Video Game / Tunic

Tunic is an Action-Adventure game developed by Andrew Shouldice and published by Finji. You play as a small fox who wakes up on a beach. With no further motivation than a desire to explore, you soon find yourself facing off against unforgiving foes and discovering powerful artifacts, all while trying to unravel the mysteries of the land. The game was released on March 16, 2022. The game's website can be found here.

Tunic draws heavy inspiration from that other game about a small hero with a sword and shield and green tunic. The game is rather obtuse and full of secrets. The player finds torn-out pages from the manual as they explore, akin to an old NES-era video game manual that contains the tutorial and gameplay hints the in-game tutorial lacks. Each page of the manual has multiple hints and secrets, helping the player learn gameplay mechanics and how to navigate environments as they explore. Late-game content shifts from exploration and combat into more complex puzzles. As such, everything past the tutorial is a pretty big spoiler.

---

Tunic contains examples of:

• All There in the Manual: Everything you need to know about the game — mechanics, dungeon maps, enemy information, secret treasures, etc., including what the player character is called — can be found in the game's manual. Played with, in that said manual's pages are scattered throughout the game itself, and it's up to the player to find them. Ninety percent of it is also in untranslated in-game language with a few exceptions to get the player started out on interpreting what it may or may not be talking about. Have fun!
• Ambiguous Gender:
  • The Ruin Seeker, as the player character is known, has no masculine nor feminine features and isn’t referred with any pronouns, making their gender identity unknown. According to the developers, the reason for this is for the players to more easily project themselves onto the Ruin Seeker.
  • The Heir's tall, slender form and ankle-length gown give a feminine impression, but in the true ending their depowered form looks like a taller version of the Ruin Seeker and is just as ambiguous.
• Anti-Hoarding: the game gives you free bombs if you throw a lot of them, to encourage their use. This contrasts non-bomb consumables, which are both Too Awesome to Use and made Awesome, but Impractical by the item menu not pausing the game.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The gun. It does great damage and stuns foes, but it also has a slow wind-up and consumes large chunks of your mana meter. Some items can mitigate its drawbacks, and its mana cost is less of an issue when fighting multiple enemies that drop mana.
  • The Burning Sword ability card, which makes your stick or sword inflict flame damage when you have it equipped. It also drops your HP to one (unequipping it restores your HP), so using it for anything more than clearing bushes is only for the brave.
• Battle in the Rain: The battle against the Librarian on the Grand Library's roof takes place in the middle of a raging storm.
• Behind the Black: Many secret areas should be obvious to the character, but are hidden from the player thanks to the fixed isometric camera angle.
• Boss Subtitles: Most bosses have these; the name of the boss is displayed in plain English, with a lengthy subtitle in the game's Cypher Language.
  • Guard Captain: Captain of the Guard
  • Garden Knight: A Sleeping Guardian, One of Many
  • Siege Engine: The Last Functioning War Machine
  • The Librarian: The Thieving Scholar Who Seeks the Cross but Does Not Understand
  • Scavenger Boss: The Queen of Those Who Pick the Bones of This Land
• Bottomless Pits: Normally not a threat, but standing on a bridge that gets removed will drop your fox into an instant death. You can also weaponize this trope by using the Magic Orb to drag enemies over them, even the Scavenger Boss.
• Brought Down to Normal: Your stat upgrades don't work in the Far Shore, and you lose them after finishing the first half of the game. Most of the gameplay of the second half involves exploring and recovering your stat upgrades from Hero's Graves.
• Cave Behind the Falls: All sorts of things are found behind waterfalls: routes across rivers, treasure, entire secret rooms... Generally speaking, you can't go wrong looking behind a waterfall.
• Character Customization: A hidden room in the Overworld lets you change the color of your fox's fur, nose, and clothing. A hidden room in said hidden room lets you change the tuft of hair on their head.
• The Corruption: Patches of corruption are found in some of the later areas, draining your maximum health if you stray too close. It turns out most of the technology in the game uses it as a fuel source. Then you get to the Ziggurat...
