I guess I was asking how its current form lives up to the impressions it gave in 2016. Both of your posts make it seem like its poised to be a seminal piece of game software.
Edit: I guess the question can be posed for anyone playing it now. Is there a Tunic thread? I found the original post I resurrected by searching for Tunic, but that’s… all I found.
I think by the time you get to the Fire World in Kirby and the Forgotten Land the game has used up basically all its best ideas. These levels are mostly devoid of any charm and the objectives just start to feel really uninspired (boss rushes? C’mon, these guys were tedious enough by themselves nevermind as mid-level encounters).
Now I’ve reached the point where this is starting to feel like a chore, especially doing the optional objectives. I read some spoilers in a walkthrough and I’m getting real "second half of JetForce Gemini vibes and I don’t know if I’m going to want to bother with the “post game”.
I might just be ready to pack it in but boy do I hope a lot of the ideas from this game survive and get carried forward.
I was talking about it in this topic as I played it last week.
I guess the main difference between the way it’s perceived now vs 2016 is that we know its true nature. Like, it appears to be a Zelda 1 clone that goes for a sort of monomyth approach, like Sworcery or Below, and in this respect it’s not particularly notable save for one or two ideas (there’s one rather obvious third act twist but it’s put in a new, more interesting perspective by the regular ending) and its stellar looks.
However, the manual gimmick completely transforms it: because you get the manual, an in-game relic, page by page, not in order and written in a foreign language, you’re making a whole bunch of assumptions about your moveset and interactions, based on incomplete info and “games/Zelda do it that way usually”, that are turned around when you get more of the manual.
Not an actual example, but imagine having to figure out a maze made of waist-high hedges, only to be taught at the end that you’ve had a jump button all along and you just assumed Link can’t jump. This is what Tunic does, all the time. Sure, there are some tools you’ll unlock along the way, but a lot of them you have from the get go, except you didn’t know because the manual is a lost relic.
And then it makes you think about those newly discovered powers, because they have one obvious use and some less obvious ones. Once you learn to trigger object X, suddenly you start considering that the same, or analogous methods could work on objects Y and Z, and once you get used to the fact the game’s withholding information, you might just learn to spot the blanks and discover some shortcuts early. And the game’s full of shortcuts and alternate paths. It’s even kinda cheeky about it, as in the late game it gives you an alternate but now redundant way to get a sword, which for speedruns might be a game changer.
For that alone I think it could have been seminal indeed, but as I said, it appears to be a Zelda. But it’s also a Fez. Like, not just in its videogame-worshipping trappings like BustedAstromech explained. It sort of is the Fez 2 we never got.
And a better structured and paced Fez at that. The thing with Fez is, it tips its hand really early about being a cryptic puzzle collection rather than just a platformer with a perspective gimmick. The anticubes are secrets in name only, the early ones are really hard to miss and it’s actually much easier to get the first ending by including the anticube hunt at a casual level.
In Tunic, even if I tell you about it you’ll only come to understand that aspect of the game really late, and possibly miss it (twice over, because it’s also kinda hidden as teaching you something that seems more superficial), and they’re totally unneeded for the normal ending. But if you follow them, then as you run all over the world with your newfound insight, chasing for secrets left and right, you’ll start seeing the looming shadows of the puzzle to end all puzzles, connecting everything you’ve learned together. Fez was missing a boss puzzle, Tunic isn’t.
I’ve said it before, but the moment where I saw and broke out pen and paper to make a Pepe Silvia chart to the true ending, visiting improbable places to find the missing bits I still needed, is one of my very best gaming experiences this year and I don’t think it’ll get pushed out of the podium all that easily.
One very interesting aspect of it is, again, the manual, because basically it brings puzzle book mechanics into the mix. There’s not that much precedent for that, not the way it does it. The first anniversary update of Sea of Thieves comes to mind, which introduced a campaign where the “maps” you get are increasingly cryptic and seemingly unrelated books (ranging from ship logs to astronomy books to a little girl’s crayon drawings) that, interpreted the right way, will indeed point to riches and wonders. Another one is The Fools’ Errand, which I feel has got to be an influence on the way Tunic’s manual and late game puzzles were designed.
