Highlights
- Tunic, a free game for PS Plus Essential subscribers, is a challenging, visually pleasing action-adventure game with a unique storyline.
- The game draws inspiration from titles like Bloodborne, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and Monument Valley for its gameplay and visuals.
- Tunic’s combat system requires players to master rhythm, while its world design is influenced by a range of classic 2D games, making it a standout experience.
Every month, PS Plus Essential subscribers get a handful of free games, many of which are often a steal, due to their success beforehand. This May, one of the free games made available is Tunic, a peculiar action-adventure game by indie developer Andrew Shouldice and Isometricorp Games. Tunic sees players stepping into the furry feet of an unassuming anthropomorphic fox in a post-apocalyptic world where the story gradually unfolds as players progress. Tunic is not an easy game, and it has been noted as such, but this is all a part of what makes it unique and the product of a melting pot of inspirations.
It’s not uncommon for video games to include elements from other games their developers were inspired by. For instance, Shift Up’s Stellar Blade is also quite the melting pot, with inspirations like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Star Wars Jedi, and NieR: Automata influencing its gameplay and exploration. In the same way, Tunic was inspired by an unlikely combination of games, and it doesn’t try to hide those inspirations by any means. In fact, its developer and designer, Andrew Shouldice, has been very transparent about Tunic‘s various influences.
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Tunic Was Inspired by a Melting Pot of Games
Tunic’s Gameplay Was Inspired by Bloodborne and Metroid
Much like ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley, Tunic began as a solo development project by Andrew Shouldice. Development took around seven years, but Shouldice was eventually joined by a team of other developers who were able to help make up for Shouldice’s lack of expertise in certain areas of development. Shouldice’s goal with Tunic was to ensure it was a challenging experience while also being gentle and pleasing to the eyes, which is ultimately where this melting pot of inspirations began to take shape.
The core of Tunic‘s gameplay was interestingly inspired by Shouldice reading through the manual for Metroid 2: Return of Samus as a child, unable to fully understand what he was reading due to lack of context. In the same way, Tunic drops players into its eccentric world without anyone there to hold their hand, and with little explanation about what is going on. In fact, the only way to understand the context of the game is to play through it and learn the story by collecting manual pages — a callback to Shouldice’s reading of the Metroid 2 manual as a kid.
Tunic‘s combat was inspired by Bloodborne. In Tunic, players must learn to master the rhythm of combat, which requires them to perform well-timed attacks and dodges. Tunic was also inspired by FromSoftware games in general, as players control a “player-ambivalent artifact,” as it were, which essentially makes them an insignificant character in a world that cares very little for them.
Tunic’s Visuals Were Influenced by The Legend of Zelda and Monument Valley
Upon first setting eyes on Tunic‘s key art, it’s easy to spot its Legend of Zelda influence. The iconic fox character is dressed in a green tunic, wielding a sword in its right hand and a shield that looks strikingly similar to Link’s Hylian shield in its left. However, only Tunic‘s visuals and world design were influenced by The Legend of Zelda, as its combat and gameplay are almost nothing like it. Ustwo’s Monument Valley also had a hand in inspiring Tunic — specifically, its isometric viewpoint and art style.
When considering just how many influences Tunic openly embraces, it’s easy to see how it has grown to be so successful. It might be easily written off as a Zelda clone, but its gameplay and world go much deeper than Zelda, stretching toward the likes of Bloodborne and Metroid 2, for instance. It’s safe to say that Tunic is a worthy addition to May 2024’s list of free PS Plus Essential games.