• Crutch Character: Equipment example. Bombs can be acquired early in the game and their strength and splash damage makes them excellent for taking out groups of enemies or stationary foes (like envoys). Later enemies are much more mobile, severely hampering their utility.
• Cypher Language:
  • Most of the text found in the game is written in a script that resembles runes. The script is in fact a phonetic cypher; all the text is in English and can be deciphered if you take the time to do so. Fortunately, much of the instruction manual can be understood from the illustrations and the occasional plaintext word. Learning how to read the language is not necessary to see the end credits, but is necessary for learning the story and a few secrets.
  • Yet another cypher can be found in much of the game's audio, which has a "rosetta stone" in the form of a strange website found through one of the game's more obscure puzzles involving the secret treasures and the Glyph Tower. It works similar to the runic language, with different notes corresponding to different vowel and consonant sounds. Examples of it in use are the title screen jingle saying "WELCOME", hidden fairies saying things like "WHAT UP LIL FOX" and "WOO HOO WOW HA HA" when released, and wells saying "YUM" when you flip a coin into them.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The game's shopkeeper is a gargantuan fox skeleton that materializes out of the dark each time you enter one of their shops. Despite this, they do nothing but help the player, offering a little bow of thanks each time you make a purchase, and even (apparently) giving you one of the pages of the instruction manual free of charge later on. Their theme song is even called "My Favorite Customer"..
• Developer's Foresight: Given the open nature of the game, there's quite a lot of this, mostly to make sure you can't get stuck.
  • You're supposed to find the stick as your first weapon before reaching the East Forest by going into the house immediately in front of the bridge when you start the game. However, it's possible to walk right past it, and drop down into the East Forest with nothing in your inventory and no way to go back. The room you drop into has a treasure chest that is normally already opened and empty, but if you don't grab the stick before coming here, it will be in that chest.
  • In the "purgatory" save file, the character has an impressive amount of items, but no bombs. Using the Holy Cross to get some and then using them to kill yourself causes you to spawn in what's colloquially called the "Devworld", an unfinished prototype of the overworld with unused enemies and a mysterious mural. Should you want to go back to the usual purgatory, just delete the save file.
• Disconnected Side Area: The Cathedral is only accessible through the Swamp, which is also only accessible through its South-East entrance in the Overworld.
• Door to Before: Almost every area features at least one of these, whether it's a gate to open, a ladder to drop, or something similar.
• Double Meaning: Your little fox is a Ruin Seeker. Do they seek ruins? Or do they seek ruin? It's ultimately up to you to decide.
• Dual-World Gameplay: After you die in your first fight with the Heir, the world changes. Everything is thrust into night, monster spawns are changed, moonlight bridges open up some areas, wooden bridges collapse in other areas, and familiar ground is now blocked off by miasma. To make things even worse, you are greatly weakened there. You can switch between the two worlds by resting at a bed after collecting all six Hero Relics.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The ending after completing the Golden Path (or solving the puzzle early): the Ruin Seeker frees the Heir, but before the Heir attacks, the Ruin Seeker presents the guide to the Heir. The Heir reads through it and starts crying about what happened in the past, ultimately relinquishing their power and presumably becoming a mortal Ruin Seeker again. They and the current Ruin Seeker become friends and start having fun together.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: To an extent. The levels are only "easy" when put next to other Souls-like RPG games, or just difficult games in general, and still will likely result in multiple deaths for an average player. However, past the first area, the bosses pull no punches.
• Either/Or Title: "Tunic" is obvious, but the other title — written in the game's cipher, and seen in the title bar of the game on PC — is "Secret Legend".
• Elaborate Underground Base: The Rooted Ziggurat is actually an elevator to a huge power node factory, with walkways over seemingly bottomless pits and a truly enormous chamber in containing hundreds upon hundreds of power nodes as far as the eye can see (and far, far below).
• Enemy Rising Behind: The instruction manual depicts the Librarian doing this during his battle. Hilariously, you can actually pull this off before his fight, getting the drop on him while his back is turned and scoring a few free hits.
