (most) of its bosses is why I love the medium. Sadly, the games' final stretch is a little too obtuse and grating for me personally. Whereas combat is a pallette cleanser inbetween stretches of exploration in the main game, the final hours of Tunic demand you fight a series of incredibly challenging battles. The combat system and camera, however, doesn't always help you with that. Sometimes attack patterns are too relentless or glitch ever so slightly to punish what could have been a well-timed dodge. Other times a big dash from an enemy sends the camera careening off into the distance without you, forcing you to reorient yourself in a splitsecond to avoid punishing damage from a flanking attack. If I enjoyed the combat, I could look past the issues. For me, however, it is not what I played Tunic for.

As for the final puzzles that could give you the "true" Ending, I think ive had my fill as well. Although Tunic's hidden secrets are thrilling to find, it does love hiding things in margins, behind walls and inside hidden nooks. That trick does get a little tiring after a while when you dont get to do it in new environments, instead having to backtrack through zones youve already explored.

All this criticism doesnt take away from the fact that Tunic is incredibly fun for the 10 hours of its 12 hour runtime. I recommend everyone tries it. Perhaps it could be your all-time great! Kick the Heir's ass for me.

Really good Zelda-like with Souls elements that takes you back to the time when games were cryptic and obtuse. Exploration and discovery are a masterclass. My critiques are with the combat (it feels clunky) and the pacing, which feels a little weird. You almost feel like there should be another area or two.

I think folks who play this should try Death’s Door, and vice versa. I personally prefer Death’s Door, but people could very justifiably feel the opposite (both are great games). A really fun dozen or so hours on Game Pass.

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

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

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


Good:
World building was interesting and intriguing, made me want to find more about the world.

Instruction manual was gorgeous and the highlight of the entire game. The whole concept and execution was great and it really reminded me of old instructional manuals on SNES games.

Graphics is stylized in a very nice way and the overall aesthetic of the game was pleasant.

Neutral:
Did not care for the obtuse language of the game overall. I know it may be a big selling point for a lot of people but I think that a majority of gamers that are playing Tunic are never going to come close to solving the language without external help. In that way it only serves to act as a deterrence to explaining in game mechanics for the sake of world building. I think the player experience greatly suffers for this because there is a lot of neat mechanics that a player won't find because of the language.

Enjoyed the puzzle solving elements of the game but the instruction manual hints got way too vague for the puzzles that were needed for 100% completion and ending B. I think the puzzle difficulty before the end of the game was completely fine. I certainly don't mind having to think a little but a game that requires collaboration to solve puzzles is not a game that I'm interested in.

When the story got interesting with the Ziggurat and the Cathedral, the game basically ends right there. All that is left at that point is treasure hunting / fairy hunting through the same areas you've been through and I really wish the game built upon more of the interesting world it built. Souls games can get away with little in game story telling because a large part of the lore is built into the items and the item descriptions. Without that, Tunic provides you this interesting world with no real explanations and answers.


Negative:
Combat was not good. I don't think Tunic gained anything from having souls-like combat because the moveset of the player is so limited. A three hit combo and a parry and a stab out of a roll is your entire sword moveset. A lot of enemy encounters basically ended up being swing once and then roll backwards. It really didn't add anything to the experience. Not being able to sprint during lock-on is very annoying either, a lot of times I break lock-on specifically to sprint. The enemies not resetting aggro also means the game is forcing you into combat because the enemies will never stop chasing you unless you find a ladder.

Bosses were way too overturned and I think a lot of players are gonna struggle. The camera acts in such a strange way versus bosses when you're locked on because of the bosses constant movement. I don't think the game really gained anything from having difficult Souls-like bosses. The cathedral gauntlet especially is a point where a lot of players will consider either turning on no-fail mode or outright quitting because of how difficulty it can get. While yes, invincibility and stamina modes exist to help with the difficulty, there needs to exist better options for difficulty that is simply "never fail" and "extremely difficult."

The lighting and background of the game often obscures pathing and passages through out the game. While it is fun to find a secret passage obstructed by the view of the game the first few times, it basically forces the player to press up against each wall for the fear of missing out on a treasure chest behind a hidden passage. There needs to be better sign posting for a lot of the secret passages instead of asking the player to press up against every wall in a room in order to find a secret passage.

It was a fun romp, flawed but unique. I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to but it's definitely worth trying especially on Gamepass. I think it focused too much on the obtuse elements of a Souls game without finely crafting the experience around it and for that it suffers. It's a game where the designer vision took priority over the player experience. It's finely crafted but it's definitely not going to be a lot of people's cup of tea.

High highs and very interesting unique design, but the rest of the world and the combat ends up being okay at best. Honestly disappointing how it drags down an otherwise wonder-filled adventure.

A game that simply gets better the longer it goes, and one that builds 2 worlds for you to explore, with one of them hidden in plain sight - there's one particular puzzle involving the instruction manual that is wickedly clever.

