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.

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 thought the Holy Cross was just this one input on the D-Pad" STOP THIS IS LITERALLY MY PLAYTHROUGH

I feel too many people are intimidated by the mountain door. I have never felt more rewarded or excited by a game for actually legitimately solving that puzzle and encourage anyone to give it a go. It's more fun than it looks

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.

gosh, the golden path never fails to make me emotional. especially after all that was required to do!

20:15 I HAD THE EXACT SAME ERROR LMAO I was like "I checked everything 3 times, why is it not working??" and then I felt like an idiot on the 4º check when I found out

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!

I really hope more people play this game. Absolutely a GOTY contender in my book

I feel like this is one of the only videos I watched that described how I felt and had the same experience I did with the dramatic paradigm shifts that affected me so heavily. The other videos alluded to how insane all these things were, and touched very briefly on the mere concept of the Golden Path, hell I didn't even realize the holy cross was the d pad, but they didn't explain as plainly as you did why this game is so amazing even though you'd understand that yourself perfectly if you stuck with the game long enough to discover this all for yourself which I mostly did. Excellent video, and Tunic is just a real good game, man

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.

The flow and story of this game reminds me of my mother. My mother loved playing games. It doesn’t matter what kind of game it was. It could be a shooting game, it could be an old school side, scroll or or whatever, she loves games. And she would always sit with me and play. But as a depression, consumed her, she became more and more withdrawn and stopped wanting to play. Kind of like we see the fox at the end with the sword trying to kill us. I just like how the little fox find the missing pieces of the manual, and slowly reconstructs whatever that big fox was missing, and it gives her back her humanity, my mother was the same. Little by little, I was able to help her regain some of what I loved as a child about her, and even though her depression ended up, killing her, still, for a while, I guess I can say I had handed my mother the manual which, for me was sitting down with her not as an adult or a child, but just as myself and playing games, she had regain a lot of what I loved. That’s what this game makes me think of. A journey to recover my mother that I almost succeeded in, and just like this little fox, the first time I tried to save her, she lashed out at me. and just like this, a little fox, in order to understand what others had done to my mother to reduce her to this state, I had to go on a spiritual journey. I had to go down deep into myself and my memories and to the clues that she left me from verifications, and she would give of the past. Very vague details, that she would give of the things that she had gone through that inspired and grew the depression and her. Only when I brought that manual of Understanding together, did I see my mother, as she was before depression took her from me. As she really wants. And I found myself as I really was. Not as a young adult slowly, exploring life, But as a kid hanging out with my best friend, my mother

The translation aspect of the game was REALLY interesting. Interesting because of how… unnecessary it is. No core puzzle in the game requires translation, but can instead be intuited by visual cues alone. The Easter Eggs and deeper riddles (such as the trophies and glyph puzzle) do require translation, but they aren’t required for the story. So the translation is almost a third optional stage of the game. And I am immensely grateful it is OPTIONAL because solving a phonetic cypher is definitely not for everyone. Now I LOVE cyphers and have made several of my own (including on very similar to Trunic, which made it convenient for me to decipher), but some people don’t vibe that kind of puzzle. So I liked that the greatest puzzle of the game (the golden path) required no translation. It meant that almost any player could piece it together through the visual cues and get the immense satisfaction of doing it themselves.

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.

Holy m o l y I could unironically smell that game manual part o_o

I love how when talking about the fire shrines you immediately went "Wait a minute, is this Dark Souls?!" cause around that same time I came to that realization as well and the timing was amazing xD

There's also the fact that finding all the optional [redacted] and [redacted] and then going through the [redacted] gives you a link...to a real-world website...that explains how the game uses music as a THIRD language. The Tunic rabbit hole (fox hole?) just doesn't end.

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.

gosh the golden path puzzle was such an absolute blast, it's been so long since i've experienced something like that!! (actually inputting the code? different story lol it took me several tries, i think i was standing in the wrong place 😅)

The whole manual theme through is SO COOL and brilliantly done. Love Tunic.

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!

3:10 So you said that manual felt like it was a real thing. It actually is! The developer actually made the manual and took photos of it for the game. So there IS a real game manual out there!