• Eternal Recurrence: A Ruin Seeker is drawn to the beacon. The Ruin Seeker releases the Heir and becomes the Heir-to-the-Heir. The Heir-to-the-Heir strikes down the Heir and is imprisoned within the new beacon. Repeat ad nauseum... unless you follow the Golden Path.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Librarian is a terrible person who is implied to lure Ruin Seekers into his library so he can kill them and take their pages in order to learn more about the world. Nonetheless, if you translate his ghost's text after you beat him, he attempts to advise you on how to break the Eternal Recurrence by using the power of the Holy Cross, rather than killing the Heir and perpetuating the world's problems.
• Featureless Protagonist: One of the Frequently Asked Questions listed for the game on Finji's official Discord responds to a question asking what the fox's name/gender is supposed to be by stating that they are meant to be a conduit for the player to project themselves onto or build a new character from, and as such, they aren't given a name and their gender is intentionally left ambiguous. The "conduit for the player" part is supported by the fact that there is a hidden room in the Overworld that allows the player to customize the fox's colors.
• Final Boss Preview: Your first fight with the Final Boss occurs shortly after freeing the Heir.
• Flash of Pain: The Ruin Seeker, enemies, and bosses all flash orange and black upon taking damage. This can be disabled in the options menu for players who struggle with Photosensitive Epilepsy.
• Flash Step: The Hero's Laurels allow the Ruin Seeker to do this, even being able to dart across gaps in the ground to access otherwise off-limits areas.
• Foreshadowing: You often pick up Manual Pages depicting events that have not happened yet, or hint at later areas. For example, one page you can collect depicts the Ruin Seeker in a standoff against an opponent who is obscured due to being on another page you can't collect until later. On the Ruin Seeker's head is a strange set of purple runes, which are the final major traversal item acquired before you're able to end the game.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The Scavengers of the Quarry all wear them. Justified, as the masks protect them from the dark energy leaking out of the monoliths they're excavating.
• Genius Bruiser: The Librarian is a formidable adversary, as well as a dedicated scholar.
• God Mode: "No Fail Mode", in the Accessibility menu. It blocks all damage, and stops you dying from attacks that reduce your max HP to zero. You still suffer status effects such as freezing.
• Golden Path: What the manual calls the game-wide puzzle necessary for the best ending. The trope is actually averted, as you can solve the puzzle at any time if you have enough information.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Three Questagons, six Hero Relics, twenty fairies, twelve hidden treasures, twenty-eight instruction manual pages...
• Grappling-Hook Gun: The Magic Orb is basically this game's hookshot, except it functions by partially summoning a creature from the Far Shore.
• Great Big Library of Everything: The Grand Library.
• Guide Dang It!: Actually used as a game mechanic. There are many things you can do from the beginning of the game, you just don't know how to do them until you find the manual pages explaining them.
  • The manual lists 15 cards the player can get, but there is actually a secret 16th card that the manual does not clue you in on at all: "Bone", found in the Ruined Atoll. It is possible the manual doesn't hint at this because the card's effect - doubling your roll's invincibility frames - is effectively made obsolete once you obtain the Hero's Laurels; no other card is impacted in this same manner.
• Healing Potion: Many to be found, either in whole or in three parts. Thankfully, any spent potions are refilled at save points.
• Heroic Mime: While it is revealed that the text boxes that pop up when you grab items are the Ruin Seeker reacting to them and showing their thoughts, the fox does not utter a word over the course of the whole game.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: After you free the Heir, you're treated to a Final Boss Preview. The Heir will likely reduce your HP to 1 by attacking in what seems to be a cutscene, then promptly finish you off with their nigh-undodgeable attacks. Once you've lost, you can now get a much-improved Flash Step dodge and regain your stat increases before coming back for a Heroic Rematch. However, it is possible to defeat the Heir on the first try, making this a subversion. Doing so yields the same ending you'd get by defeating them later.
• How Do I Shot Web?: The game hints at several mechanics before you find the manual pages explaining them. Clever players can use this to Sequence Break. Other players may struggle if they push too hard on a single idea or puzzle.
• Hub Level:
  • The Overworld, a cliffside beach where all other areas can be accessed in the cardinal directions.
  • The game also has The Far Shore, a teleporter hub accessible through praying at golden platforms in the world.
