Thinking on it a bit, Tunic has the most engaging map I've ever seen in a game. It gives just enough information to stoke your curiosity, and rewards a closer look at the details. Since it doesn't sit in the corner as a minimap, you can focus on your surroundings until you actually want a hint or direction.
honestly mini-maps were one of the worst things for game design. It takes so much of the experience away by always being present. It's a nice feature but it's often just an annoyance you instinctly look at more than your own surroundings. Just one of those "we gotta hand hold the player so they don't get lost and fustrated" mechanics born out of earlier games. Now if there's ever an option to turn off a mini-map I will. I really love it when UI design is incorporated diagetically. Where it's apart of the game world rather than just some omni-present hud. Tunic doesn't do this per-say. It is still stopping play to open a menu. But that's at least better I think than something like an ever present minimap. Sometimes getting lost is fun`! And you notice little things way more often when you're not constantly looking at the corner of the screen.
@@rocovailo2862 If I may, I'd argue that the manual screen is diagetic in Tunic. A keen eye will notice a CRT-like screen with your gameplay behind the pages, lending a strange blend of game and reality.
This and Hollow Knight have a very nice approach to the map design, and frankly I think Tunic managed to transcend that idea. The only game I can think of with half as much creativity in its maps is Zelda Phantom Hourglass.
@@thattagen oh ya, I'd agree with you there x3 definitely feels more "in universe" because of those things... especially given the meta-ness of the manual pages existing in the game world itself.
@@rocovailo2862 ...you know I have no idea, actually. 🤔I always thought of her as a 'goddess' but I don't really have any genuine basis for it. it's good to check assumptions every so often, ty. 🙂
@@MagrokAlpha Both the "goddess" and the player character are designed to not be definitely male or female. I'm pretty sure everyone I've seen immediately went for female pronouns for 'her', though.
When I got the first coin, I tried it without knowing about the well. So the fox would just flip it. I was in love with the idea of randomly flipping the coin as something to do when stuck on a puzzle or thinking. And tried it on enemies, which draws them all to you. I also thought it was the solution to a couple puzzles, lol. I was pretty sad to let them go, haha
Me: "So can you mark the rough sploches on this map for me?" Guide: "Ugh, for the last time, it's called Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and you NEED to stay on the marked path for your own safety"
There's a story idea I've never been able to use so I'll drop it here. It's where the Hero must go through the Bif Forest and an order of monks guarding it sends one of thier own with them. When asked if the monk is a guide, the monk says, "I'm not helping you, I'm following you to bring your body back."
Minor spoilers that get revealed during the episode Cool to see you play through this cautiously and intelligently. I just bulldozed through it on 1 HP and didn't realize the Scavenger's Mask actually did anything lol. I got so mad at myself once I figured that out.
Dan Jones did the same, only, he ignored the room with the mask on it, he found it way later on, once he completed the whole area, and the one after it.
I love that Dan encountered some miasma apparently encased in crystal (so it couldn't cause any harm), and then _immediately_ tried to see if he could break it with his sword. Because he just can't help exploring.
"It must be useful for something" ...Dan, Dan, is control over time not enough for you. Are your reflexes as unto a god's? How much more useful can it get! (Man I didn't find that thing until [DEEP SPOILER ENDGAME] I wish I'd had it for the bosses)
Good job on not dying~! Lots of hair raising close calls. I love how this game plays with its progression. It starts you with a weak stick, then upgrades you to a sword after a bit. Then you start exploring and finding new upgrades which slowly allow you to take on enemies way quicker than they did before. But it's always seemingly at a progress where your first encounter with new enemies will be relatively tough, but after clearing an area you'll have enough upgrades to make those fights way more manageable (and well, personal knowledge too) But then the game starts fucking with your progression, taking away your health semi-perminantly, throwing you into a guantlet of long range and explosive fighters that could almost one shot you normally and with reduced health certainly could. (or at least two, I'm pretty sure the game prevents one shots unless you are actually at 1 health) Just brilliant encounter and game design.
For as much as Dan gets roasted on here for not using magic/ranged options sometimes, he is absolutely devastating with that grapple. I don't think I thought to use it that way when I went through this area, and I didn't have nearly as easy a time as Dan did (I also don't have years of training in the FromSoft dojos).
