I'm worried I won't like this because the game is purposely designed to be obtuse. Should I still give it a shot on sale or skip it?

[GodlessGambit]

I generally hate obscure mechanisms in games. Gotcha moments where a game doesn't explain a thing I can suddenly do or poor tutorials that don't set you up well for playing the actual game make me seriously annoyed if not frustrated or outright angry. I understand some people really get appreciation out of having to try things and learn how the game works through experimentation, but I'm very much a person that can't get into a game if it doesn't explain how it works up front. I don't want the game to be hard because it never told me I could parry, I want it to be satisfyingly difficult because I know I can parry but actually doing so requires great timing. I have no issues with a game telling me everything I can do (and even more).

I have been avoiding this game because apparently it sounds like my worst nightmare in gaming: everything in the game universe, even the "instruction manual", is written in an incomprehensible language you won't understand without either taking great time to piece it together or flailing about doing stuff until it just clicks. I've also seen lots of praise heaped at the game for this.

Long story short, would playing this game using a walkthrough to not have to try and decipher a made-up language still be worthwhile, or would it kill the point of the game? I have no problem skipping it if it's just a not me kind of game, but if the game can still be enjoyable and interesting without having to beat your head against a wall trying to interpret made up glyphs, I'm all for removing that particular hurdle and enjoying the game.

TL;DR does reading a guide to not have to deal with the in-game language ruin the experience?

[Don Lobo]

Yes, it would. The game appears extremely linear, but this is only because you lack the knowledge to understand other ways to progress through the world. Acquiring knowledge is the single most significant progression in this game. Getting it from a guide will rob almost the entirety of that, no matter the writing talent of the guide maker(s).

That being said, other than maybe a couple of puzzles, you don't need to decipher the language at all. More than enough of it is already translated, and most of the things the game wants you to figure out it simply shows you, and expects you to be observant.

I would suggest to try it for 2 hours and return it if it doesn't suit your taste. It's a game about knowledge and observation. I think using a guide for specific things you feel frustrated you're stuck on might work better (looking up specific puzzle solutions), but one for the whole game will take an integral part of what makes this game unique out of the equation. Doesn't seem worth it to me, but you do you.

[Rapax/希狐]

I have been playing this for over a month and there is still two stupid puzzles that I can't figure out, but yes the game is still extremely fun if you play it through without understanding anything.

But there are some moments of realization that you would definitely be missing out on.
I think solving a certain puzzle in the game felt like the greatest moment in my entire history with gaming and the idea of just seeing that puzzle, looking up the solution and applying it is abhorrent to me.

[GodlessGambit]

Originally posted by Don Lobo:

Yes, it would. The game appears extremely linear, but this is only because you lack the knowledge to understand other ways to progress through the world. Acquiring knowledge is the single most significant progression in this game. Getting it from a guide will rob almost the entirety of that, no matter the writing talent of the guide maker(s).

That being said, other than maybe a couple of puzzles, you don't need to decipher the language at all. More than enough of it is already translated, and most of the things the game wants you to figure out it simply shows you, and expects you to be observant.

I would suggest to try it for 2 hours and return it if it doesn't suit your taste. It's a game about knowledge and observation. I think using a guide for specific things you feel frustrated you're stuck on might work better (looking up specific puzzle solutions), but one for the whole game will take an integral part of what makes this game unique out of the equation. Doesn't seem worth it to me, but you do you.

My main concern other than the language barrier is that not being able to read anything will make it boring. I tend to prefer games with a good storyline, so if everything, including cutscene or character dialogue, is in an unintelligible language, then I might grow bored of the game. I was never really a fan of 8-bit/16-bit action/adventure games. I played the original Zelda because I wanted to know where the series’ roots came from, but growing up with a Nintendo 64, it was really hard to go back to retro games after playing Ocarina of Time.

[Rapax/希狐]

There's a lot of nonverbal storytelling, too

[Don Lobo]

Originally posted by GodlessGambit:

My main concern other than the language barrier is that not being able to read anything will make it boring. I tend to prefer games with a good storyline, so if everything, including cutscene or character dialogue, is in an unintelligible language, then I might grow bored of the game. I was never really a fan of 8-bit/16-bit action/adventure games. I played the original Zelda because I wanted to know where the series’ roots came from, but growing up with a Nintendo 64, it was really hard to go back to retro games after playing Ocarina of Time.