I have abandoned my FF15 replay around the time the game ditches the open world concept for a linear FF13 story approach. What a weird game! What a weird game. The open world feels weirdly small and like almost everything else in the game, kind of just a jumble of ideas that don’t work. The last half of the game has the bulk of the big set-pieces but also ditches almost everything interesting about the first half. It is also, out of nowhere, just a relentless bummer that intentionally obliterates most of the plot, pacing and camaraderie of the first half. What a weird choice! Just such a deeply strange game, obviously way way too long in the making, that it’s hard to believe it exists. I still sort of like it? It’s definitely not “good.”
I’m not sure I’ll honestly have the patience to ever complete the whole thing again but I might pick up this playthrough later if I feel like doing more of… whatever this is
It strikes me that you can have this same sort of experience with almost any game if you get into speedrunning them. In that context those hidden abilities you had from the beginning that you didn’t think to try are called “glitches” or “tricks”, and the arcane manual is looking up typically incomplete/poorly written guides or other speedrunners’ streams
I mean, personally, I rather dislike Tunic and what it’s trying to be; my impressions were written at about the 90% mark and I ended up finishing it with most of the secret items. It’s the sort of dislike I can have because it’s very good at what it’s trying to do (it’s a lot better than Death’s Door, for example, though the action is much worse), so we can start to have a conversation about the value of its goals.
It may feel reductive to say this but this was definitely a stylistic goal and point of the back-5 hours. The emotional beats are like the one clear thing as SE was coming out of extremely compartmentalized development (Cobblestone Girl).
It’s a big weird game filled with STUFF and a lot of people’s One Idea. Which also ends it with feeling cold and disparate.
I think it does come together for the ending and you gotta be /right there/. Also can picture the final run in my head but can’t remember the final boss or the story so hey I’m talking out of nothing here.
あー新しいレシピを思い出した。
Yeah, I do feel like I want to revisit the ending again at some point and also play the episodes. Monte Cristo-ing your protagonist after killing and blinding major characters is certainly a bold choice after a fun boy band road trip?
If anything, the decision to put all that stuff after an imitation Ubisoft game is probably the strange one. I feel like I kinda burnt out on the game over the first thirty hours to the point where I wanted to do something else for a bit.
At the end of the day, it’s an interesting one. I can’t imagine FF16 being nearly so strange
for like a decade, final fantasy games mostly felt like they were all released in a state of absolute panic, like “how the fuck are we gonna ship this,” and 15, to its credit, actually turns that obvious distress into something endearing and not very trying
I like it about as much as the FF7 remake, which is to say, it’s a weird luxury that no one else would ever have come up with and it doesn’t ever really disrespect me even if it’s not always strictly great
it’s also fairly successful at a few tricks that preceding final fantasy titles were seemingly obsessed with implementing poorly, e.g., bizarrely diffuse storytelling, (post-)modern reinterpretations of classic characters, heavy-handed series callbacks, villains that sort of sheepishly hang around you for half the game, loads of optional “hunts” being available from early on, etc.