• Humongous Mecha: The Guardian of the Eastern Vault absolutely dwarfs the player character.
• Immortality Seeker: The worshippers at the Cathedral were evidently this, as led by The Heir... who succeeded.
• Insufferable Genius: If you decipher the lines related to him, it becomes apparent that not only is The Librarian something of a sore loser, he's also a serial thief who baits Ruin Seekers into his tower so he can kill them and take their Pages. Funnily enough, despite his haughty air and considerable knowledge of magic, it turns out he doesn't even know what the Holy Cross is — believing it to be a tangible in-game object, secreted away inside the Cathedral.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • A subtle one. The options menu — specifically the section where you can remap your controls — references a "d-pad", but the assigned inputs don't seem to do anything in game. This is your first clue to the true nature of The Holy Cross, which is the d-pad.
  • XBox and Switch versions of the game come with a physical copy of the completed manual. Though the packaging clearly warns players not to spoil themselves with it, the temptation is right there.
  • The manual page for The Swamp says, in English, "Only ghosts are permitted to enter the Inner Grounds". This hints that the Ruin Seeker will die at some point.
• Invisible Monsters: There are some in the Swamp, and they have a ranged attack! They eventually reveal themselves, and then you can fight them.
• Isometric Projection: The game is rendered in full 3D, but the camera almost always stays in this view. It only breaks the isometric angle for specific puzzles, dramatic angles and boss battles.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The manual's story pages are a bit confusing, but each one you find gives you a little more insight into the plot. Obtaining them all gives you an almost clear picture of the game's story.
• King Mook: Two examples.
  • The Guard Captain is a bigger Rudeling with a purple cape, and is the boss of the East Forest.
  • The Boss Scavenger,
• Klingon Promotion: Of a sort. When the Heir-to-the-Heir defeats the Heir, they take their place... which also means they're imprisoned until the next Heir-to-the-Heir comes along.
• Living Battery: Most if not all of the technology you find runs off of dark spirits imprisoned inside the monoliths you encounter throughout the game.
• Mad Bomber: The scavengers that chuck explosives at you seem pretty excited to do it. The game encourages YOU to be this as well, as it starts giving you a few bombs for free after respawning if you use enough of your own.
• Mage Tower: The Great Library floats high above the Ruined Atoll. You need a teleporter to get there, and you find the Librarian floating just off the roof of the building staring off into space.
• Maximum HP Reduction:
  • The flame sword accessory lets you set things on fire with your equipped weapon, but temporarily reduces your HP to minimum. Useful for clearing bushes when you only have a stick, but risky for combat.
  • Some enemies and environmental effects will reduce your maximum HP, and this lasts until you heal at a shrine. The effects can stack down to death if you take enough hits or spend too long in the affected areas. Beware of purple.
• Meta Twist: Since the game borrows many elements from a certain other series, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the regal, glowing sword in the Far Shores is this game's equivalent to the Master Sword and that you'll be acquiring it after retrieving the three keys. Not only is that not the case, it's actually the weapon used by the Final Boss against you.
• Medium Awareness: The Librarian has been gathering manual pages from previous Ruin Seekers, and judging by the notes on one of the blackboards in the great library, he may be aware he's in a videogame as a result. Played with in that translating the page about him in the manual or his Boss Subtitles makes it clear that he doesn't fully understand, since he thinks that the Holy Cross is an in-universe item to be found in the Cathedral.
• Metroidvania: There is some hard ability gating spread throughout the game but it leans more into the -Brainia subgenre as the player has many "keys" from the start that they don't know how to use yet. As well as very well hidden non-gated shortcuts.
• Mind Screw: A lot of the story and gameplay is confusing because it's presented to the player through instruction manual pages written in a runic text. Learning to read the manual's story pages will alleviate a good chunk of the confusion, but not all of it.
• Mirror Boss: The Boss Scavenger has many of the same tricks you have except the grappling hook, and fights in similar manner. She also does use a certain enemy-exclusive attack, however.
• Money Is Experience Points: Leveling up is done by paying money and offering an item at a fox shrine.
• Monster Compendium: Averted. Map pages in the manual give some information about the enemies in the area, but it's more Flavour Text than the detailed information typical for this trope, and is in Cypher Language in some cases.
