MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - "tunic" was designed to make you feel like an 8-year old that has rented zelda on NES

> >>Is 80% of this game just hidden passages / non-obvious routes you need to somehow
> find, but are obscured by the isometric perspective
>
> that's part of it sure, but is that not a valid gameplay mechanism? we could be
> equally reductive about any other game title. i found that it constantly made me
> laugh, and set my mind to reworking routing for subsequent playthroughs.
>

it was interesting when I popped back out a path I didn't know existed when looping round after competing a section, but equally it felt like there were too many times I was controlling a character in complete darkness on a secret path, only really knowing where they were by camera position, pushing against complete darkness just to see if a 'press A' prompt would appear anywhere for a chest of a ladder.

I liked the approach Octopath took better, where in such situations it would usually show a window to where your character was, rather than expecting you to poke around in the darkness.

>
> >> colour choices which (at least with the muddy graphics of the Switch version) make
> it near impossible to see essential routes needed for progress?
>
> looked fine to me. played it on the switch & pc (granted the switch is the oled
> version, so that may have made it different)
>

In handheld it's not so bad, on a big screen TV it looks bad, like the game area is maybe 360-480p at most and upscaled to fit the screen (the HUD is fine) I've seen it on other platforms and it's much better, but it definitely suffers from 'Made in Unity' which is rough even on a PS5, and the death knell for many Switch releases (so relatively, they've done quite well as mitigating the problem, even if it's still very noticeable)

>
> >>Enemy AI also seems to be "as soon as player is detected, charge straight for them,
> unless there's a ladder, because we're reincarnated Daleks and we don't do ladders)"
>
> valid, but not everything needs to be half-life grunts. the bosses do well enough
> enforcing pattern recognition and response.
>
>

It just feels like a very binary thing, if you trigger them, even if they're somewhere else on the screen they can't get to you the 'hunt' logic turns on. It felt a bit under developed, not too bad, but I think it's something I'm becoming sensitive to these days as I'm seeing a lot of these games where the enemy AI is basically just that. 'Home in on player' but with a bit of pathfinding.

> i'm honestly not enjoying the end bit where you have to collect your pieces back as a
> ghost. if you didn't like the world-building initially, this end part jumbles it up
> even further.

I've not got that far in it yet, although I will say there have been some moments I've really enjoyed, some of the new area reveals have a sense of wonder about them, and there is a lot of heart in the game that does shine beyond the flaws.

To its credit, for a game that is the passion project of a single person, with others assisting him, it has turned out rather well, much better than say The Outbound Ghost which was a disaster in every way, or even Clive and Wrench, which I wanted to like but fell short where it mattered. (It's possible those 2 have improved since the carts arrived on my desk, but first impressions count, and by the time a game gets a physical release it SHOULD be finished)

I just think maybe Tunic has been overhyped a bit.