malvasia bianca

I’m behind in my blogging, so I’m going to cover Tunic and Stray in a single post. Because I have the same thing to say about both games: each of them starts from a conceit that is compelling enough for me to have been drawn into the game, but neither of them manages to expand that into a satisfying game.

For Tunic, the goal is to make you feel nostalgic for early Zelda games. Part of how the game carries this off is very good visual design and solid level design; but what really sets Tunic apart is the way that you find pieces of the manual scattered throughout the game world.

Whenever I played a game in the 80s and 90s, I would always read through the game’s manual, and I really enjoyed that aspect of games; I very much appreciated Tunic bringing that back. And the game dives into the experience of poring through a game manual: the manuals gradually teach you basic controls, they show you important information about where to go and what to do to collect the key plot macguffins, and they have various other clues hidden in them about how to solve (and even the existence of) the game’s hidden, optional puzzles. I spent a lot of time in the game going through the manual and wondering what would be in the pages that I hadn’t yet found; I enjoyed that time.

Unfortunately, as strong as the above is, it’s not enough to make a game. When I started the game, I thought the enemy encounters were fine; but, when I got into the middle third of the game, I stopped enjoying the combat, and I also found that the combat got significantly harder, enough so that I ended up dropping down into no-fail mode. I’ve never finished the original Zelda, so it’s possible that the combat in that game was similarly difficult, but I’ve played and finished a bunch of other Zelda games and never had that experience; it just felt to me like that aspect of the game wasn’t designed and balanced particularly well.

Also, the ending of the game didn’t work for me. I’m okay with games having multiple endings, and with needing to do more work to get a good ending. But, in Tunic, the bad ending is pretty bad, and if you want to get the good ending, you have to either be an obsessive puzzle solver or else just put in answers from a walkthrough. I actually am a mostly completionist person and I like puzzle solving, so I naturally did most of what the game wanted me to do to get the good ending, but the combat had soured me enough on the game that I had no desire to track down the last bits just to get a good ending. And, honestly the last couple of puzzles were tricky enough when I did look at a walkthrough that I’m not at all sure I would have solved them even if I’d been more motivated.

So, basically, instead of having a bad ending for people who just rush through and a good ending for people who do a fair amount of completing side missions and what not, or alternatively having a normal, satisfying ending combined with a completionist ending for obsessive people (and maybe people who are doing a new game plus), Tunic had a bad ending for normal people and a good ending for obsessive people. Which didn’t leave me feeling great coming out of the game, and didn’t remind me in any way of Zelda games.

On a more minor point: I didn’t particularly like the music, and it didn’t feel nostalgic in any way? A matter of taste, of course, but, if we’re talking about Zelda nostalgia, then music is an important part of that.

Don’t get me wrong, though: I actually still recommend playing Tunic. Because it really does have a compelling vision, and it carries off that vision well enough that I really enjoyed the first several hours I spent with the game. But, once I’d gotten the initial trio of plot items and moved into the middle of the game, I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much; so, if you do play it, be prepared to do some combination of having a bit of a slog, dropping down into no-fail mode, and/or not finishing the game.

For Stray, the compelling idea is: you are a cat. So, you walk around like a cat, jump onto things like a cat, scratch objects like a cat, knock objects off of high places like a cat. And that’s great: it’s fun to play around with being a cat, and it looks very good.

The problem with Stray is that they didn’t do a great job of building that mechanic into a full game. The game starts off by having you navigate unfamiliar territory, and the designers decided that they needed to give you some sort of challenge to propel you through that section and to have you not mind being force down a corridor; so they give you a flood of enemies chasing after you or appearing in front of you for you to avoid. Then the game quiets down and turns into a town-based section; I enjoyed that more, though I’m not sure the NPC interactions were great? But the idea of having a town with layers of buildings stacked vertically worked well with the cat theme: you get to jump up along ledges / signs / railings / etc. to reach the higher levels, which is good cat-centric navigation. (I do wish the jump point detection had been a bit more forgiving, though.)

But then the game went back to the corridor-with-enemies-design (and, this time, you’re a cat with a gun!), then another less satisfying town, then a more satisfying town, then a stealth section. So, basically, the game alternated sections where you’re navigating an interesting lived-in environment with sections where you’re moving along a corridor trying to avoid enemies designed in a not-particularly-cat-focused way; pleasant enough that I kept going, but nothing that made me think that Stray was really good as a game rather than as a concept.

And there’s an overarching plot about a ruined world, and people (a cat and a bunch of robots specifically) navigating that and trying to understand bits of the pre-calamity world. Which could have worked well, and there are parts of that aspect of the game that I did like? But Stray didn’t really carry that off in a convincing way, either; and the way the game callously discarded key NPCs that you met as the plot moved along didn’t sit right with me.

Comparing the two games: the core concept in Tunic shines quite a bit brighter than that in Stray, but Tunic is also a lot rougher around the edges. (I wasn’t thrilled with the gameplay in Stray in parts, but I was never worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish it.) Two interesting experiments, and I’m glad to have spent time with both of them; I just wish both had been built out in a way that had let their respective core concepts shine.