oi oi, chew-nic, innit? This game left a serious impression on me so I'm glad I was able to get this finished. Especially glad to get it finished today because tomorrow (as of publishing) is my birthday! And I'll be damned if I'm going to spend it staring at an editing timeline... As always, more stuff to come, so stay tunic err... tuned.
Smartest, genius, novel, beautiful and most engaging and surprising game of the year therefore in my book the BEST GAME OF THE YEAR. Similar, to Inscryption the last year.
Yes! I thought the Holy cross was literally like a prayer, kinda like the Sign of the Cross. But then the most interesting thing is how I figured the golden monolith, instead of realising the pattern on the monolith is the directions you're supposed to input I noticed the pattern was inverted through the X axis in relation to the one on the manual page, so I thought "what if I also invert the holy cross pattern along the X axis?". To my surprise this worked, but only for this particular case due to its pattern, it wasn't until I started to notice other patterns I figured there had to be another way, then I looked closely at the pages and finally picked on the queue to follow the lines with the D-pad. Wow, this game truly was an experience.
Your experience with the Door in the Mountain hits home. I missed THE EXACT SAME marking on page 52. My saving grace was counting out the inputs I had, realizing there were only 99, and concluding that an even 100 was too perfect to be coincidence.
Not me bawling at your interpretation of the character reminding the past games and memories how great they were. And then carrying them with us??? It's so beautiful and wholesome, I just can't stop
I love how Tunic is bold enough to wear its inspirations on its sleeve, but still is able to stand on its own two feet. You think you’re playing a Zelda clone, until you realize it’s actually a Souls-like, but wait…no, actually-actually, it’s its own thing and that is…a puzzly, cutesy, horror?! It deserves all the praise it’s getting and you summed why up so well: a masterclass in subliminal nostalgia.
I just got 100% in the game yesterday, and was going to start on Super Mario Wonder today. But instead, I spent most of the day looking up lore videos and reviews (your video is my latest stop. Loved it, by the way!). Like you did, I just cannot seem to leave the world of Tunic yet. I was in love with the exploration and puzzle elements of this game. Going into this totally blind, I managed to collect every upgrade treasure, every coin, and almost every equipment card (At the very end of the game, while looking up what all of them do, exactly, I somehow learned that there was a secret one not mentioned in the manual! It made fighting the Heir so much easier). I got all but 1 fairy, all but one trophy, and managed to solve the entire Golden Path puzzle all on my own. I felt so bad having to look up the answers to those last few puzzles, but in doing so fell down a fucking rabbit hole like you wouldn't believe. Did you know that there's an option in Accessibility Settings to make audio puzzles easier? Knowing that sure would have helped in figuring out what's going on with those windchimes outside the Old House. Were you also bashing your head against the wall trying to figure out what the "60 seconds", "Shhh..." was about on page 51, with the illustration that looked like a star partly underwater next to a piece of paper? (Even as I type this I'm having to boot up Tunic again for reference) The one that, if I'm reading page 54's hint correctly, surely holds the final trophy? Apparently, you have to turn off Sound Effects under the Audio options and stand in water for 60 seconds. Doing so will cause a secret message to appear at the bottom of the "Thank you!" note by the devs on page 1 (which bears a similar star symbol). Said message consists of more game language and a drawing of a familiar landmark in the overworld which is shaped like Holy Cross directions. Ah! So that's it! If everything the game taught me so far is correct, I just have to go there and input the directions to get the final gold treasure!...WRONG! At this point, it would be very, VERY handy to know what the note next to the image says. Throughout my journey thus far, I noticed that the game language doesn't appear to be random runic scribblings of a non-language. There are certain shapes that repeat in ways consistent with language which has had some thought put into making it. Furthermore, what of the notes on pages 21 and 54? They appear to be some sort of clue to how you could go about deciphering it, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. The game isn't over yet. THE. GAME. ISN'T. OVER. YET. The game expected me to decode an entire in-game language. A multi-hour task, if you even know where to start (not me!). This is the hardest task this game has asked of me at this point. But thank goodness there's a awesome community of clever Tunic fans that managed to translate this thing (Bravo!
It seems Tunic brings out a joy and playfulness in us that our souls are craving, because I’ve never seen a game evoke such enthusiastic expression and the desire to articulate what makes it so beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
I love when a game evokes this kind of response from people, and glad I'm not alone on that. This game consumed me for a time and it was a wonderful adventure. It took me back to my childhood with nostalgia yet was a whole new experience in and of itself. It truly is a masterpiece.
Spoilers It's so so amazing how fucking deep it goes. Like, the ARGers found out that the tunic language was represented with MUSIC as well. Dubbing the text Trunic and the music Tuneic. And then an audio engineer working on tunic revealed that some of the OST plays Tuneic in it as well as many sounds. The turrets say BOOM when exploding, the fairies say NO FOXES ALLOWED when spawning, the fairy spell says "over here! Over here! Fox friend! Over here!" It's so fucking amazing how amazing this game made me feel.