Almost the entirety of the story is told through environmental storytelling, or through images. The backstory is written almost entirely in that language, but you can sort of piece it together without it. I haven't learned to read it btw, I know 1 word that I can recognize "THE". So don't worry about it. And if you ever want to read the manual, there are already fully translated captures out there for you to read it. Is just not needed to progress, nor to get a grasp of what happened and a decent idea of what’s happening when you're playing.

[AN]

I feel like the game tutorializes you effectively to understand the mechanics in the order you are supposed to learn them. If it's going to legitimately make you angry to not have everything laid out for you before you start the actual game then you shouldn't play it.

[GodlessGambit]

Originally posted by AN:

I feel like the game tutorializes you effectively to understand the mechanics in the order you are supposed to learn them. If it's going to legitimately make you angry to not have everything laid out for you before you start the actual game then you shouldn't play it.

I'll see if I can come up with an example of the thing that would bother me.

I don't necessarily need a game to tell me *everything* from the get-go. It's okay for new stuff to be worked into gameplay naturally, or if I'm playing something like Bayonetta or God of War, I don't mind if combos are listed somewhere in the pause menu so if I really want to utilize them, I can look them up and study them.

A good example of the kind of thing that would bug me would be like the parry mechanic from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. I can remember back in college my friend was nearly in tears because he was stuck on this one boss fight where you need to parry, but he couldn't figure out how to do it right. The game said, "Press the left stick and the O button toward the enemy to parry," but even though he was doing that, it wasn't working at all, and he thought it was bugged.

I looked it up online. Even after looking it up, it took me some time to get used to doing it, and it was kind of tricky. Turns out that game didn't explain it right at all. You didn't need to just hold the stick in the direction of the enemy and press O (or whatever button it was, I don't remember exactly) to parry, you had to *tap* the stick and the O button *at the same time* to get the parry to go off. Even when you knew what to do, it wasn't very reliable, but you would never have known how to do it properly from the instructions the game gave you.

My friend wasn't particularly adept at games (he liked to play everything on Easy), and even after learning how to do it from me, he just gave up on the game because it was too hard for him. I couldn't blame him.

That would be a great example of a thing that would piss me off in a game. I'm failing because the game didn't properly give me the tools to succeed.

Another example would be the horribly translated hints in the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. Unless you know what the characters in the game are saying, their hints are completely unhelpful because they're in either transliterated English or bad Engrish. If I remember correctly, there's one random tree in the middle of nowhere that doesn't stand out from any of the other trees at all that you need to burn to enter a dungeon, and the game gives you no indication where this tree is. So you either spend hours wandering around the screens burning every tree in existence or, if you're like me, you give up super frustrated after 15 minutes having gotten nowhere and you look the answer up.

I just don't like it when it feels like I have to solve a puzzle but I wasn't given all the information to solve it, or the game deliberately obscured useful information. I don't get an "Aha!" moment when I look up the answer. I get a, "How the hell was I ever supposed to know that?!" kind of moment. It's why I like modern adventure games but won't play any point-and-clicks from back in the 90's because I know the moon logic would just piss me off too much.

[GodlessGambit]

"If a frustrated player eventually does reach for the strategy guide, there will be two common reactions on discovering the answer: If the puzzle is well written, the answer will make complete, brilliant sense in hindsight, and the player will respect the puzzle designer, perhaps curse themselves for giving in to the strategy guide, or for needing it in the first place.

If it is poorly written or implemented, you still may not think anyone could possibly solve it on their own. You may also find yourself cursing the developer for expecting you to make overly arcane connections, notice absurdly minute details, or for throwing in intentional or unintentional Red Herrings; but even a badly executed but successful moon logic puzzle makes sense after you read the answer. The pieces of the solution were in fact provided, and the solutions make logical sense in hindsight, just in strange or hard to notice ways. Even a highly skilled puzzle-solver will occasionally get stuck on one of these. When this is bad enough that hundreds of players will get stuck on this puzzle, it's That One Puzzle.

Failed attempts at creating a moon logic puzzle, on the other hand, will have the player screaming at the ceiling in rage upon reading the solution, and are generally unsolvable except by accident. The worst offenders cross the threshold from "convoluted but comprehensible logic" into Non Sequitur or even pure Insane Troll Logic — for example, you should just know which three rocks should be arranged on the three pedestals and in what order. Other times, the clues that would have led to the solution seem so out of left field that it leaves the player wondering "how was I supposed to know that?" Such "out of left field" examples might entail figuring out the third meaning of a Double Entendre someone you talked to 20 hours ago made, listening to the unlisted audio track included on the bonus disc that didn't come with the rental, knowing some obscure pun in a language other than English that got Lost in Translation, or not being familiar with a common custom of the writer's culture."

