Tunic comes at a perfect time; in the middle of a packed release schedule dripping with titles that delight in killing you, it’s a calmer, more mild-mannered take on the adventure game that wants to engage in a friendly dialogue. It doesn't want to yell at you – it wants to encourage you. To explore, engage, and experiment. It’s the perfect palate cleanser, taking anywhere between six and 20 hours, and absolutely essential if you’ve got a fondness for adventure games with a potion in their pocket, a cape around their neck, and a twinkle in their eye.
I’ve likened TUNIC to Fez, a similarly brilliant game that also shattered expectations, hid riddles in a new alphabet, and had an entire community rally around some of the larger secrets. I believe we’ll see the exact same here. The difference, however, is that TUNIC seems to be available to everyone, not just puzzle-minded nerds like me. As already mentioned, it’s a game of two halves. How deep the fox hole goes entirely depends on what the player wants to extract from the experience and I think that is just excellent. Not only is it one of the biggest surprises you can expect this year but it sets a new bar for design and minimalist storytelling, allowing players to slowly pick away at the world as new manual pages slowly drip-feed enticing clues about the true nature that lies beneath the cutesy surface. Like Pony Island, Doki Doki Literature Club, and Frog Fractions before it, TUNIC is going to be opening many people’s eyes to what a video game can do.
Has a magic to it that few games have anymore. Truly embraces not teaching the player and letting them learn things for themselves. Both to great effect and in certain circumstances, can be incredibly rewarding. An awesome time that I think anybody can enjoy.
Tunic is a masterpiece zeldalike and soulslike game that achieved a fair balance.
Beautiful art style and an ambiguous world that makes you hungry to know more about it.
At first glance, Tunic might look like your typical breezy indie adventure. How wrong you’d be to think that. Underneath its cute exterior lies a tough-as-nails experience, designed to truly test your mettle. But here’s a game that also sports some of the most thoughtful, wonderful design elements you’ll ever find, all laid out in an interconnected, sprawling world that begs to be explored. Better yet, a range of accessibility options mean that absolutely anyone can experience Tunic, regardless of their skill level. And by god, they should. It really is something special.
Tunic is an isometric action game where players take on the role of a small fox on a big adventure in an unforgiving world. It might look cute, but it is far from soft, presenting a unique, cleverly mixed fusion of Souls-like combat and Zelda-like exploration and puzzles.
Tunic desperately tries to recreate the magic of classic Legend of Zelda games, all too often doing so to a fault. It tries to be hands-off and instead leaves the player with no idea of where to go. It wants to have simple combat, akin to something like the Zelda Oracle games, but that approach gets stale incredibly fast here. More than anything though, Tunic left me feeling lost in its mysteries, which I didn’t want to solve out of need or drive, but because I couldn’t bear them anymore.
Je n'en reviens toujours pas que tout était sous mes yeux depuis le début ! Une des meilleures découvertes que j'ai eu le plaisir de jouer depuis très longtemps ! Si vous vous attendez à un ancien Zelda remis à neuf, passez votre chemin ! C'est un jeu à mystère !
Very good exploring aspect but the combat is not that good. The game can't stand to it's difficulty because the mechanics in the combat don't work that well. I would give it a try if you like exploring, but you will find yourself not knowing what to do next, very often.
This is one of the best and worst games I have played and for good reasons. Tunic is both very experimental and at the same time very traditional. The game design is very innovative and captures how video games used to be experienced. The old game was filled with obscure puzzles, unfair level design, and even a foreign language, which resembled the old Japanese game in which nobody understood what going on. Player has to scratch their heads to look for the game manual for hints and walkthroughs. In Tunic, the game manual is both a tool for hints and a puzzle to be solved. However, after so many years of gaming experience, I believe game designs are generally going in the correct direction, how the old game used to be experienced was a product of this time and would not completely click in modern times. Additionally, there are many game design choices I cannot possibly agree on, for instance, the maximum health-reducing enemy and even in the mid-game the game reset all player upgrades which basically ended the previous gameplay investment meaningless. The hidden puzzles are way to time-consuming than they needed to be, they are mostly not difficult to figure out but very time-consuming to map out the correct code. One single error can cost a player 30 minutes to 1 hour. Overall, it is a unique experience in the modern age, everyone should give it a try to see if they like it or not, especially I would those who have summer vacation to burn. 7/10 good game with serious flaws.
Unfortunately disappointed. It starts with controls and ends with guiding through the maps. In addition I personally think the puzzles all related to the manual are making things unnecessarily difficult. The nice details get lost in basics that just dont feel right. I had it very often, that I needed to check seconds sources to check what to do next. A clear path was missing for me. Controls during combats in my eyes feel way too slow and clumsy. Sometimes it feels like things are just not reacting / working. All in all a very good try but price and basic gameplay do not match in the end. Its one of the rare games I stopped playing after a while because it wasnt fun anymore. Better basic gameplay, controls and a clear path would have made this game way better instead of adding all this puzzles in the manual. Its like the clear concept got lost at a certain point.
I was really looking forward to this game. I'm a huge classic Zelda fan and loved the indie game Death's Door from last year. I'm about three hours in and incredibly disappointed. The game looks great, but the feel is all wrong. Your character moves like molasses and the combat is simply dreadful - your attacks knock enemies back, but you move incredibly slowly, meaning every encounter, you hit an enemy, then have to close distance to hit it again. You have a stamina meter and dodge a la Dark Souls, but the meter depletes incredibly quickly and replenishes very slowly, so I find myself reluctant to use it for anything. The first boss battle was a tedious slog because the boss moves way faster than you do, and if you try to use your roll (or run, which is initiated by rolling) to close distance, you'll run out of stamina, be unable to block, and take double damage.
The world design is... all right? There's something odd about the blocky art style though - it's very difficult to tell what connects to what. Several times I've been trying to walk across something, only to hit the 'shift perspective' button and realize that what I thought connected to the platform I was standing on is actually twelve tiles away.
There are lots of good ideas here but the game badly needed some playtesting to adjust the combat mechanics and flow. Unfortunately, I'm finding it incredibly tedious and not fun at all. If you're looking for a great Zelda-esque title that incorporates some elements of Dark Souls with a compelling story and fun combat, play Death's Door.
SummaryTunic is an isometric action adventure about a tiny fox in a big world. Embark on an adventuresome questabout set in that place just beyond the farthest you’ve ever been. Explore ancient ruins, fight monsters and uncover mysterious secrets. The world is big and scary — so be brave, little one.