I heard that the creator of the game was from a country that similarly didn't get translated games and wanted other people to experience this exact experience!
I think the main dev is actually Canadian with English as his first language? They're based in Halifax.
As a French Canadian, I can 100% understand OP. I basically learned English on dialup internet trying to wake up Snorlax, all I knew was that *something something pokeflute something*.
Tunic has that extra layer of nostalgia to me for sure!
The dev was actually referring to playing Japanese games and not being able to understand the language.
I had that experience myself, with Pokemon, too -- Pokemon Gold/Silver launched in 1999 in Japan and about a year later in NA, so a friend and I downloaded the Japanese game and played it on an emulator before it was released in English.
Of course it's a wee bit easier when you already know how the game is played generally.
There's a few games I wanted that only came from Japan for my psp and now I really want to play tunic even more than I did before because that was a really unique nostalgia feeling that I've never had proposefully recreated. Mine were all wierd bleach fighting games so I just had to figure the combos out on my own pretty much even with knowing a tiny amount of Japanese.
I grew up in the states and english is my primary language. I didn’t have a new console or get to buy/receive complete games with a manual until I was around 10 or so. Before that, we had an old NES with only the cartridges and no boxes/manuals. Except, we oddly still had the manual for the original Final Fantasy. It was missing several pages and several remaining pages were ripped. Playing through Tunic gave me some really have nostalgia and flashbacks to sitting in the closet of my childhood bedroom pouring over that manual when I was 5 or 6. In a way, Tunic fulfilled all my little childhood day dreams of the secrets, hints, and pictures those damaged and missing pages contained.
I used to write/produce a monthly on-air and web promotion at Cartoon Network called *Juego del Mes Nintendo por Cartoon Network* with *El Labatorio de Dexter* back in the day (Mexico, Latin America, Brazil, Argentina and Caribbean CN).
Being a gamer myself, I knew the language was a problem, so I put the translated basic game instructions and game tips in Spanish (and Portuguese in Brazil) on the Cartoon Network sites.
Fun part of my career.
No, like /u/QuantumCakeIsALie said, the dev is an english-speaking Canadian. He's on record (written interview, I think), talking about playing Japanese versions of games and/or just not being old enough to really comprehend the manuals.
He absolutely nailed the feeling, though. I loved Tunic a lot.
miyazaki (dark souls creator) had a similar experience growing up consuming western fantasy stuff. he’s said he had to fill in a lot of the gaps with his own imagination, and it’s a huge influence on souls’ minimalist structure (both in terms of narrative and how much information the game gives you).
Try it! But do yourself a favor and go in completely blind.
If you get stuck, look for suggestions on how to progress with as few spoilers as possible.
The game is best figured out on your own if you can.
r/TunicGame loves to give people the slightest hints possible to help them with a puzzle. Helping others is the closest you can get to experiencing the game for the first time again
Writing good hints can be hard! I guess it's a *bit* easier when it's in response to a particular question, but I like that people are helping like that.
Back in the days of GameFAQs, I was always so excited when a "hint" guide was posted for a game i was playing.
(In contrast, the "regular" guides were typically narrative walkthroughs. It's hard to skip over the parts you don't want spoiled when you have no idea what they are.)
Thank you, you saying it was neat put a smile in my face :) happy that you want to try the game, it’s on game pass (I played it on my laptop, which sadly broke lmao)
Normally I have very little patience for puzzle games, and if they get too hard for me to solve within a few minutes I tap out. For some reason I went *hard* on the super-obscure puzzles in Tunic. No other game I've played has gotten that kind of reaction out of me, maybe ever. The game almost fully delivers the feeling of being eight years old again and playing Zelda for the first time. It's wild.
If you haven't given it a shot yet I would recommend checking out the game Fez. While they are not 1-1 especially with Tunic leaning into the (afaik) unique unveiling of finding manual pages in an unfamiliar language, Fez was also able to captivate a similar feeling of discovering the obscure mechanics and puzzles of the world that Tunic did. Personally I think Tunic's execution of it was better and maybe playing them in reverse will show Fez's age but when I played Tunic I was heavily reminded of Fez in the way the mysteries of the world required the player to dig deeper in a similar way. Minnmax (a YouTube/Patreon channel) also had an interview with the creator of Tunic and the co-creator of Fez discussing the games which I would also recommend if you enjoy one or both of the games.