I was waiting for this game to come out since like 2015. Finally glad to see it got released :D I was wondering if it was in development hell, or just stopped being worked on by the devs at one point. I was super hyped for it, so I'm really happy that it's great!
Played this on game pass, the game did a wonderful job of capturing that nostalgic feeling off looking at an "official" game guide to figure out stuff in the game before the internet really started to become more mainstream. I must applaud you for figuring out the golden puzzle yourself without help. Personally I would of never solved that myself alone. The game had a lot of "ah ha!" and "I understand this now" moments which I thoroughly enjoyed.
You know, I was sent on my way to Tunic the same way I had initially played The Witness: by finishing Outer Wilds and begging to find any other game that might make me feel as fulfilled as I did playing OW. Tunic filled the void a million times more than The Witness lol, what a neat little game!
Oh, same! I happened to glance at the Steam reviews for Tunic, instantly saw "like Outer Wilds" and "I can't tell you anything, just play it" in the top two reviews, and slammed *buy* instantaneously
so glad you had a great time with the game! did you ever go to find the golden statues and the rest of it?? it's absolutely bonkers where the current state of the game / secrets are at now lol. i think deciphering the language and figuring out what the pause screen said is gonna stay with me for a while. it's such a delightful gem and i love everything it does. i was wary because so many people said "oh it turns into a puzzle game halfway through" but man, it's so good at what it does! if you want another soulsy top down game there will always be more of that. there will so rarely be more of what tunic actually is.
7:21 this reminds me of a giant skeleton salesman sketch I made during my math class like down to only making it’s arms torso and head I also gave him a top hat
Brilliant video! I really surprised you never mention Fez. I think last part of the game is much more Fez than The Witness. Also things like general sound design, environmental inputs, custom alphabet very much like Fez. You should definitely played it if you haven't before.
oh sameee i was thinking "omg this is just like fez" throughout so many parts of the video be it by either frustration of solving a puzzle or by game elements that pop up. 100% convinced that one rotating tower you go up the ladders is inspired by the belltower in fez. also the weird alien thingies with the three eyes look so much like the benefactors too
I got the bad ending and just thought, cool, that was hard! I didn’t really want to search for the missing pages. I had NO idea how much crazier it got from there. I feel like I missed out, but at the same time I’m not sure I would have even solved most of the late-game stuff. What an insane game
Easily one of my most favourite games ever. No other game has made me be as drawn to it than tunic did, I wish i could experience it for the first time all over again
Great video! My journey to discovering the holy cross was so different to yours, as my realisation came from the seeking spell page first! But that’s what makes this game so great, it’s your own journey of discovery!
Your discussion of this game mirrors exactly my experience and thoughts with this game. Such an incredible and rewarding experience for figuring stuff out.
13:05 you technically can win there, this requires a very specific strategy or extraordinary skills but it's definitely possible. If that happens, you proceed as if you won the fight normally (so you get your ending sooner).
I ended up getting so invested in the puzzle solving, I did the golden path ending first. I didn’t even know that there’s was another ending, I thought the boss was never supposed to be defeated (or if it was then it would be like a true ending for the ones who are god gamers)
I figured out levelling up by incidentally opening the item menu while standing near a shrine (because I'd just died and was checking how much currency I had) only to see the "offer" option on the items and go "???!?!?!!?!?"
Hahahaha, I made the exact same mistake translating the clue for page 52, missing that -tiny- notch. Glad I’m not the only one. I was very proud of myself figuring it all out without a guide up to that point.
I found the load game puzzle for page 9 on my own. But what stumped me more was page 22 with the blurry images. And some of the fairies were more impossible... I looked up a guide for those, but NOT the golden path. Im glad I was able to do that, and this game is one of the best games ive ever played
Absolutely loved this game. Realizing halfway through that there was a massive puzzle game hidden in plain sight all along was AMAZING and I loved the fact that I had to get out a notebook and draw in it to solve some of them.
Tunic will always be my favorite game of all time, nothing will ever come close to how much I enjoyed it. The only thing I regret was, stopping playing the game because of the scav king and then getting spoiled on the next part of the game. I’m still playing it now, even trying to learn and memorize the language. The music actually makes me feel nostalgic, even though I was born in 2010. I’m not even sure how it does it, but I’m glad it does. This game has actually become my comfort game, I play this game to unwind and relax. This is game of the decade for me.
This is the only game that could make me learn an entire writing system to the point of being able to use it without a reference just so I can talk to some ghosts. What a masterpiece.
This IS a brilliant game. I was completely taken by it as I love these sort of games that gate (at least some of) your progress simply by what you know about it. I tried to do as much as I could without looking things up online, but I eventually got the platinum trophy by looking up some of the late-game things that I just couldn't figure out. Amazing game, and I look forward to any more of these style of games because they are my jam. For anyone else that likes these kinds of games, others that I have played that use similar methods of gating progress are: The Witness, Outer Wilds, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Chants of Sennaar.
your interpretation of the true ending made me think of a weird "what if" scenario where link's true quest in "link to the past" was actually a side quest where you try to ressurect your uncle who died at the beginning of "link to the past"
The music making you feel nostalgic? It's simple: their music sometimes uses sounds that I describe as being "crystal-like". You hear it in the PS1 startup sound. The Lego Media Group logo video on the Lego: Rock Raiders videogame, the soundtrack for the 2002 hit videogame Fate, etc. It also uses sound fonts, compositions, and arrangements similar to what you might hear in an older Final Fantasy game or other JRPG. I could go on about this, but I think you get the point.