I put it down maybe 15 hours in and I suspect I would have no idea how to play it again if I tried to pick it back up but I have a pretty positive opinion of it (probably marginally higher than 12, which I had higher hopes for and which tried to be equally retrospective but mostly failed)
i just got a T1 ensorcell and a 6x enchantment for FREE (from the person who threw the daisy down the well!!! they’re being so nice to me now! oh how two decades can change a person) on my spiked disruption flaring shield in gemstone so now if im strapped for cash i can sell this shield for like 200 dollars
as a bonus it also seemingly takes a lot of combat/character inspiration from the last story, which was completely flat and inessential like virtually all of sakaguchi’s projects from the last couple decades despite being billed as a big deal, and improves on it in every way
I have never been so excited to play a game I’m anticipating to dislike
that’s the spirit
There seemed to be zero videos of Valhalla MUD on YouTube somehow so I thought I’d better record one for posterity despite being a horrible noob. Sorry posterity. I also thought I’d better see if I could preserve a copy of the source code and I found it but it’s an active GitHub repository and someone submitted new code while I was sitting there trying to see if I could compile it; I went to the Discord listed in the readme and was able to chat with Michael Seifert, current game author and one of the comp sci students who originally put the game out at the University of Copenhagen in 1991–he’s still working away at the game 31 years later! He patiently answered all my silly questions!
Then I got a little carried away in a carrot patch and almost died. It was Sunday.
Borderlands 3: did my very best Tom Servo impression during the last 3-4 hours of the story wherein my reaction to everything happening was yelling “END!!! END!!!” over and over
I apologize if I ever said Destiny anything had bad boss design now that I’ve finished BL3
kneeling down and kissing the 100GB I got back uninstalling it and crying in joy
yesssss
when are you making a gemstone account 
You know, I told myself I would steer clear of any MUDs that required an email address to sign up, which GemStone does… I can’t say I’m not curious about it, though. (May have googled dragonrealms vs gemstone last night >_>)
The p2p thing was worrying me but as far as I could tell by googling, there is a fairly viable free-to-play option?
Wait I had some other question too, what was… Oh! So that “Wrayth” custom client they have is pretty wild looking, but in all those pretty windows I don’t see an automapper or whatever. Is there a mapping function?
you gotta download lich and then install the xnarost plugin for maps, they’ll pop up in another window and you can click on the rooms to get to them
and yeah the free accounts are really viable to see what the game has to offer and dont start to feel limited until around level 12 or so
Return of the Slimepires has too many secret endings! With hidden preconditions!! I am dumb and bad at videogame, I got ending B only. Fast and fun, like Sophie’s other games
been coaching a lot! helping gamers get past jumps in Steamworld Dig 2 that require running and jumping and their hands don’t automatically claw up around the controller. we are learning about feedback and taking our time and talking about planned approaches.
same for Wandersong (this is the game that I wanted to post about). when we started it I felt like it was going to be an insufferably twee indie game. the controls are floaty, levels are a bunch of fetch quests then a themed gimmicky platforming section, every character is so chatty!
since you’re a bard, the main mechanism is ‘singing’ (Simon Says on the eight d-pad directions, each direction maps to a C-major note + a pastel colour) and matching patterns with very generous windows and very clear signposting. well, clear to me, I am patiently explaining how to recognise and follow the indicators. the first few songs didn’t grab me, I would ungenerously describe them as ‘music for pet insurance ads’. notably, you can sing at any time outside of a cutscene, you move to a lower register by crouching, and you can add accidentals with the L2/R2 trigger buttons
then in Act 2 the fetch quest is ‘assemble a band’ and you perform this track at the local nightclub:
the vocals (and the bars they’re inserted over) are missing from ^^^ but you have to call-and-response & provide accompaniment for the fiddle and accordion. the patterns follow the song structure, verse/chorus/verse/etc. it was absolutely delightful to watch and anticipate the patterns based off the chord progressions and I want to keep playing this section.
the mix from the video is shortened from what you hear in game, it dynamically loops and extends the track if you miss the patterns. which means, the stems are in the game data files and I can learn how to use a DAW??
this one section has made me completely reconsider Wandersong. the chatty characters all have distinctly-written voices & their filler lines are entertaining. the game is quite happy to let you proceed when the floaty controls get in the way of playing perfectly, sometimes the challenge is to have a go at something and do it in a silly and fun way
we have 6 more acts to go. also there’s some plot about the world ending and we’ve mastered the musical language of ghosts so there’s an awful lot of grief and mourning themes so far, hope that goes places