A green-garbed hero wakes up on an island. Their mission - retrieve a sword & shield and get to work vanquishing evil. Sounds familiar? Well this hero’s the cutest I’ve ever seen. And a fox.
(Disclaimer: The author of this piece is acquaintances with one of the developers of TUNIC and received a few hints from them on where to find things over the course of the demo.)
Tunic is an adorable isometric action-adventure game that wears its inspiration from the Legend of Zelda series on its sleeve. From the clay-like character models to rows of rubbery grass, you might think this is coming on the tails of 2019’s Link’s Awakening Remake, but Tunic was unveiled by publisher Finji back in 2017.
Despite some similar aesthetics, Tunic is very much it’s own beast, so I’ll try to keep comparisons light. Now, an unexpected source of inspiration for the game (that admittedly didn’t click until I saw so many people posting about it) is Dark Souls.
You’re probably familiar with the ‘Souls-like’ formula : kill-kill-kill as you explore ruins or a town (or even ruins of a town), die over and over to scary ghouls as you slowly learn their strategies and weaknesses, and uncover a shortcut or two as you go. All of this applies just as easily to my time with Tunic and the grimness of repeated deaths is an interesting contrast to the game’s cute artstyle.
And what an artstyle it is! I know I’ve already made my feelings clear already, but the banquet of cute details - like how the (canonically nameless) Tunic Fox takes the time to give every enemy they walk past a good look - made my six hours with the demo a delight.
Sunlight filters through the leaves as the waves lap the shore and armoured feet pound the cobblestone, all with the same level of care put into them. Everything in the demo was a treat to the eyes and ears thanks to the art of Eric Billingsley and developer Andrew Shouldice, not to mention Power Up Audio’s excellent work on the sound effects.
The demo -- which presents itself as a “remix” of the final game on its faux manual page -- is crammed with secrets and gives a good picture of what the core gameplay loop is going to be : explore the island, slay/run away from beasties, keep an eye on your stamina meter so you can keep dodging and blocking attacks, collect stronger weapons to defeat more powerful enemies, pray at shrines to respawn at them when you inevitably get blown up by a Slorm, and - whatever you do - do NOT try to fight the giant skeleton.
Dubbed “Mr Bones” by those lucky enough to play Tunic’s demo during its limited-time availability at Gamescom’s Indie Arena Booth two weeks ago, the giant skeleton lingers off the beaten track and hints at the difficulty curve to come in the final game. Only after I scooped up every health potion around the island (love the fox’s swig animation, by the way) and bombarded Bones with a barrage of bombs was I able to defeat them.
It’s likely Tunic will wall off things for later in the story this way, which feels faaaaaar more organic than an invisible wall or the “I don’t want to do that” monologue of other games. In fact, there won’t be any monologues in Tunic at all if the demo’s anything to go off of. No text either.
Every sign you come across while exploring the island is plastered in a series of indecipherable glyphs and the occasional picture - with the exception of the SEALED FOREVER message when you try to open an enormous gold door to the north of the starting area that I think was only put there so demo players wouldn’t waste too much time trying to jam the collectible gold medals inside of it’s medal-shaped crevices.
The aforementioned manual (which you appear to be able to collect pages from) also has a smattering of English, but largely just so players know what the button’s do.
Quite a departure from Finji’s last game - the text-heavy Chicory - but Tunic should have no trouble reaching an international audience from launch as a result.
Coming at some point in the next century (my money’s on a surprise release early next year - based on nothing at all) to Xbox and STEAM as what I believe to be a timed exclusive, Tunic is the action adventure game that’s far more than a Zelda-like.
Will you be buying this game day one, and why is the answer ‘yes’? Do tell in the comments.