I did look up a few things for my own playthrough, but the things i looked up were unintentionally optional things, like the trophies and the remaining Fairies. I had gotten 12 of those on my own, and didn't realize I only needed 10 to unlock the missing page 54/55. After that, I was able to open the door in the mountains (with 1 hiccup) and get the true ending of the game. It's a delightful game, and I absolutely loved it to pieces. Some of the Holy Cross puzzles were very obscure, but thankfully getting all of them is unnecessary and only unlock one final secret thar I don't think anyone's fully cracked yet. In all, thank you for letting me know about this game. It was beautiful, and I'm so glad I played it myself :)
If only it wasnt a non-elden ring game... So right. I specifically remember tunic coming out just after elden ring and thinking I was too busy banging my head against ER to play it. Tunic was EXACTLY the pallette cleanser needed after that, and I actually regretted prioritizing ER.
finally working out how to translate the language was one of the most rewarding things i'd ever experienced in a game, and definitely a step up from figuring out simple english ciphers, like the one in fez, for example
Love this game. ICO esque forlorn. The soundtrack arpeggios are hypnotic and sets a moody ambience. I’ve never played a Dark Souls game so this is a new experience for me🎉
I actually figured out the Holy Cross and a bunch of the Holy Cross puzzles way before you were supposed to. Like, early enough that I had one manual page that mentioned the Holy Cross, but didn't realize that that type of puzzle was what it was referring to because I didn't have the necessary context yet. I'd found it by chance, staring at the pattern on a door early in the game and just tracing it because it felt like the kind of environment puzzle they'd put there (knowing that I had at least some moves I didn't necessarily know how to do and that those buttons didn't apparently do anything didn't hurt, neither did having recently finished the Witness), and it worked. Then I started noticing them in a bunch of other places. Also for anyone curious you can actually translate the language, it's just English under a cipher. The broad strokes for how the cipher works are that each glyph encodes a vowel sound (vowel sound, not vowel letter as most English vowels have multiple sounds and some vowel/consonant pairing that indicate specific variations on their sounds) using the outside edges and a consonant sound using the inside lines (the page he shows at 21:35 is supposed to suggest splitting the inside and outside into two parts and gives a list of all the valid ones). The notes to the right give a couple of examples, like showing how "sword" is two glyphs, representing S+OR and D by itself. If there's a dot at the bottom then the vowel sound comes before the consonant, if not the consonant is first.
Honestly, once I figured out what I needed to do to solve a puzzle, I often just looked up the solution. I can only imagine the thrill of playing the game when it was brand new and getting out a pencil and paper and thinking you might be one of the first few people to figure it out. I did solve the language mostly on my own though, with pencil and paper and lots of guess and check work until I could start to make sense of the manual and figure out the rest. It was very rewarding.
U are absolutely right this game is an absolute delight i loved everything about it. I did look at some walk throughs bc i dont have a lot of patience but the ones i did solve by myself felt amazing i wish i could wipe my mind playing this game the first time so i can play it again with same amazing feeling i had the first time playing it
for far, a love FPS , HALF LIFE, thats my main , but this peace of art, the seek peak of the secrets of the real world and developers world is beautiful. This is a Oportunity to be in love of video Games again.
i am extremely bad at games and the point where invisible things start attacking you is where i had to hand in the towel. it’s an extremely well done game and i wish i had the skill/time to complete it fully
I think the reason they offer the option to start over again, is so that the Witness-esque puzzles seem more organic in the world, just like you said wishing the experience was more varied.
17:25 you're not wrong to make this comparison, but I feel like Tunic has way more in common with Fez than the Witness. Honestly, I'm shocked you didn't mention it!
[Spoiler's for tunic's best puzzle] I've never had as much fun on a puzzle as I did with the puzzle on the mountain door. I mostly solved it by myself by piecing it together, using a Microsoft powerpoint slide, the screenshot tool, and the powerpoint draw tool. Athough I did have some help here and there to point me in the right direction with some of the puzzles (page 9 blew me away), but I mostly solved it by myself through intuition and guessing. It was an absolute blast getting it together piece by piece, tile by tile, connecting the dots both metaphorically and literally in this case. my only complaint with the golden path puzzle is how excruciating it is to type it in. Like seriously?!?? 100 steps? missclick once and you're back at the beginning. Like, I wish we only had to do the code in segments rather than all at once (like maybe we could've divided the door into four separate sides so that we only have to input 25 tiles each instead of the full 100.)
“Oh boi some of the game mechanics and bosses do remind me of dark souls” *Enters the Spoiler Section* “Oh god it reminds of dark souls, just without the dogs and crustaceans”
If anyone is looking for a game similar to Tunic I recommend check out Death’s Door. It doesn’t quite have the same level of depth but it has many resemblances, mainly just by being an isometric indie game with a moderate difficulty spike.