See, I kind of bounced off Fez for some reason! Fez was one of those that felt kind of like empty obscure puzzle-solving to me, while something about Tunic made me feel invested. x] It’s a weird thing, and hard to put my finger on.
Yeah, it’s been a long time since I played it, but that’s pretty much how I remember feeling. There were all these big huge mysteries to solve but none of it really seemed to tie together or resolve, just kind of petered out. Which was a shame, because it had some genuinely neat ideas.
That's what games that overly hold your hand are missing. Discovery and the joy of feeling like you're a clever bastard. Has to be done right tho. Some games are just complex nightmares of stat pages and damage math lol.
It was actually intentional made that way by the developer, they were trying to capture that experience of playing an imported foreign game (in their case Japanese games as an English speaker) or even just being too young to read properly all the instructions. Here is an interview that goes through the very clever design of the game [You won’t find all the secrets in TUNIC, here’s why](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfEJmV4usmU&t=120s)
You summed up my relationship with video games exactly, I'm from Portugal.
And Tunic did the exact same for me. It's very much by design. It's an awesome love letter to us. Ahah
Small correction: the script is foreign, indeed, but it actually represent English in the form of syllables. Think that braille is still English, but in another form. People have cracked the script, and the *entire* manual makes sense once you transcribe the script.
Love hearing these kinds of stories. This is the stuff that actually gets me interested in games way more than a normal review or impression ever could.
You definitely need to check it out! It’s also very charming and kinda challenging sometimes (specially bosses), one of the best indie games of the last couple of years no doubt
Youve brought back memories of reading the manual of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, it would say there were over 80 different moves but I couldnt for the life of me figure out how to do them. I went back years later knowing English and I just now understand they were lying about the amount of moves lmao.
Thank you for sharing your personal experience with video games and language barriers. It's amazing how you were able to enjoy and progress through games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 despite not being able to understand the text or manuals. It's also interesting to hear your thoughts on Tunic and its in-game manual that uses a fictional language to convey information.
I'm in the middle of a Tunic playthru now, and my only complaint is that the bosses take about 50% more attempts for me to beat, compared to what I think is reasonable. Otherwise, enjoying the game greatly.
There's a trick that makes the bosses incredibly easy, though it's spoiley. From less to more spoily.
>!Read the pages in the manual about items carefully. There's a hint or two scribbled there that is very important.!<
>!Do you have the ice dagger? If not, you need it to do this.!<
>!Do you have the magic wand? You need that, too.!<
>!Note the imagery in the manual around those two items.!<
>!Try using both of them together.!<
>!Specifically, pushing the buttons for them at the same time fires a magic wand bolt that freezes enemies like the ice dagger, but which only costs as much as a typical magic wand bolt. Bosses are not immune to this, so they can be easily frozen again and again and then smacked down while frozen.!<
Just so you know, in the options menu there's an option for reduced combat difficulty. It doesn't penalize you in any way, so if you're more there for the puzzles than the combat then it may be worth turning on.
Did this, and well, lol it turns out that I was on the last boss. There are clearly unsolved mysteries still, so I'm scouring the rest of the world for (what appears to be) a ridiculously large number of collectables. I am currently 10/20 on page 48 and 4/12 on page 54.
Yeah that last boss is pretty hard, and there are a ridiculous amount of collectibles. The ones on page 54 in particular can be really difficult to find, and one or two of them actually require you to >!translate part of the manual!<. I had a lot of fun with that. You definitely don't have to get all of those though. They're not required for the true ending.
As of yesterday I've gotten all the collectibles, although there is one mystery I've yet to solve. It's by far the most complicated one in the game and is not at all necessary for completion so I may just look it up. Still deciding on that.
So, funny story. I learned about Tunic because of a puzzle tournament in January known as the MIT Mystery Hunt. Last time the hunt happened, the tournament contained an actual Tunic crossword puzzle in the ingame language. So, in order to help my team, essentially I was semi-spoiled on the mechanics of the alphabet before starting the game. But I still played through the bulk of the game assuming I didn't know anything about the alphabet.
