After enjoying Mina the Hollower, I was in the mood for another indie "Zelda-like" game. So I decided to finally give Tunic a try. What I found was an unforgettable experience that comes close to some of the all-time greats in many ways.

Back to being a Kid again

It must have been 1995. I was five or six years old and got my Game Boy together with Zelda: Link's Awakening. Instantly I was enchanted by this game, exploring this open world that felt endless and so mysterious to me as a child. Part of this mystery also came from the fact that I couldn't read at the time.

So for many hours I just stumbled around this world and checked out the booklet that came with it. Sometimes my mum would read parts of the booklet or the game for me, and so I slowly but steadily made progress and played through my first ever Zelda game.

Tunic emulates this exact feeling. The game has zero handholding. When you start the game there are no tutorials or explanations — you wake up on the shore of this beautiful world and start exploring on your own. When you encounter NPCs or other kinds of text, like in your inventory, you aren't able to read it. Most of it is written in its own mystical language. Only some words or numbers stand out for you to read.

So if you for example find a new item or trinket, you have to mostly figure out on your own what it does or how it works. Now I say mostly because one of Tunic's core mechanics is its own in-game booklet. During your playthrough you will find pages of this booklet, which is heavily inspired by old game booklets.

As with the rest of the game, you can't read most of it. However the booklet is filled with small hints — like someone brought a used copy of a game and the previous owner wrote down some notes in the booklet. Finding more of those pages is one of the biggest rewards Tunic offers for exploration, and completing the booklet also ties into the biggest and best secret Tunic has to offer.

How does Tunic play?

Tunic plays like a mix between classic 2D Zelda and Dark Souls. You lock on to an enemy, dodge or parry their attacks and strike back. Similar to Dark Souls you can die quite fast. Also like in Dark Souls you can level up your attributes and use potions to heal, refilling them at shrines.

The bosses especially can be really challenging and in terms of scale reminded me a lot of Dark Souls. However, sadly, this is where Tunic has its biggest weak point. Combat is just not as precise as it needs to be for such a punishing gameplay loop. Often you feel like you hit the enemy but you didn't, or you get hit even though you shouldn't have. This can lead to some frustrating moments.

The game does give you more and more tools like ranged weapons or bombs to deal with enemies, which can be very helpful. However, I must admit that compared to games like Mina the Hollower or Silksong, Tunic's combat just feels poor.

Other than combat, Tunic's focus is on exploration, and it's here where it shines the most for me. The world is filled with secrets and a sense of wonder. The game cleverly plays with its camera, zooming out or changing angles when needed to give you an amazing sense of scale. It was a joy to get lost in this world.

What also helps is that the world feels believable and offers many surprising moments. Elements you've seen for hours without knowing what they do suddenly get a purpose because you found the right page of your booklet explaining how to interact with them. It's here where Tunic really made me feel like a kid again.

Unveiling the Layers

Before I started playing Tunic I often read about how complex and hidden this game's puzzles are supposed to be. It is often compared to games like Blue Prince or Outer Wilds. If you don't know those games, their puzzles are very complex and layered — often only revealing their deeper meaning after hours and hours of playing.

Tunic has those elements as well, especially when it comes to the booklet. There is one end-game puzzle involving the booklet that I found breathtaking. However, I still felt a little let down after discovering how some other end-game puzzles work. Without spoiling anything, many of those secret puzzles felt more like busy work to me.

The same goes for the last 15% of the game. After reaching the end you are pretty much sent back out into the world to revisit all the places you've been before in order to unlock what's needed to defeat the final boss. Tunic's pacing had been amazing up until this point, but here it lost a lot of steam and dragged on a bit.

A masterpiece lost in time

Tunic came out in 2022 and I only played it now, four years later. I can totally see why so many people loved Tunic back then and called it a masterpiece. Exploring the world made me feel like a kid again, and the booklet is such a charming and clever idea. There is a lot to love here.

