TUNIC
TUNIC is an action-adventure game inspired by Zelda and FEZ.
You play as a fox who wakes up on a ruined island, with no context and nothing else to do but to explore.
You’ll quickly find the bare minimum to fight the enemies wandering around, and a few pages of what appears to be the game manual : this manual is the core of TUNIC.
The twist is that it is ciphered, written in a language you can’t understand. Some words are still readable though, and the game revolves around that : making you guess and guiding you with your senses of observation and deduction. Nothing is directly told to you : everything, whether it is a minor or major thing, is in the manual and you’ll have to study it.
It has a strong nostalgic vibe, game manuals are not a thing anymore and anyone who grew up with them probably miss them too. I always read them before playing a new game, and I remember I had to put tape on my Super Mario Sunshine and Sonic Adventure 2 manuals due to reading them too much…
The world of TUNIC is extremely well crafted, exploring it is very pleasant (the game is beautiful, cute and has a nice soundtrack) and very rewarding, there are TONS of secrets hidden everywhere. Once you get that this is this type of game, you’ll start searching any corner you can find… and sure you’ll probably get a lot of treasures.
But what makes the level design of TUNIC so good and truly genius is not only the secrets you’ll find. It’s all the things hidden in plain sight that you’ll still miss. The game doesn’t even try to misdirect you, they are just so cleverly hidden that you won’t see or find them.
TUNIC has two major sides:
– The first one is the adventure side, the main game. It strongly reminds of Zelda, but harder. And I’m not just talking about the bosses, common enemies are also threats and some areas can be (very) challenging. The combat is punishing if you just brainlessly rush into the enemies. If you take your time and properly dodge/parry, you won’t have much trouble going through the game except for an area near the end. You even have some consumables you can use if you really struggle.
The bosses are still the highlights of course, being fun, varied, very strong and usually forcing you to use different items depending on which one you face.
– The second one is the FEZ-like side that you’ll discover near the end. Full of clever puzzles, including mind-blowing ones that you’ll remember for a long time. Some people can find that part too difficult but it’s not, it just requires patience and, as always, a thorough study of the holy manual.
I unfortunately can’t go into details without spoiling anything but if you like puzzles, it’s heaven.
At this point you probably wonder why I didn’t talk about the story at all. Well, like anything else in the game, the story is also cryptic.
You’ll guess a few things and probably end up understanding what you’re doing on the island. But the real story, the context of the game, is locked behind the ciphered language. And you’re not supposed to decipher it, at least not until the very end of the game… and you probably won’t anyway because it’s absurdly hard.
That’s the only little sad thing I can say about the game, I would’ve loved more hints about that to really try to decipher myself.
Anyway TUNIC is a masterpiece, in case it wasn’t clear.
And we need more games like that. Games crafted with a lot of love and time put into it. Games that don’t hold your hand and recognize players are not devoid of brain. Games that are unique and memorable experiences.
I’ll just end with a small message to the devs : thank you.
Developer: TUNIC Team
Publisher: Finji
Platforms: Steam – Windows/macOS, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series, Xbox One, XCloud
Release Date: March 16, 2022