Tunic is the Alpha Zelda Experience

Tunic is one of those games that I feel is not going to be talked about enough given its quality and unique selling points. On the surface, it looks like yet another isometric action-adventure game, of course in the same style as Zelda. But, digging deeper, we have a game that tries to break years of gamer behavior with its most powerful mechanic simply being its manual.

Confused fox

Our story finds a fox waking up on the shore of a mysterious land. Unarmed and with enemies around, it’s up to you to explore and figure out what is happening here. I love the aesthetics and art style of Tunic, and the game has some amazing establishing shots and backgrounds.

As per other action-adventure games, progress is about finding McGuffins that are the key to quests and new items that will allow you to either access more of the world or uncover things in areas you’ve already visited. Some people have compared this to Dark Souls in terms of combat, mainly because of the fact that you have to manage stamina when swinging, blocking, or dodging.

Where Tunic goes with all this is what’s going to either keep you playing or cause you to quit in frustration.

Mystery manual

We’ve all grown accustomed, over the last decade, to not reading game manuals, because developers haven't been making them in the first place. In Tunic, the manual is your tutorial, secret guide, and your progression. Throughout the world of Tunic, you will find pages of the manual that reveal everything from maps, to where you need to go, to even mechanics that you wouldn’t know otherwise.

Here’s the kicker: most of the text in the manual is written in the game’s runic language. To learn more about the world, your objectives, or even what things do, you’re going to have to figure out things from the pictures or attempt to translate the language yourself. The manual, from a design standpoint, is well done and reminds me heavily of the monster manual/spell book that came with Ni No Kuni (and why I got the special edition of that game).

I joked about this in my stream of the game, but Tunic is really the Zachtronics’ version of a Zelda game — it is complex, has lots of elements under the surface, and you must read the manual to make any sense of things. The game features multiple secrets, different endings, and a wealth of content for players who want to dig into it. The developers have taken a big gamble on the use of the manual, and I’m not sure if it pays off as well as it should.

Collaborative solo affair

Tunic reminds me of the game Abyss Odyssey, whose main marketing point was that the game was supposed to be played with the community to make progress. However, banking your mechanics on the size of your community, especially for a single-player-focused game, is a tall order. I can tell you right away that there is no way I’m going to be translating Tunic's language on my own anytime soon.

If you’re trying to play this game blind without help, I cannot imagine you’re going to figure out everything on your own. Someone on my stream commented that one of the clues in the manual is literally a reference to the TV show "Lost". As someone who never watched the show, this completely went over my head.

The question remains: Is Tunic perfectly playable without needing the community or outside help? I feel that the answer is no. I can imagine a lot of people getting frustrated and confused due to the lack of in-game direction, ending up quitting before they dive into the manual itself. I also think it would have been better to integrate the manual into the game experience more, such as being able to write notes on it or being able to have it on screen as a map or reference.

It is possible with brute force and just trying everything to make some headway in the game, but that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. And I can safely say that brute force will not work if you’re trying to go for the game’s true ending.

The beauty and nightmare of the game is that literally everything that you’ll need to play Tunic is in the manual, but you’re the one who has to make sense of it all.

Getting lost

The more I played Tunic the more the esoteric nature of the game began to annoy me. After playing this and Elden Ring, the latter is like a children’s show in terms of the ease of understanding it. The problem that Tunic has is that it presents another world, another set of rules, and another language, without really giving the player the barest understanding as to any of it. The game wants you to rely on action-adventure conventions and logic until it doesn’t; that the rules of the world are like X until they’re not.

Looking up some of the many solutions to the advanced puzzles, I can honestly say that I would never be able to figure them out without a spoiler guide.

Instead of feeling that the game was being clever, it just felt confusing for the sake of it. This is the kind of game for someone who grew up playing adventure games in the 90s or loving the deep dives into the ARGs of a Daniel Mullins game. Tunic commits the puzzle design sin of requiring way too much outside knowledge to solve its puzzles, or even know what a puzzle in the game is.

The camera can also cause problems with many things purposely hidden behind walls or at angles that you can’t see. During one fight, the camera kept spinning while locked on to the boss to the point that it started to make me dizzy. Boss fights became more frustrating as the game went on due to the camera issues and how fast they could move compared to my character.

Tunic is passionate but not practical

Ultimately, I respect Tunic for what it does, and there is a lot of passion put into it. However, enjoying this game requires you to be both an action game fan and a puzzle expert. I think the game leans too far in some respect to the latter while still requiring a lot of the former. I would suggest if you are interested in playing Tunic for the puzzle-solving to turn on the assist modes to make that easier.

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