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Tunic’s instruction manual and the Zelda art that inspired itThis Zelda homage runs deep
This Zelda homage runs deep
As several members of the RPS Treehouse can attest, I have not been able to stop playingTunicthis week. I was a little cautious going in, having not particularly gelled with the E3 demo from last year, but in hindsight, that early glimpse was nothing but the tip of a tiny fox nose peeking out of its burrow. In its full, regal splendour, Tunic has become an early game of the contender for me, and a large part of that is down to its wonderfully clever in-game instruction manual.
7 Reasons Why You’ll Fall In Love With TunicWatch on YouTube
7 Reasons Why You’ll Fall In Love With Tunic
Of course, part of the joy of Tunic is discovering these manual pages for yourself, so I’ve attempted to crop the following bits of manual art as much as I can to avoid potential spoilers. Hopefully I’ve been successful, but also: fair warning. If you want to play Tunic with completely fresh eyes, maybe bookmark this page and come back once you’ve found a few pages of your own. Also: check outTunic instruction manual artist ma-ko’s other work while you’re at it. It’sstunning stuff.
A special thanks also toZelda EuropeandHistory Of Hyrule, who have been diligently collating and scanning in all sorts of Zelda artwork for actualyears. Both are great resources for life-long Zelda fans, and particularly for big Adventure Of Link likers such as myself (as it is hands down the best NES Zelda game and I will fight anyone who says otherwise).
I’m going to start with a nice early one. One of the first pages you find in Tunic is a map of the game’s overworld. It’s a lovely thing to look at, packed full of fun details like staircases, waterfalls, place names and landmarks, but hot damn if it didn’t also make me think of the combined Legend Of Zelda / Zelda II: Adventure Of Link overworld map that was printed in itsValiant Comics series. Ilovelooking at video game maps,especiallymaps that fit together from different games like this. Could honestly pore over these all day given the chance…
Click to enlarge!
Click to enlarge!
In a similar vein, there’s a page in Tunic’s manual that gives you a hint about how strong you should be before taking on a particular boss. I’ve cropped out the numbers to avoid spoilers, but it immediately reminded me of this bit of Zelda II artwork explaining how its attack, magic and life upgrades worked.
Now, I’ll put my hands up here, the next two images aren’t massively close in appearance, but I do feel this image of Link smiling and raising his finger is similar to Tunic’s lecture wandat leastin spirit, if not exact pose. Also, shoutout to Tunic accurately capturing the entire vibe of the last two years in a single sentence.
When it comes to fighting enemy tutorials, though, some things never change. Sorry pink slimes / octoroks, you are forever doomed to look like dumb fools as you teach players the basics of combat.
Sometimes, though, clues aren’t enough, leaving our heroes well and truly stumped. Not gonna lie, this is probably quite an accurate representation of how I felt once I hit Tunic’s ‘What’s Next?’ achievement:
Finally, the illustration Shouldice showed Imogen during her interview was one of Link on the floor waving a little white flag with an arrow and sword stuck on his bum. This is next to the tip for ‘what to do when you run out of lives’. Tunic has a similar page in its manual, and I actually squeaked and pointed at the screen when I saw what was on it. I mean, come on, how perfect is that?
There are more examples I could draw on (sorry) in how Tunic details some of its wider illustrations and items and weapons, but those I’ll leave you to discover for yourself. I wouldn’t want to spoil all of its secrets, after all.
I love it when a game makes the sparks in my brain fly like this. It doesn’t happen often, at least outside of actualZelda games.Outer Wildsdid it,Heaven’s Vaultdid it, andInscryptionand Return Of The Obra Dinn did it, but that’s still only something that happens like once or twice a year tops. I treasure the moment whenever I start to feel those synpases wanting to fly, and right now, Tunic is making it fire on all cylinders.
10 / 10, Bestest Best, GOTY. Goodnight.