This summation of Moon Logic Puzzles from TV Tropes sums it up pretty well. If Tunic has understandable puzzles that totally make sense in retrospect but might be hard to understand at first, I'd likely enjoy giving it a shot. If instead I'm going to be staring at my screen saying, "How the *HELL* did you ever expect me to understand that without looking it up?!?!" I should probably avoid it like the plague.

[Rapax/希狐]

The puzzles in Tunic make perfect sense, in my 98% complete experience. Or... they will, the game teaches you the intuition of its puzzles after a while and many puzzles will at first not make sense until you have learned that intuition. In fact you will not even notice the omnipresent puzzles at first.

You can play through this game one way without understanding anything and just going wherever your curiosity takes you.

If you want to really uncover every secret, the puzzles get really convoluted, but you can reasonably almost 100% the game without knowing anything about its writing system.

But many of its mechanics are very obscure if you can't read the manual.

[tripbillie]

The manual/in game text isn't completely in the made up language. There is enough English scattered through it to give you a basic idea of what's going on. You might not get all the nuance of what's being said, but you have enough to get by. I'd compare it to getting a game in a different language (like buying a Japanese version of a game) and while you're not fluent, you know a few words here and there. That plus the images in the manual/visual storytelling can get you fairly far.

I will say that I've somewhat played the original Legend of Zelda (though not to completion), and I feel like my experience there did add to my experience in Tunic. So I'm not a 100% blank slate as I've had previous training from other games.

Additionally, the hardest thing I've had to do is not look up solutions. They are out there if you get stuck, but just running through a guide on the first playthrough (which I'm still on) would be pretty boring.

[Toxi]

what I would suggest is not to look up things right off the bat, but to give things a try at first and then look up a solution if you get stuck.

That's how I do it anyway, because there's a few real headscratchers later in the game that weren't worth the time wasted going through trial and error with some late game mechanics, people who played this probably know what I mean by that.


for the most part the game has only some few sticking parts, but does a great job otherwise, it has a very interesting way of communicating its mechanics to you that's kinda charming if I'm being honest. I tend to be harsh towards esoteric puzzle designs, but I found few times I needed to look things up in this game, I'd say it's worth it if you want to challenge your notion and experience something a bit more different than usual.

[clutzyninja]

Originally posted by Don Lobo:

Originally posted by GodlessGambit:

My main concern other than the language barrier is that not being able to read anything will make it boring. I tend to prefer games with a good storyline, so if everything, including cutscene or character dialogue, is in an unintelligible language, then I might grow bored of the game. I was never really a fan of 8-bit/16-bit action/adventure games. I played the original Zelda because I wanted to know where the series’ roots came from, but growing up with a Nintendo 64, it was really hard to go back to retro games after playing Ocarina of Time.

Almost the entirety of the story is told through environmental storytelling, or through images. The backstory is written almost entirely in that language, but you can sort of piece it together without it. I haven't learned to read it btw, I know 1 word that I can recognize "THE". So don't worry about it. And if you ever want to read the manual, there are already fully translated captures out there for you to read it. Is just not needed to progress, nor to get a grasp of what happened and a decent idea of what’s happening when you're playing.

I assumed the script would be become readable through a later power up (i'm only a couple hours in). Does it not? Do I need to decipher it myself? I don't mind if that's the case, that's kinda awesome lol

[Rapax/希狐]

Originally posted by clutzyninja:

I assumed the script would be become readable through a later power up (i'm only a couple hours in). Does it not? Do I need to decipher it myself? I don't mind if that's the case, that's kinda awesome lol

At first I thought the manually would get gradually translated if I collect more pages but no,
sorry if this is a spoiler, but this game brings its very own superior phonetic alphabet to the table and you will have to learn it or stay in the dark lol

ooor just look up translations online.

The spoiler is because I think knowing what it is takes away some of the challenge.

[Perseus]

Originally posted by Rapax/希狐:

The spoiler is because I think knowing what it is takes away some of the challenge.

I'd suggest maybe describing what's in the spoiler tags before the actual spoiler tags to lessen the chances of someone thinking that the things in spoiler tags aren't spoilery.

[clutzyninja]

Originally posted by Perseus:

Originally posted by Rapax/希狐:

The spoiler is because I think knowing what it is takes away some of the challenge.

I'd suggest maybe describing what's in the spoiler tags before the actual spoiler tags to lessen the chances of someone thinking that the things in spoiler tags aren't spoilery.

If you click a spoiler and then get mad there's a spoiler in it, that's on you, lol