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!

I made the exact same mistake missing that tiny vertical notch on the Golden Path. Thanks for the help! 😖

I agree with you 100%. I was so overwhelmed with emotion at the end of the Share Your Wisdom ending that I just sat there with tears of joy in my eyes for a good while. In a world of bittersweet, that pure sweet ending was a precious treasure. . . . . [Spoilers for yet deeper secrets about Tunic's language] . . . . . And when I found out that there was a musical language embedded in the game, and that when the Door in the Mountains opens the tune that plays spells out "SHARE YOUR WISDOM"... childlike wonder is the perfect phrase. Wow.

Your discussion of this game mirrors exactly my experience and thoughts with this game. Such an incredible and rewarding experience for figuring stuff out.

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

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...

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

Tunic & Deaths Door really made their own new sub genre in gaming imo

Its very beautiful on top of good gameplay

When the hard pages started to occur, it immediately brought me back to when I played FEZ all these years ago. Trully special game

Oo, this game looks really beautiful. Thanks for letting us know about it, I honestly hadn't heard about the game before. Oh, and Happy (slightly early) Birthday!

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.

I hope this channel blows up because your content is really solid

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).

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 😂😂

Well, I can tell you that this fox felt his brain get folded into a pretzel by some of these twists, obfuscations and puzzles. And I traffic in confusing perspectives, mind you. Tunic is the game equivalent of a Jorge Luis Borges story, with a side dish of Voynich Manuscript, all while expecting you to be Robert Langdon. It's like the cryptic ephemera of Undertale's meta on crack.

Nice to see tunic is getting more and more attention

8:28 to be honest every boss were easier compared to those bunch of eligators.

"Imagine what it was like going through all of these notebook pages, scribing them down here, inputting the very long and difficult combination... and nothing happening..." I don't have to imagine... that happened to me too. :,( It was Page 22 that gave me the most grief, but eventually I managed to solve it. 100% agree, this game feels like a magical work of art. 10/10, must play.

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.

Awe yeah, I see that TWEWY manual. I knew Power Pak was a man of culture!

As a linguistics enthusiast, I cracked the language long before I got anywhere near the meat of the game. Playing became an incredibly frustrating journey of finding a new page, translating it, attempting to use the knowledge on the pages, and being shut down by the game because Now Isn't The Time. Tunic is far and away my favorite puzzle wrapped up in my least favorite game. It's so cool to see the parts of the game I missed, and how they would have naturally led from one to another. I wish I could MIB flashy-thingy myself and get a second go.

I see a fox character and I click

Seeing the instruction booklet in game, and the little scribbles and stains of someone before you, hit me so hard. Growing up, my family and I didn't have the money to purchase newer consoles. Instead, I played on a hand-me-down Sega Genesis, with a handful of games that my father had played. In those manuals were codes, cheats, hints, guides. Coffee stains from his late night escapades into the mazes of Zero Tolerance. 20:55 resonates with me so much. It was like I was a kid again, discovering my dads notes, beating the game, and presenting him with the manual and saying "Look! With your help, I beat it!" I've showed my dad Tunic. I've watched him play. Seen his face light up. Just like mine did playing Tunic, and just like mine did playing all those games he gave to me when I was ten. It's a magical game.

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)

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

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.

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.

Playing this I of course saw "Zelda meets Dark Souls", but surprisingly also felt a bit of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest here and there.

I stopped this review half-way because I went to go buy the game. :)

greatly recommend! i turned on godmode in accessability menu when i reached the 2nd major boss, proceeded to finish the first ending, did a couple late game puzzles before seeing i had another 10-20 hours of insane sleuthing and just happily youtubed what the answers would have been and watched the true ending.

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 :)

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 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.

