Even if you’d taken an interest in Tunic before, you would be forgiven if the game had slipped from your radar. I think I first saw the game during E3 2018 when it was part of Microsoft’s conference, and even then it didn’t reveal a whole lot. We saw the player character wake up on an island, grab their sword and shield and embark on some achingly cute exploration and adventure – opening chests, unlocking paths and battling foes in a stylised but welcoming 3D environment shot from an isometric perspective (but with sweeping camera motions heralding significant events.) In a conference boasting trailers of gritty and mature games such as Metro Exodus and The Division 2, the Tunic trailer definitely caught my attention, and so the recent Tunic demo has been a welcome surprise after so much radio silence.
Exploring the Tunic demo
The Tunic demo quickly establishes its agenda – with messages written in a unique language and no establishing cutscenes or narrative, it wants players to explore and discover. The controls are simple enough, offering movement, an evasive dodge-roll (that uses up stamina which can replenish if you stay still) and contextual interactions with certain objects in the world. You can also equip weapons, shields, and consumable items, and use these by pressing the associated buttons. Beyond that, everything else exists for you to discover. There are bushes blocking pathways which can be cut down, locked doors that require you to go and find the mechanism to open them, combat arenas that you need to survive before you can think about moving forward., and more besides.
Risky combat
A lot of the challenges I saw were neatly self-contained (or maybe the explorable area in the Tunic demo was deliberately small), and I didn’t feel like there was a lot of back-tracking. However, the demo wasn’t afraid to show its less forgiving side; despite the health drops and checkpoints, a regular enemy can still do damage if you’re careless, and your character can’t withstand many hits before they fall. Often you will want to catch the attention of a single enemy and retreat so that you can see their attack strings (and find out when they might be vulnerable), but you can also find yourself amongst a group of foes as you’re pressured into prioritising threats and keeping yourself safe.
The Tunic demo is demanding but intriguing
The dance of blocking and countering continues through later combat areas and culminates in an intense boss encounter, and whether you succeed or fail, the logo will flash onscreen and the demo will end (which may be irritating for some players if they simply wish to learn the boss without replaying the whole demo.) After being dropped back to the title screen, I had mixed feelings – I enjoyed the challenge (and couldn’t get enough of the aesthetic) but maybe a full game of such demanding encounters could be wearing for some players who just want to roam around and explore. We won’t know until we see more of the encounters and exploration, but it seems like it’ll be a while before the full game emerges anyway, so it’s an experience that can be filed away for now. As always, if you’ve been able to try the Tunic demo, let us know what you think.
