TUNIC

TUNIC casts the player as a small fox in armor who wakes up on an unfamiliar shore with no memories and no guidance — except for scraps of pages from an instruction manual written in an invented language, which the player gradually finds scattered across the world. This idea is the heart of the whole game: the manual isn't just a cosmetic extra but a genuine key to understanding the combat system, the map, items, and hidden mechanics that the game otherwise never explains, and without its pages the player is left quite literally groping in the dark.

The game is visually inspired by classic isometric Zelda titles, but beneath its charming surface hides surprisingly demanding, thoughtful combat and layered puzzles that often require combining information from different parts of the manual and different corners of the world, without the game ever explicitly pointing the way. Discovering hidden paths, secret rooms, codes, and alternate endings ranks among the most praised elements of the game, as it rewards patient, observant players far more than is typical for the genre. The level design is full of shortcuts and portals that gradually connect into one surprisingly compact and well-thought-out whole, one that can be traversed in many different directions and rediscovered even after completion thanks to new information found in the manual.

On PlayStation 5, where the game arrived roughly a year after its debut on other platforms, TUNIC runs without a hitch, and its gentle, watercolor-like graphics and melancholic music truly shine on a big screen. The game was received with great enthusiasm upon release, with many players and journalists calling it one of the smartest adventure designs of recent times, one that elegantly blends nostalgia for old games with a modern, player-respecting approach to storytelling and discovery, where each player ultimately builds their own uniquely incomplete understanding of the world based on what they found themselves.

Why play it: For players who want to piece together their own understanding of the world without being led by the hand — TUNIC ranks among the smartest adventure designs of recent times and runs flawlessly on PS5.