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

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 know I'm late to the party, but the Tunic plushie that was released also has a *secret tag* that unlocks something cute in the game! Of course you will need the Holy Cross

Just played this for the first time and beat it yesterday. Absolutely loved it

I want to be future games called not "zelda-like" but "tunic-like"

Figuring out one of the input puzzle midway through, and then having a massive revelation about many other secrets before it was a near-requirement was massively satisfying for me. My only real gripe with the game is that sometimes the combat feels a bit choppy/unpolished. Especially when it comes to some hotboxes. Otherwise, the game is fantastic. After I take a short break from it, i’ll likely come back to find even more secrets.

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

OMG that isn't the ending by any stretch. That's ending layer 2 out of 4 (that we know of). The game style progression is actually: (Zelda -> Dark Souls) -> The Witness -> Fez -> Masquerade.

Tunic filled the void that Fez left in my gamer’s heart. What a beautiful beautiful game

i love this game so much

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 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 "???!?!?!!?!?"

Had anyone gotten all the fairies? Or done the wall in the mountains puzzle? I'm so close but I CANT figure this out!!!

I remember playing this game in school. Me and my best friend trying to solve all the puzzles without looking anything up. Going through the whole game piece by piece. And it was such a memorable game. I don't think any game can catch my attention like that game did. And make me feel like it did. It is, it's own masterpiece.

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.

yes the inspirations show but boy is it totally engrossing, requires thought and strategy while sucking you in that mysterious world. Not a simple indie game to overlook but a brilliant adventure complete with a soundtrack that I keep humming even when not playing.

I bought a used copy of Golden Sun Dark Dawn recently, and it came with the old manual for that game. I had never owned the fame before, but flipping through that manual, it felt... nostalgic, I guess? I'm not sure of that is the right word, buf if felt almost natural. It felt like when I flipped through the manuals of others game I had played before, and it was just comforting in a way.

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

Wonderful. Thanks. A really worthy review of a truly great game.

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

When I realized what the Holy Cross was, I immediately said out loud OH MY GOD THIS IS THE WITNESS

Fantastic video and perfectly encapsulates why I loved the game. So many moments that felt like sitting in front of a CRT and being wrapped up in a warm blanket trying to solve puzzles before the internet on a scratch pad and my own young and frankly incompetent brain. So many moments that made me melt playing this and pulling the manual aside to see the pixelated screen behind it was just such an incredible touch. I loved Tunic and I think it showed how much love the creator put into it. But I still like The Witness a bunch too! lol

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. 😂

3:39 fun fact, the Switch and XBOX versions from Fangamer came with a staple-bound copy of the full manual; and Fangamer has a hardcover standalone version coming at the end of August 2023.

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!

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

“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”

I got TUNIC about the same time it released on steam, and beat it in 30 hours (which is evidentially slow...), then I beat it again. and then again. I couldn't get enough TUNIC. (I have 89 hours in the game and still wanna play more...) I just wish it was more popular...

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.

[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.)

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.

Every time the player dares to think "It's Zelda", the game responds "no, Dark Souls" and I love it.

20:11 This was me. Pain. But overall, an amazing experience that I'll never forget.

It feels lile those games you find in the bargain bin but really damn good. Just a new experience without hand holding

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.

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.

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"

Agree with you on the witness hot take. Loved this game, Only had to look up what i was doing wrong with the holy cross (i, for some reason, input long lines as doubles) and the translation. Imo the translation is upped a notch when you play the game in non-english, as everything untranslated is in english and everything translated in my language (german in this case). I just felt like I couldn't start translating. That made me feel defeated for a bit, until I knew that it was not necessary for the best normal ending. Thanks for the review!

I'm a big fan of Dark Souls and Zelda and I loved every second of Tunic.

You're the second youtuber I know of who messed up the Golden Path on that exact portion, the other being Dan from Play Frame. SPOILER FYI I got it right the first time hehehe. Sketching out that solution was exactly as satisfying as you said in the video and the congratulatory message from the devs on the final page actually felt super nice.

My favorite indie... It saddens me to know that I will NEVER be able to play this game again. It wouldn't be the same... I will keep the memories of the first experience

16:40 edit: This segment inspired this thought... I know Supergiant Games does not lean to the idea of sequels or something, but oh I wish there was Transistor sequel where you can absolutely be creative in how you would want to progress in that new protagonist's storyline.