Tunic is my favorit Game of 2023 on the Switch. This is my opinion after playing Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom for 220 hours in 2023 ..... and i'm a Zelda Fan since 1995. 😂
Oh yeah, man, if you want secrets, all those little chimes and shit you get when opening fairy chests, loading or starting saves, or even opening THE DOOR? That's another language :)
This game pulled me in so hard that I played through it almost fully twice inside of a week. I had to do it again because alcohol made me look at a page and make choices about save files that made me have to start over again. Didn't mind though. Just a magical game. Also, I missed I reckon the same detail you did. A bit too subtle, even in context.
This game is beautiful in every sense of the word. But sadly at one point I had decided to quit because something was too hard. But there was an itch that I had in the back of my mind telling me, “try again, but think about it.” Sure enough, it was all about attitude and how you approach situations. Everything is a puzzle, if you think about it, from chests, to the Holy Cross, and even combat. There’s always a solution. Be patient, read carefully, and think outside the box. I found the answers. But like any game, there’s always more than one solution…
Thought I was the only one who took a break from all games after finishing a really great game. This feeling is so true. Few games have that power nowadays.
The only criticism i have for this game is that I feel that you should be able to get the final ending without getting a notebook out or printing that page from the golden path. Everything else crucial to get the true ending is pretty self contained and can be solved without breaking out of the game's world. I solved everything else on my own, got the bad ending ,and was even inputting codes at different doors. Beating the final boss made me feel like i finished the game, so i wasnt in for another 12 hours trying to piece together this crazy puzzle...
11:19 As someone who played this game blind, i laughed so damn hard like some evil villain when i heard this. Edit: 11:37 OH SHUT UP YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID IT EARLIER
Let me tell you what I think about old "retro" games. If a game from 2013 can push my laptop to it's limits, it's brand new as far as I'm concerned. Like the most recently released game my computer can play maxed out will be the newest one for me.
I REALLY wanted to like this game due to loving the concept "knowledge is power" in games. But I also realized, I really don't like "cutesy" games... Even when I was engaged, the game being so overly adorable just made it infuriating for me. Yeah, maybe I'm too edgy, but I honestly cannot play Animal Crossing as I fall asleep.
Spoiler, so don’t read this if trying to avoid them I actually beat The Heir kind of in a cheesy manner… I kept throwing decoys and hitting them in the back, over and over, cause I kept missing the dodges Also funny that the secret statues are never mentioned. Keeping something unspoiled eh?
oi oi, chew-nic, innit?
This game left a serious impression on me so I'm glad I was able to get this finished. Especially glad to get it finished today because tomorrow (as of publishing) is my birthday! And I'll be damned if I'm going to spend it staring at an editing timeline...
As always, more stuff to come, so stay tunic err... tuned.
Happy early birthday! Definitely going to have to give this one a try ❤️
My gosh just watching this video, it feels like such a deep and amazing experience, that one guy did a great job making this game
Another awesome review! Happy belated birthday, and nice one for showcasing another awesome game I had never heard of before 😁
Smartest, genius, novel, beautiful and most engaging and surprising game of the year therefore in my book the BEST GAME OF THE YEAR. Similar, to Inscryption the last year.
Tunic has secrets within secrets and now it has a physical edition!
"I thought the Holy Cross was just this one input on the D-Pad"
STOP THIS IS LITERALLY MY PLAYTHROUGH
Yeah... Maybe there really isn't a single human experience, it's literally my playthrough too
Yes! I thought the Holy cross was literally like a prayer, kinda like the Sign of the Cross. But then the most interesting thing is how I figured the golden monolith, instead of realising the pattern on the monolith is the directions you're supposed to input I noticed the pattern was inverted through the X axis in relation to the one on the manual page, so I thought "what if I also invert the holy cross pattern along the X axis?". To my surprise this worked, but only for this particular case due to its pattern, it wasn't until I started to notice other patterns I figured there had to be another way, then I looked closely at the pages and finally picked on the queue to follow the lines with the D-pad. Wow, this game truly was an experience.
Your experience with the Door in the Mountain hits home. I missed THE EXACT SAME marking on page 52. My saving grace was counting out the inputs I had, realizing there were only 99, and concluding that an even 100 was too perfect to be coincidence.
... Tf
Not me bawling at your interpretation of the character reminding the past games and memories how great they were. And then carrying them with us??? It's so beautiful and wholesome, I just can't stop
I love how Tunic is bold enough to wear its inspirations on its sleeve, but still is able to stand on its own two feet. You think you’re playing a Zelda clone, until you realize it’s actually a Souls-like, but wait…no, actually-actually, it’s its own thing and that is…a puzzly, cutesy, horror?! It deserves all the praise it’s getting and you summed why up so well: a masterclass in subliminal nostalgia.
The solution to this conondrum is that dark souls itself is a zelda clone.
@@egoalter1276 Yeah, not that hard to believe. It just had some extra things like dropping your wallet and upgrading your stuff.
