Tunic is an action adventure game that puts unique twists on the genre.
Tunic has some unique gameplay mechanics that are best experienced without prior knowledge. I won’t discuss story beats outside of the basics, but I will discuss these mechanics. Consider this your spoiler warning.
What Is It? Instruction manuals were once a vital part of video games. I rarely purchased new games as a kid, but I very much remember the rare occasions where I got to get a game from a store. The ride home, tearing off the plastic and spending the whole time reading the instruction manual was a wonderful occasion. The loss of instruction manuals is truly one of the tragedies of our time. I’d be willing to wager a guess that the developers of Tunic agree with me on this.
In Tunic you are a cartoon fox who wakes up on a beach. The game doesn’t give you any direction via standard tutorials or pop-ups, it simply sets you free to figure it out. You will find a stick and figure out how to equip it to smack enemies with. You will replace the stick with a sword, find a shield, learn some magic, and so on. Use your abilities to explore the area, defeat foes, find new things, and generally do all of the Zelda-y things as you would expect from an action-adventure game like this.
The big twist Tunic offers is by way of finding random pages throughout the world. You will pick up a numbered, two-sided page, and add it to your “journal.” Some pages will include maps, others will have pictures of some items you might have found, others will show your fox character doing some moves. After a while, you will realize that you are actually reconstructing the instruction manual for Tunic.
Not all retro instruction manuals were created equal. Some are basically worthless as you can learn all you need through playing. Others will explain mechanics you may completely miss if you didn’t read page 12 of the instructions. Tunic’s approach to the manual is to hide absolutely everything about the game within. It starts with some basics such as explaining what some common items do, how to perform a roll-attack, and so on. It will expand to some button input combos needed to unlock the game’s deepest buried secrets.
None of this instruction manual nostalgia would matter if the gameplay wasn’t good, and Tunic passes the test there as well. The basics will feel familiar as it’s a blend of many top-down action games and a souls-like. Sword, shield, and dodge are the primary combat mechanics. There is a parry that takes comically long to activate, but I found myself needing to use it on the final boss nonetheless. Your shield can block anything, but taking too many hits will deplete your stamina bar which means you can’t block, parry, or dodge until it refills. There is also a magic component with a few different uses, including a shotgun and a long range fire rod. These systems add up to being pretty great. The game is fairly relentless most of the time, with some brutally tough final bosses, but also offering many, many places to die between them.
Explore, fight tough enemies, figure out how the gameplay mechanics work, figure out what you’re supposed to do, and repeat. Tunic does a great job of presenting strong, fun gameplay with a unique twist of having to discover what literally everything in the game does and how to use it. A favorite part of mine was discovering how to upgrade abilities. I was getting crushed by an early boss until I discovered how to, essentially, level up. Afterwards, the boss was still quite tough, but reasonable enough that I could win after a few tries.
The Best Part: The instruction manual and how the game hides everything behind it; from even the simplest gameplay mechanics to the ultimate secrets of the game. It’s an incredible, novel addition to the blend of genres Tunic takes its cues from. It does a great job conjuring memories of many of the retro action-adventure games and adds a new level of exploration and discovery to the game.
The Worst Part: When you die in Tunic, everything you did between your last shrine visit and your death carries over. You even get a souls-like shadow left at your death spot, you need to reach it to regain some lost currency. This is just fine on the surface, and actually quite helpful if you’ve managed to unlock a shortcut or something before dying. The downside here is that this applies to consumable resources as well. Waste all of your firecrackers against a boss fight but still lose? After reviving at the shrine you won’t have any. There are no save files, so this fate is unavoidable. It is certainly unique, but really just makes me afraid to use any of these resources which is not a ton of fun.
The Verdict: Tunic puts a bunch of things in a blender and, somehow, manages to create a great game. It isn’t perfect; one of the bosses had wildly inconsistent blocking behavior which drove me crazy, for example. It is, however, a successful game that blends many familiar elements, from Zelda to Souls to Hollow Knight, into something cohesive, unique and fun. The difficulty and emphasis on exploration, mechanically and otherwise, are the likely sticking points for many people. However, for those who are eager to tackle the unique challenge Tunic presents will unfold one of the more unique takes on the action-adventure genre I’ve played in a long time. Hitting the right nostalgia points while introducing new wrinkles is a tough path to navigate, but Tunic does so brilliantly.
How to Play: PlayStation 4 & 5*, Switch, Xbox Series, PC, Mac
*console played on for this review
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