Tunic | Xbox/PC/Game Pass/Switch/PS | Fantastic Mr Fox. Action-Adventure. IGN 9.

Explore a land filled with lost legends, ancient powers, and ferocious monsters in TUNIC, an isometric action game about a small fox on a big adventure.

OrangeRKN wrote:Very jealous of anyone able to play this

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Tunic is an unapologetically challenging action-adventure game that is charming, multi-layered, and immensely rewarding to solve.

Most Souls-likes tend to adopt a grimdark fantasy aesthetic, but Tunic harkens back to the 8- and 16-bit eras by presenting a vibrant and colorful world that also offers a fiendishly difficult challenge. It's not simply evocative of games from the late '80s and early '90s because it creates facsimiles of their graphics or gameplay, but because it manages to capture a tangible feeling of exploration and difficulty, where an instruction manual is your tool to deciphering everything. It's the kind of game you would've purchased because the box art looked cool, eagerly flipping through the pages of its manual on the car ride home, not quite understanding it all but getting excited at the possibilities all the same. In Tunic's case, this grand adventure lives up to the expectations.

Tunic turns its many influences into something that feels both familiar and gloriously new.

I was constantly veering off from the main quest to track something down or look into a newly discovered path, and so it took me about 20 hours to roll credits. Despite that, I know there’s still a lot for me to do in the game, and I’m excited to go back in to find every secret and experience everything its aesthetically striking world has to offer. Tunic is a stunning achievement that manages to embody the best of nostalgia while being completely refreshing. It’s absolutely a must-play gem.

Tunic is an absolutely delightful game to slink away to for a few hours to explore, discover, and conquer. Solving puzzles and uncovering the myriad of hidden secrets can make for a calming adventure, but there's always the potential for an exhilarating moment of victory after a particularly difficult boss.

A person’s experience of playing Tunic will absolutely be what they’ve made of it. Those uninterested in secrets or super-challenging gameplay can move along the main path as they please, thanks to these different settings. But there will also be players that revel in knowing everything about the world and defeating all of its bosses. The amazing thing is how Tunic serves all of those players without compromising on either front. This is a delightful, puzzling journey.

It speaks the language of games gone by while injecting both modernity and its own personal twist.

These grumbles aside, Tunic is a resolute and intelligently made adventure in its own right. Modern reimaginings of the "classics" often reproduce mechanics of old games in cleaner ways but without understanding the game's design from a holistic level. Nostalgic platformers give you coyote time, but then fill their world with needless dialogue. Retro shooters throw hordes of enemies at you, but fail to construct smart spaces in which to fight them. If this plucky fox 'em up flatters-by-imitation too much, it is only because it has examined its reference in its entirety. Like an overhanging camera view, Tunic sees Zelda from the top to the bottom. It is a tribute well-paid.

Old school adventure sensibilities and an expertly-designed puzzle box world combine in this charming and engaging indie gem.

Tunic's cutesy aesthetic and tips of the hat to other games serve almost as a jumping-off point, a familiar-feeling touchstone to draw players in. Beyond that, the experience is entirely its own, with satisfying and challenging combat, secrets that gradually unfurl, and a quiet and contemplative story with its own twists and revelations.

Tunic offers an immersive atmosphere, suspanceful and full of mystery

BOR wrote:If it's similar to Death's Door. I'm in.

Is it available now?