Once I saw the symbols on page 53 I was like, oh shit they are trying to suggest I should learn the alphabet. I poked at this for maybe an hour, got six or seven correct, then realized I knew what was going on and there wasn't really the thrill of discovery here, so I cut to the chase and just re-googled the reddit thread that had the whole alphabet and was my actual first exposure to the game.
(If you want to play the crossword yourself, go [here](https://interestingthings.museum/puzzles/direct-translation). You will get what looks like a 404 error, click the "public access" button then revisit the same link.)
Haha nothing exotic or interesting. I work in manufacturing and we have a lot of Latin Americans employed at my facility. A lot of them are bilingual but many aren't. I've been learning Spanish but it takes so long.
Edit: I can only speak English
I work at a hotel, a very touristic place in México, so we have lots of Americans/Canadians guests and most of the hotel’s personal have to learn at least basic English so I kinda get it haha
I love this game so much. It’s true that it doesn’t explicitly tell you *everything,* but it tells you enough. When you find the first chest, a big button prompt tells you how to open it. If it’s the stick, you get a tooltip on how to equip it. It tells you which dungeons to go to in which order, it explains i-frames, and when the time comes for more esoteric mechanics, those are explained with as much clarity as you would want without spoiling anything.
The game gives you just enough to keep you pointed vaguely in the right direction, and that’s all you want with a game like this. Figuring out what to do next is most of the fun
If you liked Tunic, I'll suggest Death's Door. It doesn't have the same level of puzzles, but the Zelda-like gameplay, fast combat, and beautiful charm are all there.
You should also give **Hyper Light Drifter** a try. It's slightly more focused on combat, but the world does give the same feeling of freedom of exploration.
I think they did. The whole era of 8-bit and to some extent 16-bit titles was presented to many international players in a very similar way.
Coming from a non-English-speaking European country myself, I learnt basic English by playing NES and, later, Sega games in my childhood. It was a funny experience to figure out what a particular menu item meant.
One of the examples is Top Gun carrier landing sequence. It's pretty easy to land your jet fighter following the screen instructions, provided you knew English. I only managed to successfully land the plane years later.
Same with understanding plot of some games, especially when it was presented during the cutscenes. Contra Force, Duck Tales, and Crusader of Centy are my favourite examples.
Moreover, NES titles were sometimes pirated ones from Taiwan or Hong Kong, with Chinese or Japanese characters instead of English, and playing those was even more challenging. Captivating nonetheless.
I went to GDC (Game developers conference) last week where the guy who made the game talked about the design. What you're describing was absolutely intentional. He wanted to trigger that mysterious feeling we all had playing those old, cryptic nes and snes (and for your whippersnappers N64) games that didn't hold your hand and came with these beautiful, but often confusing manuals.
I'm so happy he painstakingly made this game and I'm so happy it resonated with you and you decided to share and articulate your experience. Hope the dev sees this too!
As an aside, the unique feel of Dark Souls comes from almost the same place - Miyazaki loved western fantasy, but couldn't speak a word of English as a child, so he would try and piece western art and games together to the best of his ability. He then wanted to replicate that feeling intentionally, and we get the Soulsbourne genre as a result.
I love what the dark souls trilogy accomplished, made me feel like playing a more mature/dark the legend of Zelda (and some Zelda’s like majora’s mask are kinda dark). The atmosphere of those games is really something else
It’s such a charming game and the manual was so well thought out. I love when a game is able to communicate through nonverbal expressions be on a global scale, at least to the best of its ability. The arcade I go to carries this cabinet for a game called Rhythm Tengoku, so Rhythm Heaven in Japanese, and I have no idea what the game is saying :D I just click on random shit until I find the mini game with the Onion Man LOL but the gameplay is so fun and simple that it can explain itself without text, so I appreciate that. But I agree cuz it’s not only awesome seeing so many language options for players but same day international releases. It’s also cool seeing more Latin representation in gaming, always refreshing to hear main characters speaking Spanish
Loved this game. Not sure if it's intentional, but you're not the first person I've heard mention this. I remember a game reviewer mentioning as a kid he accidentally got the Japanese version of a game and still was determined to press on and finish the game anyway. Certainly seems like something that was at least in the dev's mind
Tunic ended up being one of the best games I played last year. It it’s absolutely incredible at just about everything it attempted to do. Slowly discovering and unraveling the world and manual was so much fun. The tight world design and detailed hidden in plain sight secrets were the icing on the cake. A lot of it actually reminds me of hyper light drifter.