I'm just popping in here to say that your first video on Tunic convinced me to buy it. I'm deliberately not watching any more videos of yours (of Tunic) because I'm experiencing it for myself. I'll be back later. But thanks for the intro!
When I first got to the quarry, I only knew about the back entrance from the mountain, I hadn't found the main entrance yet. It's all doable from that direction, but without finding that checkpoint from the main entrance, the runback when you die is _brutal_ I was so mad when I got to the checkpoint in the moat, as at that point I was still respawning back in the middle of the overworld...
Minor spoilers for the hourglass (100% not plot- or puzzle-relevant): ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- The hourglass is useful for helping you with timing parries, strikes, and dodges, and for digging in your inventory when you need to swap your loadout. That's basically it.
SPOILER . . . . . . . . @@Lycanthromancer1 I never even considered these ones, beat the game and never even used it once, as far as I can remember. Only now, seeing Dan play it, I'm looking uses for the hourglass. I found someone mention one endgame puzzle on which it is convenient to use but doable without, I think I can imagine which one it is. I can't wait to see how far Dan will take his curiosity, I imagine he will be on the final boss trying to use the hourglass just to see if something will happen. To his credit, he's been very clever so far, he figured stuff out in seconds that took me an embarrassingly long time to. I probably ignored the hourglass because I forgot about it, he isn't ignoring it because he's factoring it as another piece of the puzzle.
Ah, the Quarry. I just went through this area a couple days ago. I hadn't gotten any pages that would indicate the presence of the mask... i had a suspicion was a solution to the health drain I was missing but ended up just going through the whole lower area with no health and terrible visibility out of stubbornness. Great time. Took out everything with the fire wand, chewing through my entire stockpile of blueberries.
Minor spoilers for the hourglass (100% not plot- or puzzle-relevant), but it might prevent some frustration on your part: ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- The hourglass is useful for helping you with timing parries, strikes, and dodges, and for digging in your inventory when you need to swap your loadout. That's basically it.
@@userhandle-l Spoilers below if you want to know what that's for. Ignore it if you don't actually want to know. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- There are fairies ("HEY! LISTEN!") later on that you can collect. The pedestal is where they gather once you find them. You get something special if you find them all.
This the first time I saw someone find the other way around, and you even was able to beat it first try. I seen other people die so many times in the Monastery.
Now that I have some new eyes, I wonder if (huge mega spoilers below) . . . . Part of what the scavengers are doing is looking for loved ones/those sacrificed inside the pillars, or otherwise trying to destroy the power source that caused Ruin.
Could the Hourglass have something to do with the weird mirrored maze directions on the walls or possibly the windmill? It is the only moving object that comes to mind in the environment. Perhaps there is a clue on the wall tucked away behind the spinning rotor blades, or maybe if you time it right you could scale the beams? Regardless, that was some skilled gameplay in the Quarry.
10:01 This feels super cheap. It's very Soulborne combat, and here's an enemy you can't see, so you just guess and hope you're right... Also, Dan not using the ranged options is proving... detrimental.
It's not as cheap as it looks. The enemy is a melee one and gets out once you pass the doorway there. It's the same kind of ambush from behind that soulsborne uses a bunch.
@@lilowhitney8614 Yes it's the exact kind of thing I *hate* about Soulsborne. It's why I bounced so hard off it. If you're gonna give me super punishing combat, give me the info I need to work around, not cheap shots that there's literally no way to prep for unless you already know it's there.
@@the6ofdiamonds No way to prep for? You can notice almost all of them ahead of time if you play cautiously and check around corners/explore with your shield up. Even in Tunic, what we saw in the video is Dan *foiling* the ambush attempt by exploring throughly.
@@lilowhitney8614 I'm not gonna bother arguing. I've said it a bunch on this channel, on several playthroughs. There's a trend in Soulsborne to completely hide enemies behind solid walls, even in this case, there was no way I would've guessed an enemy was out where you literally can't see the ground you're walking on.