• Multiple Endings: Two, depending on whether you find all the pages of the manual before facing The Heir.
  • In Ending A (Take Your Rightful Place), the Ruin Seeker successfully strikes down the Heir. That means they're the next Heir, and they're unceremoniously imprisoned just like their predecessor. Game Over.
  Extinguish the beacon's last spark and become a fresh martyr.
  Courage that is untempered by kindness risks eating itself forever...
  • In Ending B (Share Your Wisdom), the Ruin Seeker shows the completed manual to The Heir. Shocked by what they see within, The Heir lays down their sword and regains their mortal form; the two leave the Far Shore together as friends. The End.
  ...Wisdom that is untempered by kindness is no wisdom at all.
  Be Free.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Collecting the keys releases the Heir... who is the Big Bad. Lampshaded by the ghosts who appear in the sealed temple after you do so, one of whom wonders who would do such a terrible thing, stating that they would have to be a fool or a hero.
• No Fourth Wall: In addition to the manual pages, which seem to exist inside and outside of the game world simultaneously, there's also everything about the Holy Cross.
• Noob Cave: The Eastern Forest, complete with a King Mook that quickly becomes a Degraded Boss.
• Once More, with Clarity: Invoked by the way you recover pages of the manual. One of the first pages you're likely to find is half of a spread showing the fox holding his sword and facing a dangerous fight with determination. You don't find the other half of the spread, showing who they're fighting, until much much later in the game - and it shows, after it's too late, that they're facing The Heir, who initially appeared to be Sealed Good in a Can.
• Palm Tree Panic: The Ruined Atoll, an archipelago on the south side of the map.
• Player Death Is Dramatic: If the fox runs out of health, a Scare Chord plays as the screen's borders fill with red. The camera zooms in to show them collapse to the ground, defeated.
• Post-Adventure Adventure: You can find pieces of an In-Universe instruction manual. It includes hints from someone who's played through the game before and implicitly experienced the adventure very differently. This effectively recreates the experience of playing through an older game with the benefit of a fan community.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Inside the Ziggurat, you find a machine that builds the obelisks you've been using to power puzzles - which, as it turns out, each have what appears to be a fox that succumbed to The Corruption sealed inside them.
• Purple Prose: The portions of the manual detailing the backstory have somewhat tortured wording, but it's presumably intentional to make it harder to decode. Just for instance:
  Fossils of self, annealed visions of the future, entombed and cast into sarcophagi and buried. A lever in the canonical plane, a store of potential.
• Read the Freaking Manual: Enforced Trope. The game's instruction manual pages are items that you can collect in the game itself, and they contain vital information that you likely wouldn't learn otherwise, making doing so a necessity. You get the good ending by collecting all the pages of the instruction manual and showing the manual to the Heir before she can attack you. So yes, you can win the game by telling the final boss to RTFM.
• Red Herring: Since so much of the game's text is encrypted, one may run into situations where what the English text implies isn't even close to what the full text means. One of the bigger examples is the nature of the Holy Cross: the Librarian's page in the manual suggests, if you go by just the plaintext words, that it can be found in The Cathedral. In fact, the decrypted passage says exactly the opposite — the Librarian believes that the Holy Cross can be found in the Cathedral, when, in reality, it's not even a physical object within the setting.
• Riddle for the Ages: There is never any explanation given for what the envoys are, nor their purpose. Even the manual doesn't know what their deal is.
• Route Boss: You only need to defeat The Heir if you're on track for Ending A. If you have all the pages of the manual, you skip the fight entirely.
• Sad Battle Music: The Heir's battle theme is fittingly grand and ethereal, but it's underscored by a somber melody that makes it clear that things aren't going to end well.
• Samus Is a Girl: The game's Cypher Language makes it clear that the Scavenger Boss is actually female.