Tunic has secrets within secrets and now it has a physical edition!
the bimbs are oddly helpful in this game in compared to zelda
In the end it's a FEZ spiritual successor.
I just got 100% in the game yesterday, and was going to start on Super Mario Wonder today. But instead, I spent most of the day looking up lore videos and reviews (your video is my latest stop. Loved it, by the way!). Like you did, I just cannot seem to leave the world of Tunic yet.
I was in love with the exploration and puzzle elements of this game. Going into this totally blind, I managed to collect every upgrade treasure, every coin, and almost every equipment card (At the very end of the game, while looking up what all of them do, exactly, I somehow learned that there was a secret one not mentioned in the manual! It made fighting the Heir so much easier). I got all but 1 fairy, all but one trophy, and managed to solve the entire Golden Path puzzle all on my own. I felt so bad having to look up the answers to those last few puzzles, but in doing so fell down a fucking rabbit hole like you wouldn't believe.
Did you know that there's an option in Accessibility Settings to make audio puzzles easier? Knowing that sure would have helped in figuring out what's going on with those windchimes outside the Old House.
Were you also bashing your head against the wall trying to figure out what the "60 seconds", "Shhh..." was about on page 51, with the illustration that looked like a star partly underwater next to a piece of paper? (Even as I type this I'm having to boot up Tunic again for reference) The one that, if I'm reading page 54's hint correctly, surely holds the final trophy? Apparently, you have to turn off Sound Effects under the Audio options and stand in water for 60 seconds. Doing so will cause a secret message to appear at the bottom of the "Thank you!" note by the devs on page 1 (which bears a similar star symbol). Said message consists of more game language and a drawing of a familiar landmark in the overworld which is shaped like Holy Cross directions. Ah! So that's it! If everything the game taught me so far is correct, I just have to go there and input the directions to get the final gold treasure!...WRONG!
At this point, it would be very, VERY handy to know what the note next to the image says. Throughout my journey thus far, I noticed that the game language doesn't appear to be random runic scribblings of a non-language. There are certain shapes that repeat in ways consistent with language which has had some thought put into making it. Furthermore, what of the notes on pages 21 and 54? They appear to be some sort of clue to how you could go about deciphering it, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
The game isn't over yet.
THE. GAME. ISN'T. OVER. YET.
The game expected me to decode an entire in-game language. A multi-hour task, if you even know where to start (not me!). This is the hardest task this game has asked of me at this point. But thank goodness there's a awesome community of clever Tunic fans that managed to translate this thing (Bravo!
It seems Tunic brings out a joy and playfulness in us that our souls are craving, because I’ve never seen a game evoke such enthusiastic expression and the desire to articulate what makes it so beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
These puzzles feel like actually going through the "you, me, gas station" meme
I love when a game evokes this kind of response from people, and glad I'm not alone on that. This game consumed me for a time and it was a wonderful adventure. It took me back to my childhood with nostalgia yet was a whole new experience in and of itself. It truly is a masterpiece.
Spoilers
It's so so amazing how fucking deep it goes.
Like, the ARGers found out that the tunic language was represented with MUSIC as well. Dubbing the text Trunic and the music Tuneic. And then an audio engineer working on tunic revealed that some of the OST plays Tuneic in it as well as many sounds. The turrets say BOOM when exploding, the fairies say NO FOXES ALLOWED when spawning, the fairy spell says "over here! Over here! Fox friend! Over here!"
It's so fucking amazing how amazing this game made me feel.
I was waiting for this game to come out since like 2015. Finally glad to see it got released :D I was wondering if it was in development hell, or just stopped being worked on by the devs at one point. I was super hyped for it, so I'm really happy that it's great!
Played this on game pass, the game did a wonderful job of capturing that nostalgic feeling off looking at an "official" game guide to figure out stuff in the game before the internet really started to become more mainstream. I must applaud you for figuring out the golden puzzle yourself without help. Personally I would of never solved that myself alone. The game had a lot of "ah ha!" and "I understand this now" moments which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Holy m o l y I could unironically smell that game manual part o_o
You know, I was sent on my way to Tunic the same way I had initially played The Witness: by finishing Outer Wilds and begging to find any other game that might make me feel as fulfilled as I did playing OW. Tunic filled the void a million times more than The Witness lol, what a neat little game!
Oh, same! I happened to glance at the Steam reviews for Tunic, instantly saw "like Outer Wilds" and "I can't tell you anything, just play it" in the top two reviews, and slammed *buy* instantaneously
The witness does things that are very cool... but man was there a lot of painfull design choices.
Also you missed one last secret even after the ending where you have to sing the golden path *IN REVERSE*, but I completely forgot where that was...
so glad you had a great time with the game! did you ever go to find the golden statues and the rest of it?? it's absolutely bonkers where the current state of the game / secrets are at now lol. i think deciphering the language and figuring out what the pause screen said is gonna stay with me for a while. it's such a delightful gem and i love everything it does. i was wary because so many people said "oh it turns into a puzzle game halfway through" but man, it's so good at what it does! if you want another soulsy top down game there will always be more of that. there will so rarely be more of what tunic actually is.
