This week we will spend some time talking about the videogame I have been playing a lot recently. That game is called Tunic. You have probably heard about it last year when it was announced and thought that it looked like The Legend of Zelda and Dark Souls met and had a baby. That’s what I thought when I first heard about it and since I have a friend who is a fan of both of those franchises, earlier this year I got him the game as a gift for his birthday. It seemed to be a big hit with him and so I eventually got it for myself later in the year. Sometimes you just need a friend’s opinion before you commit to doing something. Recently I started playing it and it is so much fun. I’ll get into more of why it is fun in a second, but this game reminds me a bit of Fez. For those who may not be familiar with it, Fez was a 2-D puzzle platformer that came out over ten years ago at time of writing and one of the big parts of the game is that certain puzzles would require you to make sense of patterns and potentially right things down if necessary if you wanted to collect everything. This game has something like that too and it is my favorite thing about this game.
At the start of the game, you are given limited instructions other than how to move and fight. To figure out where to go and how to progress, you need to find pieces of the instruction manual. You can find pages scattered throughout the different areas of the game. Each page you collect helps give you information on how to progress and what you need to do. Some of them even contain secrets that can help you find hidden items. The reason I enjoy finding these pages is I won’t usually understand the information on them until much later. Later on, I would piece together the information and I’d feel like I accomplished something. Sure boss fights are fun, but they aren’t nearly as crazy as some of these late-game puzzles. In fact, to give you an idea of what I am talking about, let me demonstrate one of the puzzles I had to do. This is a minor spoiler, but it won’t be anything too crazy.
There is a statue that you can find early on in the game that will give you this message when you interact with it. It looks like gibberish, and I had no idea what to do with it. Fast forward to a couple of days prior and the game shows me that this is a puzzle that I am supposed to solve. So I take a closer look at it and realize that there is a pattern here. Each line uses the same four symbols and each one is used only once. Now having late-game knowledge as well as this new information, I felt like I was close to a solution. However, try to guess what all of those symbols meant would take some time. Also, I didn’t feel like trying to brute force an answer. Eventually I figured out that when in doubt I should go to the guide so I opened up the instruction manual and found the last piece I needed to translate it. Then I input the code and I got my prize. It took a couple of attempts to type it in properly, but I did it. Actually, as a quick side note I should warn that for some longer sequences you might have it right when you’ve written it down, but you could easily type it incorrectly. Just try it a few times until you are sure it doesn’t work.
Honestly, exploring this game is just fun. I haven’t explored everything yet, but I find myself constantly finding out new things to test out. You know that it is a good videogame when you actually want to backtrack. I understand that this game might not be for everyone and that the aspect of deciphering how to play might turn some people off. However, if you are a fan of videogames that have lots of secrets hidden for you to find, then it is worth checking out. I personally think it is best experienced knowing as little as possible which is why I tried to keep things vague. Don’t stop yourself if you want to use a guide though. That’s up to you. Now if you will excuse me, I have to get back to finding the hidden items. Bye for now!
That Casual Gamer Guy 