The thing they don't tell you about Tunic is just how complete the game is. We're going to be jumping around here, but let's start with what I think is the most basic thing - the combat. In a game about puzzles and exploration, on the surface, the combat is simple. You press button and hit mans. You’ve played Zelda before, you get how this works. You get a little more into the game, you pick up some magic stuff and it adds real depth to the combat. Now you’re thinking about, ok, which magic do I use to beat this guy. You’re weaving in your magic with your hit mans attack. At this point, the system feels COMPLETE. But the thing about Tunic is, there’s always that extra level to everything. You might stumble upon this as you play, or you might discover it later in the guide when the game tells you to try hitting this little slug in a particular fashion so you can get a thing (you know what I’m talking about) – but it’s this moment of discovery, where you learn that you can combine your magic effects. It’s the same AHA feeling you get when you figure out this math problem that’s been staring at you for the past hour. There are two things going on here.

First, the game has this extra level to everything. And I mean that – mechanics (see above), story (I don’t think I fully grasp this and thus will NOT be writing about it), and exploration. Just when you think you know what Tunic is, there’s something that pops up and recontextualizes everything. Sometimes it’s apparent, as above when you get the magic. Sometimes it’s so subtle.

But that’s the second thing about Tunic. It rewards you for paying attention, and like, actually PAYING ATTENTION. I’m going to reference dark souls here because it’s a cultural touchstone and I’m lazy. I think a lot of people think that’s a video game that rewards paying attention because sen’s fortress has a lot of traps in it. I think that’s true, to an extent. You have to look at the environment, and from doing that you can intuit the danger that’s around the corner. Tunic isn’t like that at all. There’s honestly no real threat in the game – you’re probably not going to die unless it’s to the last boss. So how does Tunic force you to pay so much attention?

I’m not sure – I FEEL like it’s because it inspires so much curiosity but I don’t know how it does it. I’m going to try to break down the loop here, and maybe that’ll lead us to a conclusion. There are things you see in Tunic that you very clearly understand how to solve but you KNOW you lack the tool to do so at the moment. You see little hedges and since you’ve played video games you know you need the sword to chop them down. You see hooks sticking up from the ground and you know you need the grappling hook to get to them. You mentally note that these are places you need to come back to when you have the THING that will allow you to interact with these mechanics. Then you come across this giant ass golden door with this weird pattern on it, or these weird platforms that you keep seeing everywhere. And your gamer brain isn’t sure what these are. You believe that you lack both the tools and CONTEXT to interact with these objects, which is only half true. You have the tools, you’ve always had the tools, but what you don’t have is the context. And that context isn’t something Tunic gives you for free. The game doesn’t spell out the context for you. It gives you hints, it nudges you, but if YOU, gamer, don’t pay attention to what the game is saying then you will not build the knowledge to put these things in context.

The best puzzles are the ones where, at the start, you can only ask yourself “what’s the question?”. That’s what Tunic does so well. It prompts you, makes you think, “huh, that’s weird. I wonder what that is. I’m going to remember that”, and then, and I mean this, in a miraculous way it pays off SUBTLY. You want to dig into each mystery, because the first time you uncover one, it feels so personal. You can’t shake the feeling that you’re the first person to ever uncover this mystery in the specific way that you did. For me it was the praying mechanic at those square platforms. When I discovered that, it felt like I was breaking the game a little. It felt like I wasn’t SUPPOSED to know that yet, but since I’m such a clever boy I figured it out on my own. People like to say that Tunic is a puzzle game, but really I think it’s the first archeology game ever made.

The one downside – and I’m going to be brief here – is once you understand the Questions the game is asking you, answering them can feel lackluster or frustrating. I’m talking about the windmill, the big golden broken door. I know the answer to these questions, I know the steps I have to do to solve this, but I can’t demonstrate my knowledge without burning a lot of time. At that point it feels more like busywork and less like discovery.

Still, you’re so excited to keep discovering the puzzles that the frustrations of answering them are overshadowed (even though I will admit, I did look up the solutions to some puzzles that I inferred would take WAY TOO LONG).

You feel rewarded when you get to the end of Tunic. I don’t think it’s because the story has a moment of catharsis or whatever – at least not as written. The reward feels internal. You feel that you’ve accomplished something because you thought creatively. The game tells you just enough that your journey through it feels personal – you feel like nobody else experienced Tunic in the same way that you did. The wild part about that is, I think it’s true.