Yea, secret legend is a great game. I just used a translator, though. Anyways, I’m gonna pause now.
Oh, that pause screen message made me smile so wide when I first decoded it. XD I just love this game.
The whole manual theme through is SO COOL and brilliantly done. Love Tunic.
7:21 this reminds me of a giant skeleton salesman sketch I made during my math class like down to only making it’s arms torso and head I also gave him a top hat
The Golden Path was probably the coolest fucking puzzle in any game I've ever played. That memory will live with me for the rest of my life.
Tunic & Deaths Door really made their own new sub genre in gaming imo
Brilliant video! I really surprised you never mention Fez. I think last part of the game is much more Fez than The Witness. Also things like general sound design, environmental inputs, custom alphabet very much like Fez. You should definitely played it if you haven't before.
oh sameee i was thinking "omg this is just like fez" throughout so many parts of the video be it by either frustration of solving a puzzle or by game elements that pop up. 100% convinced that one rotating tower you go up the ladders is inspired by the belltower in fez. also the weird alien thingies with the three eyes look so much like the benefactors too
I got the bad ending and just thought, cool, that was hard! I didn’t really want to search for the missing pages. I had NO idea how much crazier it got from there. I feel like I missed out, but at the same time I’m not sure I would have even solved most of the late-game stuff. What an insane game
Easily one of my most favourite games ever. No other game has made me be as drawn to it than tunic did, I wish i could experience it for the first time all over again
When the hard pages started to occur, it immediately brought me back to when I played FEZ all these years ago. Trully special game
Great video! My journey to discovering the holy cross was so different to yours, as my realisation came from the seeking spell page first! But that’s what makes this game so great, it’s your own journey of discovery!
Your discussion of this game mirrors exactly my experience and thoughts with this game. Such an incredible and rewarding experience for figuring stuff out.
As a thorough Tunic adorer and a recent Dune fan as of the film last year, that joke/reference totally threw me and I love it 😂😂
Nice to see tunic is getting more and more attention
13:05 you technically can win there, this requires a very specific strategy or extraordinary skills but it's definitely possible. If that happens, you proceed as if you won the fight normally (so you get your ending sooner).
Awe yeah, I see that TWEWY manual. I knew Power Pak was a man of culture!
On da queen bruv!
I ended up getting so invested in the puzzle solving, I did the golden path ending first. I didn’t even know that there’s was another ending, I thought the boss was never supposed to be defeated (or if it was then it would be like a true ending for the ones who are god gamers)
I figured out levelling up by incidentally opening the item menu while standing near a shrine (because I'd just died and was checking how much currency I had) only to see the "offer" option on the items and go "???!?!?!!?!?"
Hahahaha, I made the exact same mistake translating the clue for page 52, missing that -tiny- notch. Glad I’m not the only one. I was very proud of myself figuring it all out without a guide up to that point.
I found the load game puzzle for page 9 on my own. But what stumped me more was page 22 with the blurry images. And some of the fairies were more impossible... I looked up a guide for those, but NOT the golden path. Im glad I was able to do that, and this game is one of the best games ive ever played
Absolutely loved this game. Realizing halfway through that there was a massive puzzle game hidden in plain sight all along was AMAZING and I loved the fact that I had to get out a notebook and draw in it to solve some of them.
Tunic will always be my favorite game of all time, nothing will ever come close to how much I enjoyed it. The only thing I regret was, stopping playing the game because of the scav king and then getting spoiled on the next part of the game. I’m still playing it now, even trying to learn and memorize the language. The music actually makes me feel nostalgic, even though I was born in 2010. I’m not even sure how it does it, but I’m glad it does. This game has actually become my comfort game, I play this game to unwind and relax. This is game of the decade for me.
This is the only game that could make me learn an entire writing system to the point of being able to use it without a reference just so I can talk to some ghosts. What a masterpiece.
I see a fox character and I click
This IS a brilliant game. I was completely taken by it as I love these sort of games that gate (at least some of) your progress simply by what you know about it. I tried to do as much as I could without looking things up online, but I eventually got the platinum trophy by looking up some of the late-game things that I just couldn't figure out. Amazing game, and I look forward to any more of these style of games because they are my jam.
For anyone else that likes these kinds of games, others that I have played that use similar methods of gating progress are: The Witness, Outer Wilds, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Chants of Sennaar.
your interpretation of the true ending made me think of a weird "what if" scenario where link's true quest in "link to the past" was actually a side quest where you try to ressurect your uncle who died at the beginning of "link to the past"
The music making you feel nostalgic? It's simple: their music sometimes uses sounds that I describe as being "crystal-like". You hear it in the PS1 startup sound. The Lego Media Group logo video on the Lego: Rock Raiders videogame, the soundtrack for the 2002 hit videogame Fate, etc.
It also uses sound fonts, compositions, and arrangements similar to what you might hear in an older Final Fantasy game or other JRPG.
I could go on about this, but I think you get the point.
