TUNIC

I sadly needed to enable the music tonedeaf mode or whatever to find one platinum chest, and I definitely did not translate the manual's custom language, but everything else I solved without any hints. This game was really something. A solid 30hr with maybe 2hr of frustration learning the Heir's attack patterns. Highly recommend to be played on Steam Deck!

This is a hard thumbs down to make. On the one hand, it is a well crafted game, the devs obviously thought about a lot for how the game should work and how they wanted the world to design.

On the other hand, I found it very frustrating to play. Some puzzle games / metroidbrainias are super fun - so fun that you don't know you're being taught things. (portal doesn't need you to sleeo on mechanics and come back to them). This game basically requires you to take notes and pour over the rulebook and think really hard.

But, the problem with this game is 4 fold. I know devs won't fix it for this game, obviously, but I hope they consider for the next one:

1. The major mechanic of the rulebook is interesting, but not much is done with it. It's actually quite difficult to interact with. It's impossible to know if you can currently access a page to move forward, or if you need to figure out the puzzle with the things you have at your disposal. SOLVES: Allow a "PEN" tool to mark or take notes in the rulebook. Allow binding of a button, or a hotkey, to pull up "THE MAP OF WHERE I'M STANDING".

2. The mechanics of fighting, which is important in this game, lack the tightness and fluidity of similar isometric adventure games. There are just too many Animation Lock issues with your normal swinging of the sword, and every other action. I know you unlock things that allow you to break animation lock later in the game, but if you could interrupt your sword with your roll, or if the sword had less animation lock frames, it would have made the combat so much more fun. And, other aspects of fighting (parry) are unnecessary to the game and don't have tutorial. I don't think I ever parried an attack even though I knew it was possible. SOLVE: Remove dead animation lock frames - make fighting fun. Create mini tutorials for bosses or fights so that you can have more hints on how to be successful at them. They can be natural - like shield enemies (that don't do damage) you have to use grab on, that teach you to grab away the bosses shield.

3. MOST secrets and paths forward of this game are finding hidden areas behind corners. This is a bit of an antithesis of most games, where they have a light for the way you are supposed to go. I remember at a specific part of the game where I was moving quickly across pillars, and I got completely stuck because there was a random rope I was supposed to climb up that blended with the environment. Or another time where the MAIN, ONLY (unless you sequence break) path forward was taking a ladder down the back of a wall, only indicated by two little nubs that you could barely see. I'm an experienced puzzle gamer and enjoy many similar games, I've played every zelda game to completion, but I had to look up "how to leave this room" 3 times. SOLVE: Maybe add a sound to hidden spots or chests like islands of insight do with their puzzle cubes? Or like highlight the floor really bright around the character? Or the camera turns if there's something around the corner?

4. There's a lot of backtracking in this game without much clue of where to go next. That's relatively typical of metroidvania games, so I understand the idea. You get a new power, time to backtrack, but the way you do it with secret hunting is pretty frustrating, since some of that paths change throughout the game. I know it's like the point of the game to scurry through the rulebook, but for most of the game, the GOAL of the game is super unclear. And there's very few pages that clear that up. SOLVE: A page of the rulebook should be "POINT OF THE GAME" and show things you have gotten, with checkboxes next to each thing if you've done it. That was great to have for the first half of the game, and maybe I never got the page for the second half, but would have been helpful for the second half. Missing pages (because they're around a corner or whatever) is SO PUNISHING! 2nd solve: Have a button or resource you can spend that puts a GO HERE NEXT icon on the rulebook. Or make the rulebook an item that hums for other rulebook pieces or something.

While not my personal cup of tea (there are a few decisions I find a bit grating, I definitely appreciate Dark Souls' Homeward Bone a hell of a lot more now), this game gets a LARGE recommendation from me to anyone interested in playing it. I have played few games with as much love and thought put into them as this, and to those who love to dig their teeth into a game and it's mysteries, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a better game. This game rocks.

A game with whimsical art, charming characters, and a beautiful soundtrack. But lets not forget the HORRIFICALLY difficult puzzles and combat. Best of luck to all players on the Mountain Door puzzle.
P.S Download a PDF version of the manual. You will need it.

