Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
It’s not easy to make a Zelda-like game that captures all of the quality of that freedom, exploration, combat, and adventure while doing something unique at the same time. Tunic does both, and it does them incredibly well. Coming out of the publishers at Finji and the creative mind of Andrew Shouldice, Tunic was a game that began its adventure on Xbox, but eventually found its way to all sorts of platforms and delighted us wherever we found it. For all of the good it did, Tunic’s adventure brought us some of our highest highs in gaming for 2022 with its difficult, but fair challenge, and for that, it grabbed our top spot for Shacknews Indie Game of the Year 2022.
Tunic casts you in the role of a cute fox adventurer in a strange world of magic and fantasy. In this world, a supposed great treasure awaits. If you’re going to find it, you need to explore and scour your surroundings for the pages to a sacred book. Only by filling the book with pages can you begin to parse the secrets of the world and the legendary treasures that await. Tunic is played in an isometric view, gazing down upon a beautiful watercolored world.
Tunic isn't an easy game. The enemies of the world can easily crush your little adventurer if you’re not careful. However, Tunic also met us halfway in offering a No Fail Mode that would allow us to play the game without worry of death.
Then there was the mystery of the game’s legendary book, which is sort of like a game manual. By filling the book with lost pages, players could parse together its foreign language and discover hints with which to proceed forward and overcome various challenges. No challenge is too easy to clear in the game, but its vibrant world presented us with enough joy to keep pushing forward with our adventure no matter what.
We were previewing Tunic at E3 in 2018. It’s come a long way since, launching not just on Xbox, but PC and other platforms as well. And in the end, the wait was more than worth it. Some games can be called Zelda clones, but Tunic is proficient enough in all the ways to be its very own charming and enjoyable thing. For all of the joy its adventure and the world that adventure took place in brought us, Tunic is officially the Shacknews Indie Game of the Year for 2022.
You can also find and play Tunic on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
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Check out our Year of the Games: 2022 article to see all of the other Shacknews Awards that have been announced so far.