Tunic is a small fox in a big world, and the world is hiding something. The 2022 action-adventure from designer Andrew Shouldice drops you on a shore with no instructions, no map markers, and no tutorial. You run, roll, and fight your way through ruins while piecing together what happened here. It is one of the most confident debuts in recent memory.
Trailer, via GameSpot Trailers.
A Fox Awakens on a Shore
The setup is spare. An anthropomorphic fox wakes on a beach and starts walking. The player is given no directions. Most text appears in a constructed writing system that the game does not expect you to decipher. A few words show up in your selected language. That’s it.
Shouldice built Tunic over seven years, beginning as a solo project in 2015. He wanted to pair challenging combat with gentle visuals and audio. The inspiration came from childhood sessions with Nintendo Entertainment System games — The Legend of Zelda in particular — and the experience of staring at manuals for games he didn’t fully understand. That memory is the engine of Tunic’s design.
Finji joined as publisher in 2017 and announced the game at E3 that year. By launch, Shouldice had been joined by composers Terence Lee and Janice Kwan, audio designer Kevin Regamey, developer Eric Billingsley, and producer Felix Kramer.
The Manual Is the Map
Tunic’s central trick is that you find pages of an in-game manual as you explore. Each page offers clues, drawings, and notes. The manual is written with the player as its reader. It does not explain what the fox knows or whether the fox understands the constructed language.
This is the part that separates Tunic from its influences. The Legend of Zelda gave you a map. Tunic gives you fragments of a document and trusts you to assemble the meaning. The backstory stays obscured. You learn the setting by moving through it.
The isometric perspective hides pathways and secrets. The three-dimensional terrain is usually shown from a fixed isometric view, though the perspective shifts at certain points. The camera angle is not a stylistic choice. It is a puzzle mechanic.
Combat, Stamina, and the Shield
The interface carries meters for health, stamina, and magic. Rolling consumes stamina, which replenishes after a few seconds. After a roll, the fox can run faster until the player stops moving. The shield blocks attacks at the cost of stamina.
Weapons include a sword, explosives, and magic items. Magic weapons draw on the magic meter. Chests scattered through the world hold collectible items, weapons, or coins. Ghostly merchants appear on a few hidden paths and sell items for coins.
Some items, like potions, restore attributes. Others combine with coins to raise the fox’s maximum health, stamina, or magic. Tunic has no difficulty levels. Players can toggle unlimited stamina or health in accessibility settings. That’s a clean solution — the challenge stays intact for those who want it, and the door opens for those who don’t.
Three Crystal Keys and the Heir
The plot unfolds through play. After collecting a weapon and shield and ringing two magical bells, the fox enters a temple and then a spiritual plane called the Far Shore. There the fox meets the spirit of a larger fox trapped in a crystal prison. The manual calls this figure the Heir.
The fox sets out to collect three crystal keys to the prison, found in dungeons across the land. If the fox dies, the Heir revives them. As the keys come together, the fox encounters glowing purple essence that powers parts of the ruins, including the golden platforms. Glowing black obelisks relay it.
While collecting the last key, the fox travels through a mine where the purple essence seems to be taking over the world itself, then into an underground factory where the souls of foxes are being forced into the obelisks. After the keys are collected and the Heir is freed, the Heir attacks and kills the fox.
The fox, now in spirit form, appears in a night-time version of the overworld. Many paths are blocked by purple essence. Most enemies are gone. The land is populated by the souls of other foxes, who speak almost exclusively in the constructed writing system. The fox visits six Graves of the Hero, each returning part of the spirit and restoring the fox to life.
What the Manual Pages Reveal
Collecting enough manual pages reveals more of the backstory. The game hands out its history in the same way it hands out its mechanics — slowly, and only to players who look.
This is where Tunic earns its reputation. The manual is not a collectible for completionists. It is the story. Every page you find changes what you understand about the fox, the Heir, and the obelisks. The game withholds context on purpose, and the withholding is the point.
Shouldice has said he wanted to evoke classic action-adventure games. He did more than evoke them. He rebuilt the feeling of being a kid with a controller and a manual you couldn’t fully read, and he made that feeling the whole game.
The Hard Numbers
- Release: March 2022 for macOS, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S; September 2022 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5
- Developer: Isometricorp Games
- Publisher: Finji
- Designer: Andrew Shouldice
- Composers: Terence Lee and Janice Kwan
- Development time: Seven years, starting as a solo project in 2015
- Announced: E3 2017
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC, Mac, Xbox One
- Modes: Single player
- Critic aggregate: 8.9/10 across 5 outlets
Where Tunic Stumbles
The difficulty is uneven. That’s the main criticism the game drew at launch, and it holds up. Some combat encounters demand precision the camera doesn’t always support. The fixed isometric view that makes exploration so rewarding can make a boss fight feel like a negotiation with the angle rather than the enemy.
The constructed writing system is a bold choice. It also means large stretches of the game communicate through texture rather than language. Players who want narrative clarity will find Tunic frustrating. Players who want to be trusted will find it generous.
Neither of those is a flaw in the design. They are the design. Tunic knows exactly what it is doing, and it does not apologize for the cost of doing it.
Why Tunic Still Matters
Tunic is not the first game to hide its story in collectibles. It is one of the few that makes the collecting itself the story. The manual pages are not lore dumps. They are the mechanism by which the fox — and the player — learn what the world is.
The seven-year development shows. Not in bloat, but in the density of secrets. The isometric view hides pathways everywhere. The alternate routes into locked areas reward curiosity. The purple essence, the obelisks, the factory, the Graves of the Hero — these are not set dressing. They are a coherent argument about what happens when a world consumes its own souls to keep running.
Shouldice’s team built something rare: a game that respects the player enough to leave them lost. The result is a debut that stands with the games that inspired it without copying them.
Here is what Tunic gets right, ranked by how much it matters:
- The manual system — finding pages that double as story and instruction is the best idea in the game.
- The hidden pathways — the isometric view turns every screen into a search.
- The combat — swords, explosives, and magic give fights real variety, even when the camera fights back.
- The accessibility toggles — unlimited stamina or health without a difficulty menu.
Tunic earns its reputation. The combat has rough edges, and the difficulty curve will lose some players before the first bell rings. But the manual system, the hidden pathways, and the slow reveal of the Heir’s story make this one of the best action-adventure games of 2022.
It is a game about reading, exploring, and trusting that the world will explain itself if you look hard enough. That trust pays off.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
