Tunic – Review
For those who are familiar with the classic Legend of Zelda games, Tunic is a riff on them. It is your goal to roam the world, largely unguided, and follow your curiosity as it takes you from one place and goal in particular to the next. Except that, for all the cuteness of its little fox hero, the game is quite happy to destroy you with eight giant spiders or an army of giant rats. It’d be the perfect game for me to relax with.
You play as a small fox who wakes up on a beach and finds himself in a world full of beauty, wonder, and ominous red, green, and blue lighting. Iconic examples of this bizarre world include seeing a skeleton-ghost shopkeeper appear as soon as you enter an empty, pitch-black cave with no warning.
With a stick, you can easily remove slimes from the scene before you encounter anything more harrowing. For now, you’ll have to settle for a stick until you can afford a sword and shield, which will be your first quest. No single person can be your guide, but a parental fox spirit you meet seems to fill that role to some extent, so it’s nice that Tunic has a great in-game manual you can consult at any time. Everything else will fall into place once you’ve located every page.
Tunic’s in-game manual is not just one or two pages; rather, it is written in runes that you can’t decipher, and it doesn’t tell you what the game is all about. Find them because they may provide helpful hints about the game, such as explaining that there are two bells to find and ring, and perhaps even providing a list of areas you must pass through in order to do so. While it’s a fascinating way to give players hints, being brainwashed into unhelpful games like Dark Souls and Co. has made me appreciate it even more.
While we’re talking about runic writing, it’s also true that things you find in the wild have the same style. It is up to you to figure out how to use the items you find if they don’t come with an explanation. Additionally, nothing in the outside world is of much use. It’s like playing a massive RPG or adventure game and skipping all of the tutorials, which is a lot like the experience. Tunic wants you to follow your curiosity, even if you only have a hazy idea of what everything does.
In world design, the same holds true. A lot of things are hidden in plain sight thanks to the isometric perspective and cute and chunky graphics. Every so often, a hidden path would lead me up and around the back of a house, which I could have tried to move around at any given time. Rather than focusing on what you can see, focus on what the camera is hiding from you.
Tunic does an excellent job of making you feel both smart and dumb at the same time, and I think it’s rare for a game to do this. Tunic’s combat, thankfully, does not hold back when it comes to using swords, giant shields, or magical automated crossbows to break up the monotony of solving puzzles.
Combat in Tunic is simple and intuitive if you’re used to this type of game, and you’ll encounter a wide variety of enemies on your journey. You’ve got your attack, a shield (in the future), various items you can use in combat, a lock-on, and a stamina-based roll to choose from. In other words, this game has everything you could want in a modern action game, and it all plays wonderfully.
As a result, you find yourself in a world that is constantly beckoning you forward with the promise of a new piece of information. Curiosity and the occasional “I really need to get my revenge on that gaggle of enemies” will keep you going the majority of the time.
Infusing all of the nostalgia people over the age of 25 will feel when confronted with a fox in a green tunic with modern-day design philosophies like messing with your line of sight or being comfortable enough to not let you even understand half of what you’re reading in the early hours of the morning, Tunic is an incredibly modern take on a classic style of game. In my opinion, this fox’s journey may be ruined by the lack of actual information provided early on, but Tunic is unquestionably going to make many people smile.
