Even though its references are obvious at first glance and more obvious once you start playing, Tunic doesn’t feel at all like any of them. And contrary to what you might think, that’s a bad thing. Let me explain.
Yes, it plays like a Zelda, and Zelda 1 has been referenced many, many times by other texts for obvious reasons like the lack of gimmicky dungeons, the hidden secrets, the apparent simplicity of the gameplay… it even tries to replicate the experience of playing with a manual and taking notes in order to progress and have a better understanding of the whole thing. But it fails so miserably. The world is over-designed, abusing connections between locations, teleports, save points… The sense of discovery and adventure vanishes when there’s hardly any sense danger except for bosses and occasional fights and, in case of trouble, you will respawn in the latest save point activated (which by the way you can use even when surrounded by enemies) so there’s virtually no loss of progress.
Tunic also never gets close to the feeling of having to figure the hell out of your path in order to your destination. There’s no hidden doors or passages that are necessary to progress through any of the dungeons or important locations, all the layouts are straight forward and it ends up feeling more like a modern Zelda just without puzzles to solve. Instead, there’s always locked doors with a handle next to it and at most you’ll have to fight a bunch of minions or reach it from a different place because the path is locked. What’s most worrying for me, though, is the fact that even if the dungeons themselves don’t have puzzles or gimmicks in the traditional sense (except for one that I can recall), the world itself is built around those gimmicks in a really gamey, artificial manner, hiding rewards and blocking your progress behind unreachable places if you don’t have the necessary items or power ups like the hook or the dash.
You'll also see people talk about Dark souls but honestly at this point it seems like a joke to me that people think of the game when something has stamina, bosses and bonfire-like save points. FEZ has been said to be closer to what Tunic wants to dobut this is not as mystic, magical, obtuse, imaginative, with its craziest puzzles and challenges being better integrated into the world, less gamey. For instance, both the famous Golden Path and the mechanism to activate the mysterious monoliths and doors spread throughout the world (by following a sequence of d-pad presses that have no other utility, quite underwhelming) are revealed in the manual at some point. Which brings me to the next point: why is it there in the first place? What sense does it make in the context of the game and its world? What’s fun about having pages giving you hints or sometimes really clear explanations about where you are, where to go, how its systems work, which buttons do what, how to perform certain actions or where to find things? Wasn’t the point to explore a mystical world with lots of secrets to find and emulate the old experience of exchanging information with other people, taking notes, having to figure out things… ? And why is it both in our language and the game’s language, emulating a lost manuscript that you have to gather by exploring and overcoming challenges, in a way that doesn’t feel natural at all? The point of having a manual is being able to understand it, the point of having old manuscripts is not being able to understand them, but this in-between with words written in both languages, plus the bland foreshadowing, button mappings and game system explanations, handy little hints every once in a while etc just doesn't make any sense.
But there’s great stuff like The Quarry. Everything about that zone, from its perspective-shifting presentation (very cinematic) showing the giant door you have to reach. The place is full of enemies who attack you from different ranges and heights and show different behaviours when you approach them. They all gather around corruption, some weird purple-ish liquid that’s either just there or emanating from ancient monoliths, and that corruption shrinks your health bar (yes, your health bar, not your hp) making you play safer, experiment with the different items and power ups, manage the distances and so-on. Everything’s cool except for the existence of certain item that grants invulnerability to corruption unless you touch it. It was too good to be true.
Yes, it plays like a Zelda, and Zelda 1 has been referenced many, many times by other texts for obvious reasons like the lack of gimmicky dungeons, the hidden secrets, the apparent simplicity of the gameplay… it even tries to replicate the experience of playing with a manual and taking notes in order to progress and have a better understanding of the whole thing. But it fails so miserably. The world is over-designed, abusing connections between locations, teleports, save points… The sense of discovery and adventure vanishes when there’s hardly any sense danger except for bosses and occasional fights and, in case of trouble, you will respawn in the latest save point activated (which by the way you can use even when surrounded by enemies) so there’s virtually no loss of progress.
Tunic also never gets close to the feeling of having to figure the hell out of your path in order to your destination. There’s no hidden doors or passages that are necessary to progress through any of the dungeons or important locations, all the layouts are straight forward and it ends up feeling more like a modern Zelda just without puzzles to solve. Instead, there’s always locked doors with a handle next to it and at most you’ll have to fight a bunch of minions or reach it from a different place because the path is locked. What’s most worrying for me, though, is the fact that even if the dungeons themselves don’t have puzzles or gimmicks in the traditional sense (except for one that I can recall), the world itself is built around those gimmicks in a really gamey, artificial manner, hiding rewards and blocking your progress behind unreachable places if you don’t have the necessary items or power ups like the hook or the dash.
You'll also see people talk about Dark souls but honestly at this point it seems like a joke to me that people think of the game when something has stamina, bosses and bonfire-like save points. FEZ has been said to be closer to what Tunic wants to dobut this is not as mystic, magical, obtuse, imaginative, with its craziest puzzles and challenges being better integrated into the world, less gamey. For instance, both the famous Golden Path and the mechanism to activate the mysterious monoliths and doors spread throughout the world (by following a sequence of d-pad presses that have no other utility, quite underwhelming) are revealed in the manual at some point. Which brings me to the next point: why is it there in the first place? What sense does it make in the context of the game and its world? What’s fun about having pages giving you hints or sometimes really clear explanations about where you are, where to go, how its systems work, which buttons do what, how to perform certain actions or where to find things? Wasn’t the point to explore a mystical world with lots of secrets to find and emulate the old experience of exchanging information with other people, taking notes, having to figure out things… ? And why is it both in our language and the game’s language, emulating a lost manuscript that you have to gather by exploring and overcoming challenges, in a way that doesn’t feel natural at all? The point of having a manual is being able to understand it, the point of having old manuscripts is not being able to understand them, but this in-between with words written in both languages, plus the bland foreshadowing, button mappings and game system explanations, handy little hints every once in a while etc just doesn't make any sense.
But there’s great stuff like The Quarry. Everything about that zone, from its perspective-shifting presentation (very cinematic) showing the giant door you have to reach. The place is full of enemies who attack you from different ranges and heights and show different behaviours when you approach them. They all gather around corruption, some weird purple-ish liquid that’s either just there or emanating from ancient monoliths, and that corruption shrinks your health bar (yes, your health bar, not your hp) making you play safer, experiment with the different items and power ups, manage the distances and so-on. Everything’s cool except for the existence of certain item that grants invulnerability to corruption unless you touch it. It was too good to be true.