I did look up a few things for my own playthrough, but the things i looked up were unintentionally optional things, like the trophies and the remaining Fairies. I had gotten 12 of those on my own, and didn't realize I only needed 10 to unlock the missing page 54/55. After that, I was able to open the door in the mountains (with 1 hiccup) and get the true ending of the game.
It's a delightful game, and I absolutely loved it to pieces. Some of the Holy Cross puzzles were very obscure, but thankfully getting all of them is unnecessary and only unlock one final secret thar I don't think anyone's fully cracked yet.
In all, thank you for letting me know about this game. It was beautiful, and I'm so glad I played it myself :)
One thing i felt with the game was the whole "power spike thing" like, bosses are a REAL challenge, BUT if you use Decoy bossfights turn so so so easy
i love this game so much
I beat Tunic recently, and I'm in absolute awe. One of the best games I've ever played, there's nothing else quite like it.
If only it wasnt a non-elden ring game... So right. I specifically remember tunic coming out just after elden ring and thinking I was too busy banging my head against ER to play it. Tunic was EXACTLY the pallette cleanser needed after that, and I actually regretted prioritizing ER.
finally working out how to translate the language was one of the most rewarding things i'd ever experienced in a game, and definitely a step up from figuring out simple english ciphers, like the one in fez, for example
Love this game. ICO esque forlorn. The soundtrack arpeggios are hypnotic and sets a moody ambience. I’ve never played a Dark Souls game so this is a new experience for me🎉
I actually figured out the Holy Cross and a bunch of the Holy Cross puzzles way before you were supposed to. Like, early enough that I had one manual page that mentioned the Holy Cross, but didn't realize that that type of puzzle was what it was referring to because I didn't have the necessary context yet. I'd found it by chance, staring at the pattern on a door early in the game and just tracing it because it felt like the kind of environment puzzle they'd put there (knowing that I had at least some moves I didn't necessarily know how to do and that those buttons didn't apparently do anything didn't hurt, neither did having recently finished the Witness), and it worked. Then I started noticing them in a bunch of other places.
Also for anyone curious you can actually translate the language, it's just English under a cipher. The broad strokes for how the cipher works are that each glyph encodes a vowel sound (vowel sound, not vowel letter as most English vowels have multiple sounds and some vowel/consonant pairing that indicate specific variations on their sounds) using the outside edges and a consonant sound using the inside lines (the page he shows at 21:35 is supposed to suggest splitting the inside and outside into two parts and gives a list of all the valid ones). The notes to the right give a couple of examples, like showing how "sword" is two glyphs, representing S+OR and D by itself. If there's a dot at the bottom then the vowel sound comes before the consonant, if not the consonant is first.
I've never played zelda so have no nostalgia for it, but I felll in love with tunic, the sense of discovery and wonder is amazing in it
I want to be future games called not "zelda-like" but "tunic-like"
I let out such a hearty laugh about the The Witness comparison because I made the same one, including that this game is what The Witness wishes it was
Tunic filled the void that Fez left in my gamer’s heart. What a beautiful beautiful game
I missed the exact same vertical notch, I felt like I was taking crazy pills. Holy shit it was good to unlock that mother though.
Honestly, once I figured out what I needed to do to solve a puzzle, I often just looked up the solution. I can only imagine the thrill of playing the game when it was brand new and getting out a pencil and paper and thinking you might be one of the first few people to figure it out.
I did solve the language mostly on my own though, with pencil and paper and lots of guess and check work until I could start to make sense of the manual and figure out the rest. It was very rewarding.
Had anyone gotten all the fairies? Or done the wall in the mountains puzzle? I'm so close but I CANT figure this out!!!
That 50 long pattern holy cross code though...
U are absolutely right this game is an absolute delight i loved everything about it. I did look at some walk throughs bc i dont have a lot of patience but the ones i did solve by myself felt amazing i wish i could wipe my mind playing this game the first time so i can play it again with same amazing feeling i had the first time playing it
It feels lile those games you find in the bargain bin but really damn good. Just a new experience without hand holding
for far, a love FPS , HALF LIFE, thats my main , but this peace of art, the seek peak of the secrets of the real world and developers world is beautiful. This is a Oportunity to be in love of video Games again.
i am extremely bad at games and the point where invisible things start attacking you is where i had to hand in the towel. it’s an extremely well done game and i wish i had the skill/time to complete it fully
I think the reason they offer the option to start over again, is so that the Witness-esque puzzles seem more organic in the world, just like you said wishing the experience was more varied.
This game's soundtrack might be the best one I've ever heard in any recent releases. It's phenomenal.
17:25 you're not wrong to make this comparison, but I feel like Tunic has way more in common with Fez than the Witness. Honestly, I'm shocked you didn't mention it!
Wonderful. Thanks. A really worthy review of a truly great game.