Holy Crap

Totally an epic game. 10/10. There is no other game that made me want to grind and solve the problem alone. Challenging but not a burden and also the difficulty can be changed. Mysterious but fun. Unique with it's puzzle. Absolute Must Try!!

Really enjoyable game, surprisingly challenging as well don't let its "cute" appearance fool you. Lots of secrets and hidden items. Make sure to examine the instruction booklet!

This game is beautiful and rich in lore and puzzles. I had a blast playing through it and figuring it all out. Would recommend playing completely blind for your first time.

Great Game, don't let the images make you think this isn't worth your time. Tunic has a ton to offer and rewards you with exploration and wonder!

A beautiful game deep with lore and secrets you'll feel smart figuring them out on your own and cool and challenging bosses. It starts slow where the game tells you nothing of the world you find yourself in, and if it does, the text usually will be written in a made up language, and it has a lot of backtracking but it goes hard when you know your goal, you will not be able to stop playing and if you do manage that, you'll not be able not to wonder throughout the day of things you could do or paths you could take.
TL;DR It's a brilliant and beautiful game beyond measure. 🦊

I recently reached an ending in the game, and this game has great puzzles and story. Unfortunately, the combat is extremely tight to the point of not being fun at certain points; in particular the (mid-game spoiler) 3 bosses to retrieve the keys and the (end game spoiler) Heir were tedious. It's like Metroid (NES/ZM and Super) bosses, where you have to throw yourself at them, and once you beat them once you can generally do it again.

Colour me impressed.

The simplified soulslike gameplay isn't anything revolutionary, but it just werks. You roll around, block attacks, find items that increase your stats, rest to respawn enemies, the usual -- but all without having to worry about grinding for XP or min-maxing stats. There's even a parry mechanic that's unfortunately bound to right trigger by default, making it easily missable -- bind it to RB instead, and tap the button to get some satisfying parries. Combat difficulty is pretty easy for a soulslike game, still keeping you engaged without getting trivial, at least not your first playthrough. You can make it even easier with a plethora of accessibility options, if you need to. The visuals are pretty even if there are some minor tearing, but what I'm most impressed by is the manual that you get to collect and assemble in-game, gradually revealing game mechanics in a cool and satisfying way, and the language that it uses, which is head and shoulders above the usual Caesar cypher used in action-puzzle games. I spotted one or two mistakes while translating it, but those are easily forgivable considering the effort the developers must have put in to make the thing.

The puzzles really start to shine in the second half of the game, but then the game gives you some tools that make some (but not all) of the puzzles trivial, which I thought was a shame. On the other hand, I never managed to figure out the puzzle for Secret Treasure #4 -- the solution is ambiguous and requires some language interpretation, but that might be just me being a little salty about not being able to solve it. Took me about 40 hours to almost-100% the game according to Steam, but only 14 hours according to the in-game timer -- I must have spent that many hours translating the manual and learning the language, with my desk completely covered in notes. And I had a blast doing it.

New Game+ is barely an afterthought. The only difference is it puts some rare "strong" enemies here and there, but they're not really a challenge to you at that point, and all the bosses turn into complete pushovers, making the game trivial. Got bored while playing it, and I'm pretty sure nothing special happens in it anyway.

A really good game with great puzzles and discoveries. Go in with no spoilers and have tons of fun. :)

The best puzzle game I have ever played. If you decide to get it, do yourself a favor and don't look anything up - not before, not during. You CAN do it. You CAN get 100%. Trust.

Absolutely recommended if you ever yearned to have a cork board of pictures and notes, all connected with a web of red string. Some stuff is insanely cryptic and unless you're Sherlock level brilliant there's gonna be a lot left, even after your brain boils and you've had enough. And after finishing it i still suck as dodging.