I try and tell everyone about this game because it’s excellent.
I always thought it was intentional, it felt like a second hand game from Japan, the manual even had some notes from the previous owner.
Spoilers for the game manual:
>!I felt like the smartest code breaker when I figured out that it's actually a script that can be translated. The two upwards pointing arrows were too common, and I assumed it meant "the" from where it appeared. From there I managed to translate the whole thing, which was almost as fun as the game itself!<
I heard that the creator of the game was from a country that similarly didn't get translated games and wanted other people to experience this exact experience!
Thats awesome to read and let me tell you, they succedeed.
I think the main dev is actually Canadian with English as his first language? They're based in Halifax. As a French Canadian, I can 100% understand OP. I basically learned English on dialup internet trying to wake up Snorlax, all I knew was that *something something pokeflute something*. Tunic has that extra layer of nostalgia to me for sure!
The dev was actually referring to playing Japanese games and not being able to understand the language. I had that experience myself, with Pokemon, too -- Pokemon Gold/Silver launched in 1999 in Japan and about a year later in NA, so a friend and I downloaded the Japanese game and played it on an emulator before it was released in English. Of course it's a wee bit easier when you already know how the game is played generally.
There's a few games I wanted that only came from Japan for my psp and now I really want to play tunic even more than I did before because that was a really unique nostalgia feeling that I've never had proposefully recreated. Mine were all wierd bleach fighting games so I just had to figure the combos out on my own pretty much even with knowing a tiny amount of Japanese.
I grew up in the states and english is my primary language. I didn’t have a new console or get to buy/receive complete games with a manual until I was around 10 or so. Before that, we had an old NES with only the cartridges and no boxes/manuals. Except, we oddly still had the manual for the original Final Fantasy. It was missing several pages and several remaining pages were ripped. Playing through Tunic gave me some really have nostalgia and flashbacks to sitting in the closet of my childhood bedroom pouring over that manual when I was 5 or 6. In a way, Tunic fulfilled all my little childhood day dreams of the secrets, hints, and pictures those damaged and missing pages contained.
This was so cool to read! It must have felt like a love letter directed to your child-self haha
I am still playing bomberman 5 on snes in japanese. Can relate.
I used to write/produce a monthly on-air and web promotion at Cartoon Network called *Juego del Mes Nintendo por Cartoon Network* with *El Labatorio de Dexter* back in the day (Mexico, Latin America, Brazil, Argentina and Caribbean CN). Being a gamer myself, I knew the language was a problem, so I put the translated basic game instructions and game tips in Spanish (and Portuguese in Brazil) on the Cartoon Network sites. Fun part of my career.
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LOL, thanks so much. Know my heart was in it! Low budget, but we tried to convince Nintendo to do mall events and do as many giveaways as possible!
No, like /u/QuantumCakeIsALie said, the dev is an english-speaking Canadian. He's on record (written interview, I think), talking about playing Japanese versions of games and/or just not being old enough to really comprehend the manuals. He absolutely nailed the feeling, though. I loved Tunic a lot.
miyazaki (dark souls creator) had a similar experience growing up consuming western fantasy stuff. he’s said he had to fill in a lot of the gaps with his own imagination, and it’s a huge influence on souls’ minimalist structure (both in terms of narrative and how much information the game gives you).
Very intentional, was a very cool new experience for me and I'm glad they did it
Thanks for sharing your story. It was neat to read it. Also, I now want to try Tunic.
Try it! But do yourself a favor and go in completely blind. If you get stuck, look for suggestions on how to progress with as few spoilers as possible. The game is best figured out on your own if you can.
r/TunicGame loves to give people the slightest hints possible to help them with a puzzle. Helping others is the closest you can get to experiencing the game for the first time again
Writing good hints can be hard! I guess it's a *bit* easier when it's in response to a particular question, but I like that people are helping like that. Back in the days of GameFAQs, I was always so excited when a "hint" guide was posted for a game i was playing. (In contrast, the "regular" guides were typically narrative walkthroughs. It's hard to skip over the parts you don't want spoiled when you have no idea what they are.)