Dan: "This side seems a little bit more free of this nonsense"
Narrator: "It wasn't"
Thinking on it a bit, Tunic has the most engaging map I've ever seen in a game. It gives just enough information to stoke your curiosity, and rewards a closer look at the details. Since it doesn't sit in the corner as a minimap, you can focus on your surroundings until you actually want a hint or direction.
honestly mini-maps were one of the worst things for game design. It takes so much of the experience away by always being present. It's a nice feature but it's often just an annoyance you instinctly look at more than your own surroundings. Just one of those "we gotta hand hold the player so they don't get lost and fustrated" mechanics born out of earlier games.
Now if there's ever an option to turn off a mini-map I will.
I really love it when UI design is incorporated diagetically. Where it's apart of the game world rather than just some omni-present hud. Tunic doesn't do this per-say. It is still stopping play to open a menu. But that's at least better I think than something like an ever present minimap. Sometimes getting lost is fun`! And you notice little things way more often when you're not constantly looking at the corner of the screen.
@@rocovailo2862 If I may, I'd argue that the manual screen is diagetic in Tunic. A keen eye will notice a CRT-like screen with your gameplay behind the pages, lending a strange blend of game and reality.
This and Hollow Knight have a very nice approach to the map design, and frankly I think Tunic managed to transcend that idea. The only game I can think of with half as much creativity in its maps is Zelda Phantom Hourglass.
@@thattagen oh ya, I'd agree with you there x3 definitely feels more "in universe" because of those things... especially given the meta-ness of the manual pages existing in the game world itself.
Yup pure ds1 vibes
29:13 cute trivia: If you pray in front of her, she nods happily (like, "yes, that's it!"). If you pray a second time, she claps for you. ^_^
I basically tried praying in front of every character in this game lol. The only one that I really wish had a reaction but didn't was the shopkeeper.
Is she a she though? Then again who's to say the little foxo is a guy or girl either x3 not that it really matters.
@@rocovailo2862 ...you know I have no idea, actually. 🤔I always thought of her as a 'goddess' but I don't really have any genuine basis for it.
it's good to check assumptions every so often, ty. 🙂
@@TheBabaloga low-key wanted to smooch the shopkeep, lol
@@MagrokAlpha Both the "goddess" and the player character are designed to not be definitely male or female. I'm pretty sure everyone I've seen immediately went for female pronouns for 'her', though.
The healing statue blocked by the water is such a cruel tease. Luckily it’s only psychological; there’s not too much past it between you and the mask.
When I got the first coin, I tried it without knowing about the well. So the fox would just flip it. I was in love with the idea of randomly flipping the coin as something to do when stuck on a puzzle or thinking. And tried it on enemies, which draws them all to you. I also thought it was the solution to a couple puzzles, lol. I was pretty sad to let them go, haha
ya, same thing for me. I was so intent on thinking the coin flip was for something. I dunnuh if dan has ever used the coin on its own or not.
Me: "So can you mark the rough sploches on this map for me?"
Guide: "Ugh, for the last time, it's called Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and you NEED to stay on the marked path for your own safety"
"But the Chernobyl dogs are so cute thooooooo!!!"
So all I need are bolts and a Geiger counter? Sweet.
There's a story idea I've never been able to use so I'll drop it here. It's where the Hero must go through the Bif Forest and an order of monks guarding it sends one of thier own with them. When asked if the monk is a guide, the monk says, "I'm not helping you, I'm following you to bring your body back."
@@finngswan3732 did you mean big forest or is Bif Forest a proper noun I know nothing about?
The only translation i can offer for this one is
22:01 my favourite faact about his game is that the pause screen says 'nap time' that's so cute
(i am a littol tipsy sorry)
Minor spoilers that get revealed during the episode
Cool to see you play through this cautiously and intelligently. I just bulldozed through it on 1 HP and didn't realize the Scavenger's Mask actually did anything lol. I got so mad at myself once I figured that out.
Dan Jones did the same, only, he ignored the room with the mask on it, he found it way later on, once he completed the whole area, and the one after it.
I have no clue how he managed to clear that lower area + boss on 1 HP. He must be one hell of a player.
