Tunic review: Embrace adventure, discovery, and challenge with Tunic

Tunic makes its case to be 2022’s Game of the Year on all platforms now.

October 3, 2022

I’ve had my eye on Tunic for some time now, and – as someone who up until recently was only gaming on PlayStation – was saddened when it released as an Xbox-console exclusive back in March. Patience pays off, however, and Tunic released last week for PlayStations 4 and 5 as well as the Nintendo Switch. It’s adorable, fun, and addicting, and I absolutely love it.

Tunic doesn’t shy away from its influences – take one look at its fox protagonist and you’ll see what I mean. It wonderfully blends together the charm and structure of classic The Legend of Zelda games with the level design and difficulty of the soulslike genre to create an engrossing and challenging game.

Your playable fox wakes on the shores of an unknown land and immediately sets off to adventure. You don’t know where the fox came from, what their goal is, or even what their name is. You simply collect some mail, acquire a stick (and a short time later a sword and shield), and get to exploring.

Tunic review: Embrace adventure, discovery, and challenge with Tunic

Telescopes offer zoomed-out views of levels.

There’s so much to discover in Tunic, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed many of the game’s secrets – hidden paths, secret walls, undiscovered chests. There’s always something juuust around the corner, and, because of the isometric perspective, you’ll often be guiding your fox as a silhouette behind a wall toward a secret chest or path. I greatly enjoyed the level design of Tunic and its encouragement of exploration. It takes the sense of discovery and interconnectedness from the Souls franchise and encourages you to stumble around for secrets and shortcuts.

The world is a pleasure to explore because it’s so damn pretty as well! A palette of bright greens, purples, and pinks dot the landscapes and structures, and impressive lighting make the environments even more stunning. Chill, ambient music, courtesy of Janice Kwan and Lifeformed, invite you to take your time with Tunic and stay a while.

While searching for secrets on the mysterious island, various enemies will cross your path. Tunic’s combat is simple at its core, but effective in delivering a fun time. It reminds me a lot of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (a game I’ve been playing for the first time recently) in that you’ll mostly be pressing square for a three-attack sword combo to deliver the bulk of the damage you deal. Much like Link, your green-tunic-wearing fox will also acquire various bombs to take on enemies. Magical abilities round out the fox’s arsenal and add just enough variety to the encounters to never let them feel boring; I was always excited to face enemies, especially when they felt more powerful than my fox.

A sampling of Tunic’s bosses.

Delivering a challenging experience is at the core of Tunic. Much like a From Software game, even the lowliest of enemies can take out your fox if you’re not being careful, from tiny frogs to simple skeletons. (My toughest enemies? Crows, oddly enough. Could never figure out a great strategy against them.) Bosses are fearsome, some more than other, and most, if not all, will require multiple attempts to learn their attack patterns/animations and devise winning strategies. Thankfully you only lose 20 coin when your fox dies, not your entire bank of coin/exp. You can easily burn through your consumables, however, and they’re both expensive to refill and rare in the world. Use them all in a boss fight you were this close to beating? You’re SOL on the next attempt as you’ll have to pay up to replace all your berries, bombs, and peppers.

If a challenge does prove too tough you have a few difficulty options to adjust to make the game more in line with what you want. I found these settings (which include lowering combat difficulty, turning on a no-fail mode, and reducing the empty stamina penalty as options) to be wholly welcome. I’ve never agreed with the “git gud” mentality or the premise that a soulslike has to be difficult. If lowering a game’s difficulty can help a player enjoy the game more, then why not lower the difficulty? I took advantage of this during one truly challenging (and frustrating) late-game gauntlet that might have turned me away from the game if I hadn’t had the option of making it easier.

Both a delight and a challenge is Tunic’s manual. Throughout the game you’ll collect pages of the manual – think an old-school guidebook, complete with a table of contents – that include a map, explanation of controls, and hints on where to go to progress the game. It contains lore to decipher and previews of boss encounters to come. It’s beautiful, with hand-drawn illustrations and even a paper-flipping sound effect as you riffle through the pages. I enjoyed the sense of satisfaction when I discovered what I needed to be doing next by deciphering the manual, which is written almost entirely in the game’s made-up language.

An example of a very helpful manual page.

However, Tunic and its manual are willingly and enormously obtuse at times, and this can lead to frustration. I sometimes spent way too much time repeating the levels before realizing where to go or simply giving up and going to Google, which is not an ideal way for players to progress in a game. Now, I don’t need everything spelled out, especially when the game enjoys shrouding so much in mystery. Some guidance, like Link’s Awakening’s phone or Ghost of Tsushima’s guiding wind, would have been appreciated. Anything to keep me in the game and not scouring the internet for a walkthrough.

Despite some annoyances with the game’s willful confusion, Tunic is a grand and delightful adventure. It has an almost retro feel to it even though it’s only about six months old. The adventure you take the adorable little fox on is full of secrets waiting to be discovered, enemies waiting to be slain, and, most of all, fun waiting to be had. What I loved most about Tunic was its ability to keep me engaged throughout – I never wanted to set the controller down! Tunic will make you stay up past your bedtime, wake up early before school, bring your switch to work, neglect your Steam backlog – all so you can sneak in a few more moments guiding a cute, geometric fox on its colorful adventure.

2022 will see heavy hitters like Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarok, and two different types of Pokemon games, and Tunic will proudly stand next to all of them in the race for Game of the Year awards. In an industry where hundreds of millions are poured into Triple A games worked on by teams of hundreds, it’s pretty amazing that an indie gem made by one person may rise above them all.