TUNIC: what makes an adventure?

I am a curious linguist, English and Japanese are my second and third languages respectively.
Blogpost - shetanislair.c...
Twitter - / shetanislair

[@shetanislair]

The last question wasn't rhetorical! What makes an adventure for you? Uncovering mysteries and secrets? Fighting epic battles? Making friends along the way? Let me know! (*・ω・)ﾉ

[@efimmortal]

A few years ago I played 2 games silimar in some ways - Hyper Light Drifter and FEZ. I think HLD is closer to Tunic although more dependant on fights. But the most interesting part for me was that adventure. I think that adventure is more unique if you are not familiar with the world at all (something that modern anime isekai tries to capitalize on). Hyper Light Drifter has no words at all outside of main menu and tells its story throgh subtle worldbuilding - the images that stuck with you is ruines of cities, abandoned villages, deep forests and hidden homes at caves. And I quite like it.
FEZ is a puzzle game, hard one. I still don't understand how to complete it on your own because unlike Tunic FEZ doesn't have a manual that helps you. You have to figure it out yourself. Some parts of the game use symbols to tell player what to do but you have to find them in the first place and then realise that they are in fact instructions, not textures to make the room look less boring.
There are of course adventures with deeply developed worlds where everything is explained to the player. Like Death Standing. But I don't get this feeling of adventure in this game specifically because Hideo Kojima decided to tell everything - almost nothing to interprete. Meaning: less things to wonder about. Which was sad...
Adventure is discovery and I feel like Tunic is all for it - this is amazing.

[@aX0n777]

i think what gives me a sense of adventure in games more than most, is a sense of very good world building but never ever telling the player about it, and the less the player knows the more adventurous it feels,
for example, my favorite game is Portal 2, [[spoilers]] there's a chapter in it where you fall a very large distance from the top of appreture science to the forgotten underlayers of the facility, and you keep going lower and lower as you progress, at the very bottom you can see that this absolutely massive facility is resting above MASSIVE springs, many many springs in the darkness that support appreture science and protect it ftom earthquakes and such, what i love about this is that it makes a lot of sense for the springs to be there but the game never ever elaborates about them, no hidden text somewhere, no character dialogue, no priming by the level design to lead you there, nothing, it's an example of impeccable unrealistic world building and world design that just exists there because it would make sense for it to do so, and the game tells you nothing about, in fact i completely missed it my first couple playthroughs but when i finally figured out why they where there it was a big "click" moment for me, Portal 2 is absolutely full of that kinda stuff, Portal 1 as well to a lesser extent.
so i guess what gives me a sense of adventure the most, is superb world design that is indifferent to the player's existence

[@efimmortal]

Tunic! I remember this game. Wanted to play it but somehow forgot. Maybe deleted from my Steam wishlist for some reason... It seems like I would really enjoy playing Tunic so thank you for reminding me of it

[@Mango_mahogany]

I think what gave the sense of adventure for me was the ruins, I explore abandoned stuff in real life and tunic perfectly encapsulates the crumbling ruins of abandoned places

[@thisguyfromtherenaissance934]

I played Tunic because of this video. Watched basically 30 second of it and said to myself "ok that's enough I'm going to be the fox now". Now, after beating the game I'm watching to the end. Thanks for letting me know about this game!

[@rolltimereal]

Great video! Happy to see you branch out from souls stuff, especially when the game has a intriguing linguistic elements like Tunic.

[@aX0n777]

excited for this to be on playstation finally

[@metron8496]

If you like this kind of knowledge based exploration you should definitely try out the Outer Wilds, I had the same feeling you described when playing that game

[@BlazeOrangeDeer]

The Witness has this too, you learn the rules without being told outright what they are, and then you use that knowledge elsewhere. It does the perspective shift thing as well where you will be going back to look for stuff that you didn't notice at first, and It has a lot of layers of meaning for a puzzle game about drawing lines.

[@baseai864]

This definitely makes me want to pick up the game, great video

[@Meteorlink]

up until the "all enemies in a row without upgrades" thing pretty late in the game i realy enjoyed it, getting lost, being lost mentally because i got no clue what half the things mean or do was like back in the day when i played english game on the genesys with not a word of knowledge in the language. I didn't finish it though.

[@Eidolon108]

Did you ever play The Witness? not really an adventure, no plot, just puzzles and deciphering, finding new context and meaning to solve puzzles. Would recommend

[@jerma985_enjoyer4]

EPIC

[@AkiltuK]

To me an adventure need a meaning, a goal and the choice to not achieve it.
Skyrim, Breath of the Wild even Horizon Zero Dawn, I think that's what I call adventure. Just the fact that I can go away and do something else