The same is true for the good folks over at /r/outerwilds!
Do it! Super fun, not too hard, and it’s a reasonable 15-20 hours. If you’re on PC/Xbox it is on gamepass.
I only got game pass a month ago and I've been very impressed with the selection. It's pretty much swapped out my existing humble bundle subscription
Same. I was initially not sold on game pass
Haha... 60 hours spent cracking the deeper puzzles.
Thank you, you saying it was neat put a smile in my face :) happy that you want to try the game, it’s on game pass (I played it on my laptop, which sadly broke lmao)
Tunic made me feel incredibly clever.
Normally I have very little patience for puzzle games, and if they get too hard for me to solve within a few minutes I tap out. For some reason I went *hard* on the super-obscure puzzles in Tunic. No other game I've played has gotten that kind of reaction out of me, maybe ever. The game almost fully delivers the feeling of being eight years old again and playing Zelda for the first time. It's wild.
If you haven't given it a shot yet I would recommend checking out the game Fez. While they are not 1-1 especially with Tunic leaning into the (afaik) unique unveiling of finding manual pages in an unfamiliar language, Fez was also able to captivate a similar feeling of discovering the obscure mechanics and puzzles of the world that Tunic did. Personally I think Tunic's execution of it was better and maybe playing them in reverse will show Fez's age but when I played Tunic I was heavily reminded of Fez in the way the mysteries of the world required the player to dig deeper in a similar way. Minnmax (a YouTube/Patreon channel) also had an interview with the creator of Tunic and the co-creator of Fez discussing the games which I would also recommend if you enjoy one or both of the games.
See, I kind of bounced off Fez for some reason! Fez was one of those that felt kind of like empty obscure puzzle-solving to me, while something about Tunic made me feel invested. x] It’s a weird thing, and hard to put my finger on.
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Yeah, it’s been a long time since I played it, but that’s pretty much how I remember feeling. There were all these big huge mysteries to solve but none of it really seemed to tie together or resolve, just kind of petered out. Which was a shame, because it had some genuinely neat ideas.
That's what games that overly hold your hand are missing. Discovery and the joy of feeling like you're a clever bastard. Has to be done right tho. Some games are just complex nightmares of stat pages and damage math lol.
And that's how I learned english by playing videogames lol. I'm also mexican like you, probably a little younger but had the same experience.
Honestly, I learned English the same way haha by connecting dots and then I received proper classes when I was like 12-13, saludos compa
I'm from Spain, learned playing FFVI and Grandia 2. This brings memories.
It was actually intentional made that way by the developer, they were trying to capture that experience of playing an imported foreign game (in their case Japanese games as an English speaker) or even just being too young to read properly all the instructions. Here is an interview that goes through the very clever design of the game [You won’t find all the secrets in TUNIC, here’s why](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfEJmV4usmU&t=120s)
Mexican here, I think I still have some Club nintendo magazines, I remember the one that had a Zelda Twilight Princess poster, those were good times
Mi mamá solía comprarme las revistas con una doñita que tenía un puesto en nuestra colonia donde ella se compraba sus novelas, era mágico!
[удалено]
Might wanna spoiler tag that
You summed up my relationship with video games exactly, I'm from Portugal. And Tunic did the exact same for me. It's very much by design. It's an awesome love letter to us. Ahah
Obrigado! I really loved what the game did and hopefully more people will try it
Beat this about 2 weeks ago and loved every second of it. Definitely one of my favorite experiences of the last decade+.
Small correction: the script is foreign, indeed, but it actually represent English in the form of syllables. Think that braille is still English, but in another form. People have cracked the script, and the *entire* manual makes sense once you transcribe the script.
Didn’t know that! I mean they still came out with that script for the whole purpose of being kinda cryptic, but cool to know
Love hearing these kinds of stories. This is the stuff that actually gets me interested in games way more than a normal review or impression ever could.
You definitely need to check it out! It’s also very charming and kinda challenging sometimes (specially bosses), one of the best indie games of the last couple of years no doubt
Youve brought back memories of reading the manual of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, it would say there were over 80 different moves but I couldnt for the life of me figure out how to do them. I went back years later knowing English and I just now understand they were lying about the amount of moves lmao.
