Still in your library
Tunic, the little fox and the missing manual
- Critic score
- 86
- Player rating
- 4.3/5
- Main story
- 12.3 h
- Genre
- Adventure, Action
- Given away in
- May 2024
Given to Essential subscribers in May 2024, Tunic looks like a pocket Zelda with a fox. It is a disguise: beneath the soft appearance hides one of the most devious and secret-laden games on PS Plus.
You wake up on a beach, unarmed, with no directions, and the game speaks to you in an invented language you cannot read. The only landmarks are manual pages scattered across the world — an old-fashioned instruction booklet, illustrated, with annotated maps and tips scribbled in the margins. Every page you find explains a mechanic you may already have been using without knowing it.
That manual is the game's big idea. It does more than explain: it hides things. A path drawn where the screen shows none, a repeated symbol that eventually makes sense, a page you reread three times before realising it describes a code. The second half of the adventure is less about fighting than about rereading.
The combat, though, does not mess around. Parry, dodge, stamina: the game borrows the demands of the Souls series, and some bosses will take repeated attempts. Accessibility options exist for those who only want to explore, no shame in it — the puzzles alone are worth the trip.
The world is built in isometric view, and that perspective serves the gameplay: whole passages are concealed behind a wall or beyond an angle, visible only once you know they exist. Returning to an area with a new clue almost always reveals something.
Count a good ten hours to finish it, far more to crack its last secrets — and it has some very deep ones. If you claimed it in spring 2024, it is still there. It is the game to launch when you feel like getting out a notebook and a pencil.