Let’s say that it’s 1989. You go to a garage sale and find something you’ve never seen. You recognize the Nintendo logo, but not the console or the games. The price is right, so you buy it all anyway. You take them home and put everything together with your TV. You then boot up リンクの冒険. There’s not a lot of text, and you can figure out the basic gameplay quickly. But you turn to the instruction manual to see if you can find some additional context. The adorable art tells you nothing without the indecipherable text, so you press on to discover what you can about this new, mysterious game.
This is how it felt diving into the gorgeous, strange world of Tunic.
Get a better idea of how this game looks in motion with this trailer.
An Adventure Best Experienced Firsthand
OK, I have to get it out of the way: this is absolutely one of “those” games. The more you know about Tunic, the more you are being robbed of the experience of playing it. It is a game about adventure, discovery, and peeling apart layers of a mystery that runs deep into the island that serves as the game’s setting.
If you are a fan of Zelda games at all, Tunic is an important game to check out. On its surface, it may appear to be another indie game out there that tries to draw on your nostalgia for games “like they used to make ’em.” But, once you start pushing your adorable fox forward, you start to realize it’s anything but. Tunic has a lot to say, but to understand it, you must first learn the language it speaks.
When your Stamina runs out, you’ll take more damage and be slower. Manage it carefully!
You take one look at the main character and you see the Zelda inspiration. It’s in the name of the outfit he wears;a green tunic. You wake up on the shore of a mysterious island, having no idea of how you got there, where you are, or why you’re there. Like Link’s Awakening, the only real move is to see what’s on the island and to start a new adventure. But this game is from an isometric perspective similar to more modern action games like Hades and Diablo 3. When you explore the controls, you’ll find you can do a dodge roll, which means I now have to talk about “the thing.”
Combat With A Lot Of Soul
I know you might not want to hear it, but I have to say it. The combat in this game is far more evocative of a simplified Dark Souls style of game than any Zelda. Combat is about learning patterns, countering, and getting out of harm’s way. For the most part, this isn’t an indication of the difficulty. Aside from sudden, frustrating spikes that show up around boss fights, most players shouldn’t struggle too hard. That is, as long as they remember to keep their wits about them. But other, similar mechanics include equivalent bonfires and healing flasks. You can save, heal, and upgrade at clearly defined statues that then reset the enemies of the world, forcing you to think about what you really want to do.
I wouldn’t recommend letting this discourage you in any way. Don’t tell the hardcore Souls fans, but if you do find yourself unhappy with the difficulty or design of the combat, there is are options to alter the restrictions, such as by equipping infinite stamina or health. This lets you focus on the atmosphere and mystery of the world. If a boss is giving you an especially hard time, consider this option if you feel close to quitting. The game’s world is absolutely worth delving into.
The effects of lighting in this game look great.
A Vivid Treat For The Eyes
Like many of my favorite games, the art is colorful and pleasant on the eyes. The reason I love this is that when things get weird, and I promise you that they will, they feel like a departure from expectations that leads to a much sharper contrast in tone. I’m trying to avoid specifics here for the reasons I mentioned earlier, but this game isn’t simply about a cute fox boy swinging a stick around. It goes some places in all different directions.
Part of what helps this tonal shifting seem effortless is the game’s core concept. You cannot understand anything in this game. The signs, the world, the characters — it’s all presented in a language you do not understand. At least, not at first. Given time, a careful eye, and a clever sense of puzzle-solving, you will eventually start deciphering the world and what you’re dealing with.
Even a lot of the game’s system messages are in this foreign script, leading you to hesitate before hitting the A button. What does the game want when you tell it to look at an item? Does it want you to pick it up? Break it? Eat it? You can’t know, and that’s part of the fun. The brilliant environmental storytelling helps fill in some gaps, and as the world reveals itself to you over time, you’ll find that the island is not what it seems.
And no, it’s not a sparkly whale’s dream. I think.
All alone in the cold reaches of The Mountain.
Flipping Through Nostalgia-Laden Pages
Many of us who played games on the NES, SNES, N64, and other classic systems fondly remember the instruction manual. You tear the box open and flip through the book’s pages to equip yourself for the journey ahead. You learn the story, moves, and items and enjoy the unique art within. And if Tunic wants to reel you in with one nostalgic trick, it’s that experience. But it doesn’t come with a manual, as it is entirely digital. You don’t download a PDF to your phone or anything like that. You find the manual, page by page, in the game itself. And the effect is unlike anything I’ve ever played.
This manual is enshrouded in the same mysterious text as the rest of the game, with a few bits of English here and there to help you puzzle some things out. Like looking through a Japanese manual for The Adventures of Link, some things make sense with context and a few scraps of English words. But the pages are all out of order and are sometimes unintelligible at first. But as you play the game, you’ll see something you recognize from looking over the pages time and time again, a realization will click, and you’ll feel like an absolute genius. It’s simply incredible.
A look at one of the first pages you will collect. There’s a lot more to unpack here than it seems, but you’ll discover that later.
A Proper Melody To Accompany The Journey
The music in Tunic helps to establish the ethereal mood of the game. Performed by Lifeformed, who also did the soundtrack to games such as Dustforce, the soundtrack perfectly fits the Tunic‘s mysterious nature. Chill electronic tones and beats set the mood perfectly and help set this game apart from other Zelda-like games we’ve seen. You can detect some of the more atmospheric inspirations from Zelda games, but you can’t quite pin down where you remember it from. This soundtrack is easily going to be one of my most-heard albums on Spotify this year.
Conclusion
Tunic feels like a love letter to The Legend of Zelda in a vast number of ways, but it also goes its own way and creates a unique experience. Some of it seems familiar, but the execution is something new altogether. Every time you think you’ve grasped what this game is, you’ll learn something new that completely re-contextualizes the world itself. What started out as an adorable Zelda-like slowly becomes a new beast entirely.
Once you discover that the foreign script you’ve seen everywhere is translatable, you’ll feel like an archaeologist who has discovered the Rosetta Stone. That satisfaction that comes from perseverance through the game’s intertwined mysteries will be unlike anything else you’ve played in a long, long time.
It took me roughly 25 hours to uncover every single mystery, though I was also playing with someone else so we were able to put our two brain cells together. That also doesn’t include time spent making translation charts outside the game, of course. Rest assured, there’s a lot to explore, fight, and solve. Tunic is available on XBOX, Steam, and Game Pass for $29.99.
Score: 9/10
Similarity to other games:
The Legend of Zelda: 5/5 A Link to the Past: 4/5 Link’s Awakening 4/5
by Randy Marr on April 7, 2022