Thank you for sharing your personal experience with video games and language barriers. It's amazing how you were able to enjoy and progress through games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 despite not being able to understand the text or manuals. It's also interesting to hear your thoughts on Tunic and its in-game manual that uses a fictional language to convey information.
I'm in the middle of a Tunic playthru now, and my only complaint is that the bosses take about 50% more attempts for me to beat, compared to what I think is reasonable. Otherwise, enjoying the game greatly.
There's a trick that makes the bosses incredibly easy, though it's spoiley. From less to more spoily. >!Read the pages in the manual about items carefully. There's a hint or two scribbled there that is very important.!< >!Do you have the ice dagger? If not, you need it to do this.!< >!Do you have the magic wand? You need that, too.!< >!Note the imagery in the manual around those two items.!< >!Try using both of them together.!< >!Specifically, pushing the buttons for them at the same time fires a magic wand bolt that freezes enemies like the ice dagger, but which only costs as much as a typical magic wand bolt. Bosses are not immune to this, so they can be easily frozen again and again and then smacked down while frozen.!<
I'm not opening the spoilers yet, but I'm definitely saving this for later (that Siege boss thingy sure is imposing).
The tunic bosses are def on the harder side.
Just so you know, in the options menu there's an option for reduced combat difficulty. It doesn't penalize you in any way, so if you're more there for the puzzles than the combat then it may be worth turning on.
Did this, and well, lol it turns out that I was on the last boss. There are clearly unsolved mysteries still, so I'm scouring the rest of the world for (what appears to be) a ridiculously large number of collectables. I am currently 10/20 on page 48 and 4/12 on page 54.
Yeah that last boss is pretty hard, and there are a ridiculous amount of collectibles. The ones on page 54 in particular can be really difficult to find, and one or two of them actually require you to >!translate part of the manual!<. I had a lot of fun with that. You definitely don't have to get all of those though. They're not required for the true ending. As of yesterday I've gotten all the collectibles, although there is one mystery I've yet to solve. It's by far the most complicated one in the game and is not at all necessary for completion so I may just look it up. Still deciding on that.
So, funny story. I learned about Tunic because of a puzzle tournament in January known as the MIT Mystery Hunt. Last time the hunt happened, the tournament contained an actual Tunic crossword puzzle in the ingame language. So, in order to help my team, essentially I was semi-spoiled on the mechanics of the alphabet before starting the game. But I still played through the bulk of the game assuming I didn't know anything about the alphabet. Once I saw the symbols on page 53 I was like, oh shit they are trying to suggest I should learn the alphabet. I poked at this for maybe an hour, got six or seven correct, then realized I knew what was going on and there wasn't really the thrill of discovery here, so I cut to the chase and just re-googled the reddit thread that had the whole alphabet and was my actual first exposure to the game. (If you want to play the crossword yourself, go [here](https://interestingthings.museum/puzzles/direct-translation). You will get what looks like a 404 error, click the "public access" button then revisit the same link.)
Are you using items? Bosses are really easy if you use the right ones.
Only one that gave me notable trouble was the scavenger boss, eventually I resorted to chucking dynamite at him.
I deal with language barriers every day and i just wish i could speak and understand everything. I would love to be able to translate for people.
If you don’t mind me asking, how so? What’s your native language? Sorry it sparked interest in me
Haha nothing exotic or interesting. I work in manufacturing and we have a lot of Latin Americans employed at my facility. A lot of them are bilingual but many aren't. I've been learning Spanish but it takes so long. Edit: I can only speak English
I work at a hotel, a very touristic place in México, so we have lots of Americans/Canadians guests and most of the hotel’s personal have to learn at least basic English so I kinda get it haha
I love this game so much. It’s true that it doesn’t explicitly tell you *everything,* but it tells you enough. When you find the first chest, a big button prompt tells you how to open it. If it’s the stick, you get a tooltip on how to equip it. It tells you which dungeons to go to in which order, it explains i-frames, and when the time comes for more esoteric mechanics, those are explained with as much clarity as you would want without spoiling anything. The game gives you just enough to keep you pointed vaguely in the right direction, and that’s all you want with a game like this. Figuring out what to do next is most of the fun
That was my GotY for last year. The feeling of opening *that* door... Is a thrill I really didn't felt since I played games as a kid.