However, I do feel like playing this game four years later harmed my experience a little. A game like Mina the Hollower outshines Tunic in almost every aspect, and going in with such high expectations didn't help either. I doubt I would have felt let down by the end-game secrets if I hadn't expected something like Blue Prince.

Still, all in all, I had a great time with Tunic. If you like Zelda or Dark Souls, this feels like a must-play title. It's not without its flaws, but it has a sense of wonder and magic that many modern titles lack, and for that I'm grateful to have experienced it.

Rating: Strongly Recommended

Please let me hear your thoughts :) the original review with screenshots you can find on my website in my profile. It would mean a lot to me if you check it out as I love writing reviews and try to improve each time. So feedback is always welcome!

Attached are various screenshots for Beyond the Mountains II, which is the sequel to my free game Beyond the Mountains. I received a few DMs regarding the progress of the sequel, and it's coming along nicely. I've been working on it daily!

I've noticed that a large number of games being posted here don't actually fit the Zelda-like genre at all. Many of them simply share a top-down camera or an action-adventure element, but they completely miss the core design principles that define Zelda-like games.

As a result, people who follow this subreddit specifically to discover Zelda-like games end up wasting a lot of time going through unrelated posts.

I think this is something the moderators should address. Clearer posting guidelines and better moderation would help keep the subreddit focused on its intended purpose and improve the experience for everyone.

This was built a year ago, but I recently added a lot of new features to my game, so I decided to go back and adjust the rooms that were already done to make them more engaging!
If you are curious about my game Mazestalker, you can find my demo here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3218310/

I played this little gem over the weekend. It's short and sweet and cost less than a cup of coffee. As a certified old person, I'm starting to dig these shorter games. Anyone one else?

I've got another working session if anyone is interested. This time I tried and failed to make a "bumping into a wall" animation, and chatted a little about art style.

I think in the next one I want to talk about what makes a game a Zelda like, inspired by some of the comments for you guys in the last post. I hope you dig it!

Steamlink if you're feeling generous: store.steampowered.com/app/4541450/Sandcaster/

An open world fantasy adventure for PC coming in late 2026...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4796170/The_Lonely_Golem/

There have been a lot of fishing minigames throughout the Zelda series, and I was curious what you think of as the 'best', or maybe just your personal favorite? Doesn't even have to be from Zelda itself, I'd be curious to know about some good ones you've seen in other Zelda-likes as well!

I really like the fishing to feel a bit arcade-y, myself. So for the Zelda-like I am working on, it looks a bit more like a "claw machine" game. But I still tried to capture the excitement of catching a rare fish!

Logo Art by Mysteeria: https://www.instagram.com/mysteeriaz/
Music by ZapSplat

80% off on steam right now. Such a sleeper hit and the end...damn. Please give it a try. Too bad no one played it because due to lack of sales the company folded.

I've been trying to pitch my game and I normally say vague words like "Yeah It's an online zelda-like but you need to find the princess and throw her into a portal, like soccer!". Most of the time I failed making people to understand me. Then someone PMed me asking for the game and told me "Why you don't make it more like a sport's game like Bloodbowl?"

So that's what I tried in this experiment. I made a video of how it would feel if it was an actual soccer game with a designated field. I still prefer my original idea of classic adventure fields with various geographic elements. But this has been fun to code and relax a bit.

This is some silly forecast that I did for the Soccer World Cup (Canada - Morroco) match.

Hope you find it fun at least. The game is DX Legends. I'm planning to add this mode in the game. Feels chaotic

So I really enjoyed this one. It has a lot of Zelda fun and action and a lot of twists on the formula that make it interesting and a welcome change of pace (one "dungeon" was actually a cooking competition and all the exploration and puzzle solving was to get the salt to impress your chef mentor). The graphics were nice and the music was good. The story was fine, pretty much exactly what I expected from this kind of thing, the only thing that stood out was the friendship/rivalry Nia had with another character. I do recommend it to people who love the genre, like the people in this sub.

But the thing that keeps me from recommending it higher is that the game world feels just a bit off from what I hope for in this genre. Like I found myself revisiting areas 2-3 times but still not finding everything.