Very nice indie game, beautiful and big - but not empty - world, playable in any nowadays computer and practically bug-free (just one enemy glitch in 20 hours). Amazing artistic sections (both visual and sound), good control, a lot of nice mechanics (the pages of the manual and the runic language are both quite original). A lot of room for improvement regarding the combat though (I didn't like the focus mechanic, which is not well implemented either - the focus may jump to a different enemy after performing an attack to the one you really want to keep it on). The worst part is on some final bosses, which are way too hard, way too unfair and way too frustrating, their difficulty is completely unbalanced from the rest of the game (luckily you can leave them for later at any moment and go for some exploration as a way of taking a break).
I'd have preferred being able to rotate the camera, but I understand that this would've made finding some hidden areas too easy and less reward-feeling.
I bought it at a 50% discount (~15€) and despite its flaws it's worth every cent.

Wants to be a souls-like but the combat is too primitive for it. Standard enemies are fine; it’s the boss fights that are wildly out of place. Thankfully there are settings to remove stamina and reduce damage taken, bringing it closer to what you would expect from a Zelda clone.

There’s a manual page collecting gimmick which is mostly written in a made up language so you’ll find yourself googling half of it anyway. Some awkward backtracking towards the end followed by A LOT of backtracking if you want the good ending.

Imagine we lived in an alternate timeline where 1986's The Legend of Zelda was never released outside of Japan. Imagine also if you came across a rare copy as well as well as its original Japanese instruction booklet. You switch on the game and wander around a bit with no idea what you're supposed to be doing.

You get frustrated after a while and put the game down. Some time later, you open up the instruction booklet out of curiosity. Obviously, you can't decipher any of the Japanese text (minus the occasional English word sprinkled here and there, as often happens in Japanese media), but you find yourself enjoying the beautiful hand-drawn illustrations that adorn many of the pages. Most of then are promotional; Link fingting monsters, traveling across mountains, scenes from before the game's beginning, etc.

Soon, you find one of the illustrations depict Link placing a bomb against a wall, revealing a hidden cave entrance, something you didn't even know was a mechanic before now. You even recognize some of the features in the background as being from a screen in the game's overworld. You boot the game up again, go back to that screen, and sure enough, the bomb you place opens up a cave that leads to one of the dungeons.

As you continue playing, you notice other hints in the booklet that help you progress. You begin to realize that this game was made back in an age where instruction booklets weren't obligatory accessories, but meant to be your indispensable guide through the game. The language barrier puts you at a disadvantage, so you must use your deductive reasoning to try and figure out what you're supposed to be doing.

The result is a wonderful, immersive experience that challenges your mind as much as your skills. The dungeons and difficult bosses are rewarding on their own, but decyphering the booklet's cryptic hints make you feel like Indiana Jones uncovering the forgotten secrets of an ancient civilization.

This is the experience Tunic sets out to create. It can be thought of as a metroidvania, except it is knowledge that unlocks the way forward instead of just powerups. Sadly, this means the game is really only playable once, as the experience is lost if the player isn't completely blind and uninformed.

Is that worth $30 to you? As I write, I cannot think of any other game that correctly re-reates the experience Tunic does. Plenty of games use classic art styles, or revive older genres, but none of them so accurately simulate the sense of wonder and mystery that was only possible back in the pre-gamefaqs age of gaming.

I do highly recommend Tunic for those who are open to a mental challenge. However, maybe wait for a sale to make up for the game's un-replayability

Tunic made me spend over 70 hours re-learning how to read and I couldn't be happier about it.

One of the greatest games I've ever played.

Inquisitive, relaxing, visually lovely, right amount of difficulty, great exploring mechanic. love it so far.

Genuenly one of the best indie games Ive ever played. It captured that Zelda itch that I was missing. I loved this game its so cute and everything just comes together perfectly at the end. I wish I could replay for the first time once again.

One of the most creative, beautiful and interesting games I've ever played.

Really fun little adventure game, with loads of clever ideas and neat puzzles. The combat can be pretty difficult though, much more so than the cute Zelda-like look would suggest, particularly the boss fights. I was done with the game in 16 hours, having completed everything except the more hidden secret collectables.