Combat-wise the difficulty really comes down to how quickly you figure out how the game/mechanics work (I didn't realize you could upgrade till I was about halfway through the game), and what felt like a punishing game quickly balanced out, while still retaining a solid level of challenge.

My one big gripe is how often Tunic uses the isometric perspective to hide secret areas - it gets to the point where you're left hugging every wall in the game to not miss anything, and that can get a little tedious. Otherwise, this is a must.

This review contains spoilers

A pile of incredibly clever and cool ideas mixed in with a load of tradition-fueled dumb ones all with a pretty and bright coat of paint. This somewhat affirmative response to the industry's constant push for 'more', as well as the ideas it takes from (to some extent) Zelda and Souls games rarely do this game any favors. No, what truly makes it shine is the manual system and its many puzzles rather than the equipment, upgrades, or combat. In my opinion it is not at all 'similar' to a Souls game and is not close enough to a Zelda one to be a 'clone' of that, either - Tunic is more of its own thing that just takes ideas from either, for better or for worse.

The money-loss spirit system is just as pointless as it is in games like Hollow Knight, but it's at least not particularly punishing in this game, just needless. The combat in general is adequate but overbaked, ditching the sheer simplicity of Zelda for a somewhat damage-spongy roll-and-slash system. It winds up taking up way too much time that could be spent on exploration and puzzle solving, really.

Another gameplay gripe of mine relates to fast travel. Fast travel being separate from save points is fine, but the game's got a few that are either unusable or useless at several points which makes me question why they were even included at all. It adds to the slight amount of bloat the game has - it's not an amount notable enough to be awful, but there were a few times in the later parts of my run where I thought I was doing some pretty damn repetitive tasks for less reward than during the first half of the game.

Still, the game's a lot more than just those few things I mentioned. It's still got plenty of good going for it, and the most obvious part to point out is the art design. While I think the game could have used outlines, the visual style in general is very pretty and makes me think, "what if Death's Door looked a lot more colorful and had more alluring landscapes?" It helps that you get to see the isometric world from a variety of angles as you tackle perspective puzzles found around every nook and cranny. Looking everywhere for little items and extra cash is a lot of fun, and the game generally makes it rewarding (though I really wish the cash rewards tended to be closer to 50 than to 25... the game starves you for money more times than I'd like). The aesthetic of the game is further bolstered by the gorgeous manual illustrations, which very much evoke a yesteryear sort of flavor and are all totally adorable. I was always looking forward to find the next page not just to learn more about the game, but to see what little antics our fox friend would get up to for a given illustration.

The soundtrack is wonderful. While not at all as bite-sized and focused as Dustforce's soundtrack, the work Lifeformed and Janice Kwan did for this game truly carried a lot of weight in enhancing the experience. Not a minute went by where I wasn't happy to hear the music playing in the background. It was all utterly sublime, a trait that I've come to expect from Lifeformed.

I'm very thankful the game's writing is minimal and placed primarily (and cryptically) in the manual, as after a full year of games with awful writing I really needed a break. I wasn't really a big fan of the "bright world is now totally ruined and also there's a secret bad evil underbelly :(((" side of the game in the quarry and nighttime sections, but thankfully the game doesn't really revel in or linger upon it all. It takes more of a Link to the Past "Dark World" approach to things at night, which I appreciate as a nod without being some kind of big and obvious reference. Even if I wasn't a fan of that for how trite I thought some ideas seemed for an indie nowadays, the game did nothing bad in its presentation of those elements. If anything, it presented those elements well enough for them to be just as enjoyable for me as anything else in the game. I do still wish there was more to the world, too. A single weird ARG element seems to imply there could be, but the game doesn't do very much to convey the idea that this world was meaningfully lived in. It has this sort of Hyper Light Drifter feel to it that it's in fact just a game world created for a game that just pretends that it has deep lore and was lived in, not at all being convincing of either. That sounds brutal but I don't think it really ruins the game or anything like that, but was just one of a few slightly disappointing (but not all that surprising) parts of it.

The game being 100%able in 16 or so hours makes it a length that's perfectly palatable for what it is. It's not too long (at least not by much) and not too short, a worry I had before I began. Regardless of length, though, I can say for sure that I had a blast from start to finish; the amount of "aha" moments is a number likely only challenged by Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, which I'd call a high bar to be sure. The Golden Path puzzle in general is utterly brilliant, and besides a couple small hiccups with what could be interpreted as "stops" in the path, it was pretty simple to understand once you figured out what to do. Simple, yet clever indeed. There are some smaller puzzles that are too cryptic for my liking, but those are few and far between as many of the puzzles in the game have a distinct style that the player comes to learn the rhythm of by the time they finished a few dungeons.

This game isn't exactly what I was hoping for from my hype these past 3 years, but I'd say it was still plenty of fun and worth the surprisingly moderate time investment. I'm glad to say it was good!