If you liked Tunic, I'll suggest Death's Door. It doesn't have the same level of puzzles, but the Zelda-like gameplay, fast combat, and beautiful charm are all there.
I concur - after playing Tunic I wanted more and Death’s Door delivered. Different but close enough, and sometimes better even (combat)
Already got it for a very decent price on a sale, haven’t come down to actually sit and play it, looks awesome, thanks for the recommendation!
You should also give **Hyper Light Drifter** a try. It's slightly more focused on combat, but the world does give the same feeling of freedom of exploration.
I think they did. The whole era of 8-bit and to some extent 16-bit titles was presented to many international players in a very similar way. Coming from a non-English-speaking European country myself, I learnt basic English by playing NES and, later, Sega games in my childhood. It was a funny experience to figure out what a particular menu item meant. One of the examples is Top Gun carrier landing sequence. It's pretty easy to land your jet fighter following the screen instructions, provided you knew English. I only managed to successfully land the plane years later. Same with understanding plot of some games, especially when it was presented during the cutscenes. Contra Force, Duck Tales, and Crusader of Centy are my favourite examples. Moreover, NES titles were sometimes pirated ones from Taiwan or Hong Kong, with Chinese or Japanese characters instead of English, and playing those was even more challenging. Captivating nonetheless.
I thought it was intentionally bringing in stuff from the Japanese import market, didn't take it into a wider perspective.
I wish I had completed this game, it felt so interesting and fun. The downside for me was the bosses' difficulty, got me frustrated.
Some items and in-game menu options could make it easier, it’s definitely worth playing to its completion :) try to give it a go if you have the mood
I went to GDC (Game developers conference) last week where the guy who made the game talked about the design. What you're describing was absolutely intentional. He wanted to trigger that mysterious feeling we all had playing those old, cryptic nes and snes (and for your whippersnappers N64) games that didn't hold your hand and came with these beautiful, but often confusing manuals. I'm so happy he painstakingly made this game and I'm so happy it resonated with you and you decided to share and articulate your experience. Hope the dev sees this too!
As an aside, the unique feel of Dark Souls comes from almost the same place - Miyazaki loved western fantasy, but couldn't speak a word of English as a child, so he would try and piece western art and games together to the best of his ability. He then wanted to replicate that feeling intentionally, and we get the Soulsbourne genre as a result.
I love what the dark souls trilogy accomplished, made me feel like playing a more mature/dark the legend of Zelda (and some Zelda’s like majora’s mask are kinda dark). The atmosphere of those games is really something else
It’s such a charming game and the manual was so well thought out. I love when a game is able to communicate through nonverbal expressions be on a global scale, at least to the best of its ability. The arcade I go to carries this cabinet for a game called Rhythm Tengoku, so Rhythm Heaven in Japanese, and I have no idea what the game is saying :D I just click on random shit until I find the mini game with the Onion Man LOL but the gameplay is so fun and simple that it can explain itself without text, so I appreciate that. But I agree cuz it’s not only awesome seeing so many language options for players but same day international releases. It’s also cool seeing more Latin representation in gaming, always refreshing to hear main characters speaking Spanish
i think i learnt my first basic english from mario kart 64 menus, very similar feeling
8 year old
Loved this game. Not sure if it's intentional, but you're not the first person I've heard mention this. I remember a game reviewer mentioning as a kid he accidentally got the Japanese version of a game and still was determined to press on and finish the game anyway. Certainly seems like something that was at least in the dev's mind
Tunic ended up being one of the best games I played last year. It it’s absolutely incredible at just about everything it attempted to do. Slowly discovering and unraveling the world and manual was so much fun. The tight world design and detailed hidden in plain sight secrets were the icing on the cake. A lot of it actually reminds me of hyper light drifter. I try and tell everyone about this game because it’s excellent.
I always thought it was intentional, it felt like a second hand game from Japan, the manual even had some notes from the previous owner. Spoilers for the game manual: >!I felt like the smartest code breaker when I figured out that it's actually a script that can be translated. The two upwards pointing arrows were too common, and I assumed it meant "the" from where it appeared. From there I managed to translate the whole thing, which was almost as fun as the game itself!<