Tunic Review
Don’t let Tunic’s first-glance charm fool you. Actually, nevermind – go ahead and enjoy that charm. It’s a gorgeous game with a colorful, almost Link’s Awakening-esque art style, beautifully serene music, and an adorable sword-wielding fox for a protagonist. Enjoy it, because even though Tunic may look like a simplistic isometric action-adventure that draws clear inspiration from the early Legend of Zelda games, it is in reality a decidedly hardcore experience that will fiercely test both your mind and your combat abilities. It’s not “kiddier Zelda,” as its bushy-tailed hero suggests (though Tunic himself should be made into a real-life plush immediately). Instead, Tunic caught me off guard with its challenging combat and complex puzzles, and once I regained my footing I found that it executes on that premise wonderfully.
One of my favorite things about Tunic is that, like the old-school classics it clearly takes inspiration from, it tells you nothing. Less than nothing, in fact: nearly all of its dialogue and in-game language is in an indecipherable script, Tunic never speaks, and there are no objective markers, hints, or breadcrumb trails to speak of. Everything must be intuited, which is done partly through exploration but primarily through the individual pages of the in-game instruction manual that you’ll find scattered about the world.
The booklet is modeled after what you’d find in the box in a NES-era game, complete with handwritten scribbles and annotations on some of the pages. This manual, too, is written in Tunic’s own language, but you’ll be able to suss out clues and directions from the images contained within – it doesn’t look like an IKEA instruction manual, but it’s a similar idea. Paying close attention
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