[Spoiler's for tunic's best puzzle]
I've never had as much fun on a puzzle as I did with the puzzle on the mountain door. I mostly solved it by myself by piecing it together, using a Microsoft powerpoint slide, the screenshot tool, and the powerpoint draw tool. Athough I did have some help here and there to point me in the right direction with some of the puzzles (page 9 blew me away), but I mostly solved it by myself through intuition and guessing. It was an absolute blast getting it together piece by piece, tile by tile, connecting the dots both metaphorically and literally in this case.
my only complaint with the golden path puzzle is how excruciating it is to type it in. Like seriously?!?? 100 steps? missclick once and you're back at the beginning. Like, I wish we only had to do the code in segments rather than all at once (like maybe we could've divided the door into four separate sides so that we only have to input 25 tiles each instead of the full 100.)
“Oh boi some of the game mechanics and bosses do remind me of dark souls”
*Enters the Spoiler Section*
“Oh god it reminds of dark souls, just without the dogs and crustaceans”
If anyone is looking for a game similar to Tunic I recommend check out Death’s Door. It doesn’t quite have the same level of depth but it has many resemblances, mainly just by being an isometric indie game with a moderate difficulty spike.
Hey you missed the exact same vertical notch I did! Very similar experience.
Tunic is my favorit Game of 2023 on the Switch. This is my opinion after playing Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom for 220 hours in 2023 ..... and i'm a Zelda Fan since 1995. 😂
and even after you beat the game there's the ARG, which hasn't been completed yet.
Oh yeah, man, if you want secrets, all those little chimes and shit you get when opening fairy chests, loading or starting saves, or even opening THE DOOR? That's another language :)
The unique language and execution of puzzles reminds me of Fez
This game pulled me in so hard that I played through it almost fully twice inside of a week. I had to do it again because alcohol made me look at a page and make choices about save files that made me have to start over again. Didn't mind though. Just a magical game. Also, I missed I reckon the same detail you did. A bit too subtle, even in context.
This game is beautiful in every sense of the word. But sadly at one point I had decided to quit because something was too hard. But there was an itch that I had in the back of my mind telling me, “try again, but think about it.” Sure enough, it was all about attitude and how you approach situations. Everything is a puzzle, if you think about it, from chests, to the Holy Cross, and even combat. There’s always a solution. Be patient, read carefully, and think outside the box. I found the answers. But like any game, there’s always more than one solution…
Fantastic video friend
No fucking shot. I missed the _exact same line_ in the Golden Path.
I'm a big fan of Dark Souls and Zelda and I loved every second of Tunic.
the fact that the only way to get a game over is to get the bad ending really made me feel more defeated when i got it the first time i love it
Every time the player dares to think "It's Zelda", the game responds "no, Dark Souls" and I love it.
Your comment deserves more likes
Thought I was the only one who took a break from all games after finishing a really great game. This feeling is so true. Few games have that power nowadays.
Tunic was my fav game of the year
I didn’t know there merchant was a merchant for AWHILE. I thought it was a boss lol the second he first popped up, I ran the fuck out of there
20:14, mate, you have no idea how many people i got just to tell me that notch existed
And he hasnt even touched on the SECRET secret endgame stuff...
Could you do a video on SOMA? It's my absolute fav among the horror games and I think that it would be very interesting to get a deeper look!
Tunic is just absurdly well made. Still can't believe it.
You should check out Death's Door, already completed it but I'd love a review from you
the zelda series is my favourite game series i have never played
The only criticism i have for this game is that I feel that you should be able to get the final ending without getting a notebook out or printing that page from the golden path. Everything else crucial to get the true ending is pretty self contained and can be solved without breaking out of the game's world. I solved everything else on my own, got the bad ending ,and was even inputting codes at different doors. Beating the final boss made me feel like i finished the game, so i wasnt in for another 12 hours trying to piece together this crazy puzzle...
11:19
As someone who played this game blind, i laughed so damn hard like some evil villain when i heard this.
Edit: 11:37 OH SHUT UP YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID IT EARLIER
a remake of the incredibly obscure dos point and click adventure game inherit the earth?
I mean, things that are ten years old aren't quite retro yet. IMO, nostalgia mountain is around 15-25 years after something was big.
I missed that fucking notch too
Let me tell you what I think about old "retro" games. If a game from 2013 can push my laptop to it's limits, it's brand new as far as I'm concerned. Like the most recently released game my computer can play maxed out will be the newest one for me.
Do you fear the eyes of the far shore?
I'd argue its more FEZ than The whitness but yeah!
I thought Ovopack made some artworks related to this game.
I could only beat this with No Fail Mode. Really liked this game but the difficulty killed it for me
I REALLY wanted to like this game due to loving the concept "knowledge is power" in games.
But I also realized, I really don't like "cutesy" games... Even when I was engaged, the game being so overly adorable just made it infuriating for me.
Yeah, maybe I'm too edgy, but I honestly cannot play Animal Crossing as I fall asleep.
11:37 OKAY FINE DSGFJHGSDFJH
should've said fez, not the witness, smh haha
Oh... You didn't even find the... ARG 🌚
Spoiler, so don’t read this if trying to avoid them
I actually beat The Heir kind of in a cheesy manner… I kept throwing decoys and hitting them in the back, over and over, cause I kept missing the dodges
Also funny that the secret statues are never mentioned. Keeping something unspoiled eh?