• Scary Librarian: The boss of the Great Library, naturally.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Early on, the player encounters another fox, sealed inside a magic cage in another world. While the game is sparing on story details, it more or less focuses on rescuing her with a set of magic keys. Plus, visiting her in-between shows her surrounded by the offerings you've made. This gets subverted TWICE. As soon as they're freed, they murder the protagonist, and later instruction manual lore hints that she was actually responsible for much of The Corruption that plagued the land in the past, necessitating her sealing. But once you dig deeper and find all of the manual pages, you find out that she was the previous Ruin Seeker who took their place in the prison after getting their first ending. First Hero was imprisoned and then replaced long ago, and it is not even known whether they themselves were responsible.
• Sequence Breaking:
  • The manual pushes you toward a certain order, but every Plot Coupon needed to fight The Heir is technically reachable once the Magic Orb is acquired. And that is available the moment you start the game. Pointedly, there's a second sword you can get in the West Gardens that's there if you decide to ring the two bells out of order.
  • If you know where to look, you can grab the Flaming Sword ability card before entering the Eastern Forest. It lets you burn away bushes with just the Stick, meaning you can beat the game without picking up either Sword.
• Shmuck Bait: Every now and then, the game will leave a treasure chest out in the open, spawning in enemies when you try to nab your prize.
• Shout-Out:
  • In a nod to StarTropics, one of the steps necessary to solving one treasure's puzzle is to dip one of the (in-game) manual's pages in water. It also references the note to not 'dispose of or eat' a certain page.
  • Much like Dark Souls the player's first task is to ring two bells. The Red and Blue Tearstone rings from the series are also available as item cards.
  • The anklet that increases movement speed may be a reference to The Anklet of the Wind from Terraria. Terraria also has guns that consume mana.
• Sliding Scale of Collectible Tracking: "Here's a hint":
  • Manual pages are mostly visible in the world, but a few are hidden behind puzzles. You will know how many there are after you have found the contents page.
  • Fairies are hidden behind puzzles: The manual has a checklist with approximate locations (some in Cypher Language) and a hint about how to summon a location-finding helper. Understanding the hint and solving the puzzles are your problem.
  • Secret treasures: hints about treasure locations are scattered throughout the manual, and the hidden display room will tell you how many treasures there are. Understanding the hints and finding the room are your problem.
• Souls-like RPG: While not an RPG, Tunic has many elements of the genre: a cryptic plot delivered piecemeal; checkpoints that restore you and cause enemies to respawn; spending currency to level up; combat that emphasizes dodging, blocking and stamina management. It isn't as hard as many Souls-likes, though.
• A Storm Is Coming: After being slain by The Heir, there are constant flashes of distant lightning and the rumblings of thunder in the lead-up to the final confrontation.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Very little of the overarching plot is openly offered, leaving the player to piece together environmental elements, context clues, and information from the instruction manual into a cohesive narrative.
• Super Drowning Skills: Exists purely as a Softlock prevention mechanism. Normally, the Ruin Seeker can't walk or even get knocked into water deeper than their waist, as they will just be blocked by an Invisible Wall. However, if they somehow get into it by falling off of a ledge, they will just fall straight through as if it's not there and into a black void below the game world. After a few seconds of falling, the game automatically kills you.
• Teleportation: Most areas in the game have teleportation pads. These operate single routes between the pad and a hub, to go to a different area you teleport into the hub, then walk to the pad for the other area. The pads are active from the beginning of the game, but are not explained until you find the appropriate manual pages.
• The Unchosen One: The fox does not have any sort of destiny attached to them, they aren't even the hero that the entire game's story is based around, but they still go on an adventure, find secrets, and eventually break the Vicious Cycle that has cursed the land.
• Victory Fakeout: The Heir will fall to their knees upon being defeated, not unlike the Boss Scavenger... only to get up and enchant their sword with the same corruption spread throughout the world, and completely refill their health bar. This is the only time any boss in the game does this.
• Video Game Caring Potential: You can hug a lure if you have one in your inventory and input a particular D-pad sequence.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Collecting all 3 Questagons will release The Heir, and it seems like you completed your quest... only for them to CurbStomp you back to the start of the game with the world corrupted, and all of your upgrades stripped away.
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: Averted, all mechanics and codes work without having to collect manual for them - even the Golden Path puzzle solution can be entered before collecting all the other pages (assuming getting it from the external source).

---