Fun game with fun puzzles, unique presentation, and truly beautiful overall. Boss battles can be a major genre switch and difficulty spike if you're not used to the controls though.

Go blindly into this game, if you get stuck you haven't read the manual thoroughly, that's all I'm saying.

Masterpiece of a game!

Axуeнно, играешь за тиджой спотифай дум флинфлайтагарт, бьешь монстриков, ищешь страницы из шумерского манускрипта, в конце получаешь гейм овер

This game makes me feel like I'm back in the 90's again and I absolutely love it! Collecting pages for the guide book and flipping through the pages, deciphering the meanings and hints inside to get gameplay tips and solutions on how to progress and find secrets feels so good! And good lord the secrets, there are SO MANY secrets everywhere and it makes gameplay so satisfying, you literally have to check around every corner. The puzzles are super innovative and fun as well. The gameplay can feel a tiny bit clunky at times but I don't think it detracts from the experience overall.

Finally, the music and visuals are just lovely. If you're a fun of the old school Zelda games or just old school adventure games in general from the 90's to early 2000's, you'll undoubtedly love this, it's seriously a must play.

Tunic appeals to the nostalgia of those who played Legend of Zelda as a kid and Dark Souls as a teenager. It's a challenging mystery that can only be solved with brute force and cleverness applied in equal measures.

Had this on my wishlist for over a year but finally decided to play it when someone compared it to Outer Wilds. And yes, they were right and I got hooked. Couldn't stop playing until I finished it. The kind of game that you should just play without knowing too much about it.

There needs to be a name for this genre; like Undertale, this is a "fantastic - but go in knowing nothing DONT LOOK IT UP and trust the recommendation" game where explaining anything is spoiling.

one of the best games I've played in recent years. A lot of puzzles and secrets to uncover. I would recommend you write stuff down in a notebook to help you solve some things. I cannot recommend this game enough

Fantastic game that's just purely fun to play. it respects your intelligence enough to not hold your hand through everything but not so hard you have to have the wiki on a second screen. More often than not if i did look up the answer to a puzzle I felt silly for not figuring it out and not "well how was I supposed to know that". Some extras can be hard to find but overall an excellent experience with lots to sink your teeth into.

This is a surprisingly fun game with good game play. light on the story yet it works here.

Awesome gameplay, amazing soundtrack, the puzzle are very unique and satisfying to complete and the endings are very good.

I definitely recommend this game it's one of the best game I've played

This one has amazed me on multiple levels. So much secrets, features and story to discover. Loved it all the way.

This is a great game that has OG Zelda vibes, however it was much harder than I expected. As long as your good with that it's worth picking up.

The combat isn't great, some of the puzzles are incredibly cryptic, and the pacing towards the end of the game is really weird, but I still recommend this game. It's unlike anything I've ever played before, and it's so refreshing to play a game that doesn't hold your hand. There's no yellow paint telling you where to go, or NPCs constantly reminding you what to do. Just a beautiful world to explore on your own.

Easily one of the most creative and interesting games I've ever played.

I don't want to give too much away, because this is one of those games where you should go in knowing as little as possible. But if you are into solving mysteries and puzzles then definitely give this a try. It is a rare type of game that lets you experience "epiphany". That sublime moment when you notice something or realize something that's been right under your nose the entire time, and suddenly all the pieces click into place and everything that you didn't understand before now makes sense, and an amazing feeling of awe washes over you.

If you're still not convinced then I'll give a little more description, but keep in mind that from here on I'm explaining game mechanics that I think you are better off discovering naturally by yourself.

The basic gameplay is a fairly straightforward isometric action game, taking a fair bit of inspiration from Dark Souls in its combat, level design, and other systems. The perspective and progression is also somewhat reminiscent of old Zelda games.

The unique feature and core conceit of the game is that it tells you almost nothing. Instead, as you play, you find pages of the game's instruction manual. What's more, 90% of the text in the game, including the manual, is written in an unknown fantasy script. You must use your intuition and the context clues and hints in the manual to determine where to go and what to do. The more you study the pages, the deeper your understanding of the game becomes.

