Post
A love letter to the feeling of playing a game without understanding the language it is written in.
Tunic by Andrew Shouldice looks like a cute isometric Zelda-like starring a tiny fox, but underneath that adorable surface is one of the most deviously designed mystery games ever made. The game's central hook is an in-game instruction manual written in a fictional language that you gradually collect pages of. Deciphering the manual reveals hidden mechanics, secret passages, and an entire layer of the game most players do not even know exists. The combat is genuinely challenging (closer to Dark Souls than Wind Waker), and the world is dense with secrets that reward curiosity at every turn.
Example
Collecting a manual page that reveals a control input you have had access to the entire game but never knew about, retroactively recontextualizing every area you have already explored. The subreddit collectively lost its mind when the Holy Cross mechanic was widely discovered.
Why it matters
Tunic recaptured the magic of playing games before the internet, when you had to figure everything out yourself or trade secrets on the playground. It proved that mystery and discovery are game mechanics as powerful as any combat system.
Related concepts