8. (tie) Tunic (2022)
- Final score: 61 points
- Total placements: 4 lists
- Highest placement: #2, Kevin
Casey writes:
I’m really glad that we had a little crew devoted to this game over the holidays this past winter, even if I had already played through it myself back in 2023. I had to work REALLY HARD to let them all discover as much of it by themselves as possible, so I hope I didn’t spoil it for anyone with my presence there, but it was really fun to watch them divide up the process into things like game progress, language deciphering, and riddle solving to more efficiently pack what is honestly a HUGE game into a relatively small number of days.
It’s not a perfect game by any means, though I really appreciate that the accessibility settings allow you to decide how much of a “difficult action game” you want this to be vs “Zelda but with more layers of Secrets”–I personally found a pretty happy medium for my playthrough. It’s got a really catchy soundtrack, beautiful art (the instruction manual truly is a love letter to the NES days, and I’m really happy to have a physical copy of it), and just enough secrets to make you tear your hair out without getting too discouraged. Such a special game!
Schnei writes:
This game made me feel so smart and proud of us for figuring out its puzzles mooooostly unassisted. I still have the notebook and the map for the golden path that we made. I came back to play through it myself, and the intricate interweaving of the gameplay and soft/hard progression gating is a master class in game design–no game since Super Metroid has yielded so satisfyingly to sequence breakers, making me feel smart all over again. And in the end, isn’t that exactly what you want from solving a puzzle? Tunic is a game I will look forward to recommending with fervent and inexplicable ardor for years to come.