I love that Dan encountered some miasma apparently encased in crystal (so it couldn't cause any harm), and then _immediately_ tried to see if he could break it with his sword. Because he just can't help exploring.
The hourglass is used for animation analysis ;)
I love how this... (very minor spoiler below)
...actually is very close to its real use.
@@OlxinosEtenn yeah, right?
Wish I knew that earlier...
btw I LOVE the Quarry music. The use of the flute is really cool, in particular. It's probably my favorite song in the game
"It must be useful for something" ...Dan, Dan, is control over time not enough for you. Are your reflexes as unto a god's? How much more useful can it get! (Man I didn't find that thing until [DEEP SPOILER ENDGAME] I wish I'd had it for the bosses)
Good job on not dying~! Lots of hair raising close calls.
I love how this game plays with its progression. It starts you with a weak stick, then upgrades you to a sword after a bit. Then you start exploring and finding new upgrades which slowly allow you to take on enemies way quicker than they did before. But it's always seemingly at a progress where your first encounter with new enemies will be relatively tough, but after clearing an area you'll have enough upgrades to make those fights way more manageable (and well, personal knowledge too)
But then the game starts fucking with your progression, taking away your health semi-perminantly, throwing you into a guantlet of long range and explosive fighters that could almost one shot you normally and with reduced health certainly could. (or at least two, I'm pretty sure the game prevents one shots unless you are actually at 1 health)
Just brilliant encounter and game design.
For as much as Dan gets roasted on here for not using magic/ranged options sometimes, he is absolutely devastating with that grapple. I don't think I thought to use it that way when I went through this area, and I didn't have nearly as easy a time as Dan did (I also don't have years of training in the FromSoft dojos).
You got all the way to the monastery on your first try? Dan is good at video games.
Also fox with gas mask looks so cute.
Not even for the miasma but just the game in general, hugging the edge of everything seems like a good idea.
They didnt Have To model the adorable mask but they did and it makes such a difference
I don't know how you ventured from charming snowtops to Videogame Priptyat, but here we are.
This series is the highlight of my work days right now. Loving this all so much~
8:56 'This miasma is bothering my asthma' vs 'this miasma is buggin me asthma'.
I'm just popping in here to say that your first video on Tunic convinced me to buy it. I'm deliberately not watching any more videos of yours (of Tunic) because I'm experiencing it for myself. I'll be back later. But thanks for the intro!
Same here. I've heard this game was good, but told myself I couldn't watch his playthrough unless I'd played it myself. No regrets.
I'm almost kind of mad by the back quarry entrance being discovered before all the pain this place has to offer 😅
I discovered the back quarry entrance before the front entrance when I first played. Didn't make any kind of deep run into it, though.
It only let him skip like 4 enemies, so it doesn't make a huge difference.
I was surprised by how little it helped
Yeah, it doesn't help much because you still need to backtrack to the front entrance to power up the massive door at the bottom.
When I first got to the quarry, I only knew about the back entrance from the mountain, I hadn't found the main entrance yet. It's all doable from that direction, but without finding that checkpoint from the main entrance, the runback when you die is _brutal_
I was so mad when I got to the checkpoint in the moat, as at that point I was still respawning back in the middle of the overworld...
Walking on water with frozen time would have been a beautifully elegant upgrade
So, how many episodes do you guys think it will take Dan to figure out the deal with the hourglass? He seems really intent in experimenting with it.
Man, I'm on the (probably) final boss and I don't know what to do with it.
There is a deal with the hourglass? 😂 Note that I finished this game already
Minor spoilers for the hourglass (100% not plot- or puzzle-relevant):
-------
-------
-------
-------
-------
-------
The hourglass is useful for helping you with timing parries, strikes, and dodges, and for digging in your inventory when you need to swap your loadout. That's basically it.
@@Lycanthromancer1 oooo I never considered that last option! That is actually kinda neat.
SPOILER
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
@@Lycanthromancer1 I never even considered these ones, beat the game and never even used it once, as far as I can remember. Only now, seeing Dan play it, I'm looking uses for the hourglass. I found someone mention one endgame puzzle on which it is convenient to use but doable without, I think I can imagine which one it is. I can't wait to see how far Dan will take his curiosity, I imagine he will be on the final boss trying to use the hourglass just to see if something will happen. To his credit, he's been very clever so far, he figured stuff out in seconds that took me an embarrassingly long time to. I probably ignored the hourglass because I forgot about it, he isn't ignoring it because he's factoring it as another piece of the puzzle.
