I am NOT kidding in the slightest when I argue that this is the most creative game I've EVER played in my life. It starts out as a little Zelda Dark Souls thing, but you don't know how to play? It just drops you in? What? And you can't understand the language? huh?? And then slowly but surely, Tunic reveals its hand to you, leading you inch by inch deeper into its secrets.

Every level and dungeon is so intricately designed. THE GAME MANUAL that you slowly find page-by-page is SOOO MIND-BLOWINGLY COOL. The fact that the developers created an ENTIRE FICTIONAL LANGUAGE just to recreate the feeling of playing NES Zelda as a child and not knowing how to read is INSANE. Slowly learning about features or mechanics that have been available the entire time genuinely made me FLIP OUT AT THE SCREEN.

And that's not even mentioning the crazy difficult but immensely satisfying bosses, the mind-boggling meta endgame puzzles, the LUDICROUS puzzles and hints and secrets that the community took years to track down, the GORGEOUS soundtrack I'm going to constantly be playing on loop, the (i am being fully serious right now) disturbing and shocking story revelations, the WILD speedrunning skips, or how even things like the CAMERA PERSPECTIVE get turned into a puzzle. THE CAMERA. THE. CAMERA.

I adore Zelda, but this game single-handedly goes out of its way to push more creative boundaries than Zelda has done in its ENTIRE existence. The only thing holding it back for me are a few stupidly hard puzzles and basically everything in the "true ending" path being obtuse as hell...I felt so guilty using a guide for some of that. BUT DESPITE THAT! It's so endlessly imaginative and EXACTLY the kind of thing I want developers to make. I'm probably gonna be thinking about this title for the rest of my life! And I played this for free?? FOR FREE? ON GAME PASS???

PLEASE PLAY THIS GAME. IT'S SO GOOD. I AM NOT THE SAME PERSON I WAS BEFORE TUNIC.