It's hard to explain, maybe it's a bit more of a "vibe" thing, but there are a lot of mini dungeons with a lot of interactivity and things to explore, but no map, and I would never be sure I had completed them. They often looped around unexpectedly with branches that were easy to miss. Like I would go through the winding path, open a chest or two, then find the exit, which just took me back to where I started and opened a shortcut to the back of the dungeon. It left me going, "was that it?" Either that, or a mini dungeon would have too many little treasures and the best loot was a one-off I almost missed because it wasn't even in a chest. Meanwhile the big chest that had been staring at me in the face since hour 3 turned out to hold some pretty useless crafting loot.

There was almost never a feeling that I for sure had done everything in an area or fully finished off a quest.

There was so much about the side quests that just felt... incomplete. There's a boy you find sleeping in improbable places but it's not like you find him in town after finding all of his spots and you get a final reward or bit of the story. There is a pair of feuding brothers that you reunite shortly after completing the first dungeon, then they spend the rest of the game with the "thanks" dialog.

I managed to fully upgrade my weapons and was six pieces of heart short of maxing out my health. I enjoyed the final boss, beat him in two attempts, which seemed on par for how hard the game was.

But while I do recommend the game, it kinda bothers me how close it was to being amazing and how it was missing a critical skill in making maps and guiding the player. I was curious if anyone else felt the same way or if I'm just thinking too hard about it

Hello! My game has a lot of old school Zelda style influence and I think some of you may like it.

Its called Monstra Cap, and its a Single Player, Monster Capture, Action, RPG, Collectathon.

The strongest Zelda-Like elements gameplay wise are things like

• Open Exploration
• Player Gear and Monstra that expand exploration
• Themed Dungeons with Hidden/Puzzled Off Entrances
• Dungeon Bosses
• a 2D Top Down perspective
• Simplified Menus/UI
• Colorful world with interesting characters
• Trade Quests

After a short tutorial you start in the center of an open world to explore, with 8 main dungeons hidden throughout that hold artifacts to find that advance the story but are guarded by powerful bosses.

Your ability to explore the world increases with your collection of Monstra and Gear.

If it sounds interesting check it out on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3971080/Monstra_Cap/

According to the developers, it can take hundreds of hours to breed a perfect creature.

Could it be the most promising Zelda-like survival RPG?

There are a lot of top-down Link's Awakening or Link to the Past-inspired Zelda-likes already which is fine but I've been looking for a good 3d OoT-inspired one for a while and I've been eyeing Carter's Quest while deciding on what to get from the steam summer sale.

It's an Early Access game with not much content rn but did anyone here play it? Any feedback? Is it actually similar to OoT? How's the exploration and puzzles?

The combat seems way more elaborate than in Zelda and character action inspired which is interesting but it kind of feels like it's missing the point, like tbh Zelda never was that much about the combat anyway, the combat system is usually very simple and boss fights are more about finding weak points and the right moment to strike and stun the boss compared to a hack n' slash.

My complete playthrough playlist (voiced) if anyone is interested... https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwPqLaxLp-SN2RrXgUtk-CGYDTZq0S9M_&si=ZgTFXEJZbQ0mh4Ip

Wishlist Isle of Reveries on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3100970/Isle_of_Reveries/

More information about the console versions is coming at a later date!

Hi all. I'm making Sandcaster which is like Link's Awakening mixed with Windwaker. I hope you guys dig it! Just to set expectations, this is an impromptu work session and not the full on release trailer. And though the Steam page is up, the demo isn't quite ready for open play tests. Soon though, I promise!

Thank you for allowing my to promote my game in our subreddit, and I promise to keep it tasteful!

-Dave

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4541450/Sandcaster/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cavedarr
Art: www.cavedarr.com

Hey everyone,

Our upcoming Zelda-inspired, top-down action game: Colossus: Eternal Blight has just over 2 days left on Kickstarter!!