It takes some time before the real genius of the game becomes apparent, so don't worry if it seems a bit dry at first.

A very cute artstyle, great mechanical feeling to the game and a lore/tutorial dump tied together in the most unique way I've ever seen.
Magnificent game.

The less you know going in, the better. TUNIC is jam-packed with secrets, and has more brain-tingling 'aha' [OMG / WTF] moments than many other games put together. It's dreamy on the eyes and ears—the aesthetics are gorgeous even when disturbing, and the music compels you through some truly mind-bending puzzles. The combat ratchets up with bosses, which is frustrating but feels totally appropriate for a game echoing opaque, near-impossible 90s games. Palms wills sweat. And the game guide menu is beyond perfect. I love this game.

this game is fucking amazing. you like 2d zelda? get this. you like wholesome but mildly sad story? get this. the game is reminiscent of hyperlight drifter but cuter and holding 2d zelda themes. worth every penny and the game deserves the praise it gets. truly a masterpiece if ive ever seen one in gaming. i hope they make a sequel or something....

Amazing game! Some of the puzzles are extremely difficult, so feel no shame if you need help with them. I loved the feature that allows me to play without dying because I get so frustrated with combat. It lets you freely explore for the most part. I probably ended up places early and spent too long on a boss because my attack stat wasn't high enough, but I didn't die, so... Absolutely recommend it!

I have never played a game that made me so eager to grind or spend an entire evening trying to beat a boss. Normally, I am the kind of player who gives up quickly when things get too difficult, but I simply could not stop playing this game. From the very beginning, you are dropped into a mysterious world with no instructions. You do not understand the language, and it is up to you to figure out the mechanics on your own.

What is truly astonishing is that almost everything you need to know is there from the start. You just do not realize it immediately. The way the game reveals its secrets slowly, allowing you to connect the dots at your own pace, is absolutely incredible.

It reminds me a lot of Outer Wilds. Just like that game, Tunic is best experienced completely blind. Go in without spoilers, trust your instincts, and be ready to keep trying. The challenge is real, but the sense of discovery and accomplishment makes every effort feel worthwhile.

I cannot recommend it enough. This game is truly unforgettable.

I will miss you, little fox.

An epic adventure with significantly more polish than i could have imagined.

Runs well, looks great, music is amazing, the story is interesting and mysterious (so far), and the puzzles make me scratch my head sometimes. I love the pages you slowly unlock throughout the game. If it looks even remotely interesting to you, buy it. It's well worth it. I still haven't finished the game (as of writing this review), but I plan on finishing it and seeing it all the way through. Try to go in as blind as you can for the best experience, as one of the best parts about this game is the knowledge you gain along the way.

Game is best appreciated as a discovery process, much like Outer Wilds. There's sufficient basics that get shown, but the rest you discover on your own.

I'm not entirely sure what TUNIC is about, but that's probably the point. Game's got layers upon layers, and if you're willing to dig for its secrets, you're unlikely to be disappointed. Maybe keep a notebook or something handy while you play though.

Beautiful adventure - if you get nostalgic for the days when games came with instruction manuals and used to love reading them then this is the game for you - great puzzles, great mystery, great music

Tunic is a ton of fun; a really well crafted game that is just a pleasure to play. Can't really recommend it enough if you're the kind of person who likes discovering as you go. If you're finding the combat tough, give a hints & tips video a shot and then maybe consider lowering difficulty and/or enabling settings under the accessibility menu :)

IMO worth picking up, especially in a sale

I've just now beaten the game!

Tunic is a charming adventure title of the old/early style (think NES). The atmosphere is usually light and cheerful, the puzzles have surprising depth (especially the optional ones), and the combat is difficult until you get the tools that you need.

The mechanic of finding pages to the sort of game manual that used to come with cartridge-style physical media games was a delight. Finding the pages that gave you part of the solution to a puzzle, or hinted at what you might be missing made coming across them extra exciting, and I loved all of the little hints that looked written in with a ballpoint pen.

A+

disclaimer: I was a little kid when NES games were new, so the nostalgic lens really, really worked for me.