Ah, the Quarry. I just went through this area a couple days ago. I hadn't gotten any pages that would indicate the presence of the mask... i had a suspicion was a solution to the health drain I was missing but ended up just going through the whole lower area with no health and terrible visibility out of stubbornness. Great time. Took out everything with the fire wand, chewing through my entire stockpile of blueberries.
Minor spoilers for the hourglass (100% not plot- or puzzle-relevant), but it might prevent some frustration on your part:
-------
-------
-------
-------
-------
-------
The hourglass is useful for helping you with timing parries, strikes, and dodges, and for digging in your inventory when you need to swap your loadout. That's basically it.
I was wondering if it had something to do with the blue bowl found behind the waterfall
@@userhandle-l Spoilers below if you want to know what that's for. Ignore it if you don't actually want to know.
-------
-------
-------
-------
-------
-------
There are fairies ("HEY! LISTEN!") later on that you can collect. The pedestal is where they gather once you find them. You get something special if you find them all.
That certainly sounds very interesting!
And with one very late game mechanic we haven't seen yet
It's also more generally useful once you get the thing from the cathedral.
This the first time I saw someone find the other way around, and you even was able to beat it first try. I seen other people die so many times in the Monastery.
I love the 1hp sequence here! And I love where he stopped 😈
This game is too much fun to experience with your, these episodes feel so short!
🦊
Now that I have some new eyes, I wonder if (huge mega spoilers below)
.
.
.
.
Part of what the scavengers are doing is looking for loved ones/those sacrificed inside the pillars, or otherwise trying to destroy the power source that caused Ruin.
Dan! Use your lock on when exploring!
You can shoot those red jugs with the wand to make them explode and kill lots of enemies.
I never realized there was an ELitre 4k in tunic until today. 😂
Since it's about breathing, think of it like my asthma.
Ep 11: TOC/3, 6/7, 10-21, 24-41, 50/51
No pages found today.
I am so dumb. I just realized they show where he currently is on the map..... So the map is always changing.
Could the Hourglass have something to do with the weird mirrored maze directions on the walls or possibly the windmill? It is the only moving object that comes to mind in the environment. Perhaps there is a clue on the wall tucked away behind the spinning rotor blades, or maybe if you time it right you could scale the beams? Regardless, that was some skilled gameplay in the Quarry.
I was guessing it might be placed on that lone blue pedestal Dan revisited in episode 10.
nope, it's not related to any puzzles. It's just there to slow things down, which helps with reaction time and stuff
𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐘 𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐒
With that sigil on the wall I'd be trying it at the doors.
Day 10 of being willing, if asked by a Floyd, to stop verbally looking forward to seeing the rest of the Beacon Pines branches.
10:01 This feels super cheap. It's very Soulborne combat, and here's an enemy you can't see, so you just guess and hope you're right...
Also, Dan not using the ranged options is proving... detrimental.
Was pretty effective with that magic orb tho
It's not as cheap as it looks. The enemy is a melee one and gets out once you pass the doorway there. It's the same kind of ambush from behind that soulsborne uses a bunch.
@@lilowhitney8614 Yes it's the exact kind of thing I *hate* about Soulsborne. It's why I bounced so hard off it. If you're gonna give me super punishing combat, give me the info I need to work around, not cheap shots that there's literally no way to prep for unless you already know it's there.
@@the6ofdiamonds No way to prep for? You can notice almost all of them ahead of time if you play cautiously and check around corners/explore with your shield up. Even in Tunic, what we saw in the video is Dan *foiling* the ambush attempt by exploring throughly.
@@lilowhitney8614 I'm not gonna bother arguing. I've said it a bunch on this channel, on several playthroughs.
There's a trend in Soulsborne to completely hide enemies behind solid walls, even in this case, there was no way I would've guessed an enemy was out where you literally can't see the ground you're walking on.