An indie Souls-like game dressed up as a Zelda clone, Tunic is an isometric adventure game where you play as a little fox guy as he explores the world and solves dungeons and puzzles. It has a very strong resemblance to Zelda, from overworld to character design and its greatest strength is giving the feeling of playing an old Zelda 1-esque game with very little guidance, simply exploring the world to find the way to progress. Pages of the game's manual are found scattered throughout the world, which I thought was a brilliant concept. By finding these pages, you are taught about different mechanics, hints on progression, and even given maps of the world. It's a great way to pay homage towards to an older era of games, while being seamlessly integrated into this one. The game is also very visually stunning, having a good low-poly art style and occasionally employing perspective changes to give the world a sense of scale. I mentioned it was a Souls-like game, and that's particularly in the combat. It has a similar death mechanic, dodge roll/stamina system, and mentality towards difficulty that you'll find in those types of games. I'm not necessarily a huge fan of that style, but I think this game remained pretty fair, although it did tiptoe right up against the bullshit line on a few occasions. The secrets also could be a bit obtuse; I'm not sure I ever really understood the plot of the game, but given its meta "here's the in-game manual", it didn't really feel like much of a priority. This game was all made by a single developer, and it's an astonishing work of quality.

Reviewed on Mar 28, 2023


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