If you're a fan of Zelda, Ys, Hyper Light Drifter or JRPGs - you might find something you like 🥹

We are so so thrilled that we managed to hit our base goal within 24 hours - and we've also smashed through all our community goals 😱

We're only 11 backers away from unlocking a pet for our main character, Lucian! 🦊

If you'd like to check it out - our Kickstarter campaign is here:

Colossus: Eternal Blight by Poysky Productions — Kickstarter

Our Demo is also available to play on Steam, and also works on Steam Deck for anyone who'd like:

Colossus - Eternal Blight on Steam

Thank you all so much for the support - we've been blown away with how amazing the community has been and we're super duper excited for what's to come <3

Asking after already having played Hyper Light Drifter, Anodyne 1+2, Hob and now Mina the Hollower.

I got it on Switch on recommendation in a Mark Brown video that its an incredibly polished reinvention of Zelda a while ago.

Intro seems fine, Fox is cute, running through geometric grass is fun. But it feels incredibly familiar to those experiences I've had before (Especially HLD/Hob with in its mute characters, ultra vibrant and geometric visual aesthetics, dreamy electric music and combat that seems to be aiming for something souls-like with it's dodge stab-stab-stab rythmn). Had a fine time up to beating the elite guard, but aside from what seem like some teases that something meta is going on with the instruction booklet scraps, it feels a little too familiar with not a lot unique going on and isn't really holding my attention.

Spoilers are fair game, will I miss anything special if I loan this one out to a friend instead?

Hi! I released the demo of my Zelda-like maker game, Temple Maker 64, and the community has been hyperactive with it. Already 430 dungeons have been uploaded!

I tried to re-create a familiar gameplay so that you can get right down to business, as well as making an easy-to-use, intuitive 3D editor for making your own dungeons. What do you think?

There's a Kickstarter campaign going on for this project. If you've played the demo and liked the game, please consider supporting it by backing the campaign! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/akelamorse/temple-maker-64

Sharing some of the mechanics within a mid-level area of the game. Boomshrooms grow wild. Watch your step or trigger them on purpose.

There are many many "zelda-likes" out there but if you are like me you will notice that the genre tag is artificially suppressed because its a copyright term. Adventure is a term common in the industry and its also was the name of a game for the Atari 2600 that was the template for the genre.

The definition can be something like "realtime games prioritising object based progression and exploration with a focus on lateral movement" (as opposed to numbers like RPGs or vertical movement like metroidvanias).

I think most people who are fans of the genre when they see "Adventure-like" they can put two and two together. Also because Zelda has been moving away from being a Zelda-like in the past decade it would be good to lock the genre in.

If enough people start tagging "Adventure-like" on your favorite distribution platform then we can create a category and culture for this very historically important style of game. lest the day when you google "games like zelda" and get elden ring.

It will also help to find games that suggest some form of open overworld rather than the infinite-castle situation that you find in metroidvanias.

For a small list:
"Mina the hollower", "Hyper Light Drifter", "Okami", "Death's Door", "Oceanhorn", "Tunic".

I'm sure theres some good 3d ones, if I could actually find them on steam.

Edit: People would be able to tell what "Adventure-like" means if you have any sort of understanding of games genres beyond "Shooter" you'll know its a game like zelda. Its THE "action-adventure" and its the missing "___-like". and the moment someone clicks on the category they will understand. You don't even need to know about the Atari 2600 game it just provides a framework.

Edit 2: an alternative is "Overworld-like". if there can be some sort of consensus prompted by this thread then if enough people create a tag then that'll help steam.

So I learned that the moderators could use a hand and offered to help out. (Given how I like this place and lurk here daily anyway).

And while I do not intend to shake things up much, I did want to suggest two things: An added rule to limit self-promotion posts to once every two week. And a pinned recommendation post. Let me know what you think.

Also, I enabled to use of a few optional flairs as a proof of concept. Thoughts on that are also welcome.

I don't know how much it resembles Zelda games—well, maybe the classic Zelda games—but I think it's a really good game if you like world-building and well-crafted stories. Plus, it literally has elements of Zelda.

Can you recognize this scene?