Tunic

Remember when you were a kid not really understanding English, trying to figure out how to play a videogame without tutorials, not really knowing what you're doing but getting lost in this vast world without limits? Tunic's mission is to emulate this feeling in adults, and it nails it completely. Tunic puts you in control of a cute little fox wearing the titular Tunic. It wears its influences on its sleeve, with the Hero wearing Link's outfit and wielding his weaponry. On first glance it's an isometric blend of older Zelda games and souls-like combat. You'll be dodge-rolling, sword and boarding and, most importantly, exploring and unlocking shortcuts. Quickly you'll realise that there's no tutorial. There are some signposts and a HUD but even the signage is in a script you cannot understand. Soon you'll find the first in-game manual page written in the same script, but there's pictures you can understand so that serves as a tutorial. You'll explore the diverse map, maybe fight a couple bosses and if you're keen-eyed you'll realise that there's secrets around every corner in this game. Due to the isometric perspective the game is able to hide probably the biggest SPM(secrets per minute) I've seen in a video game in plain sight. This is the first hint to the true nature of this "metroidbrania". I won't go much further about the "real challenge" of this game because I don't want to spoil the experience for potential players, but the combat is not the point (although it can be challenging at points clever use of items can trivialize most encounters), it's not a souls-like and it's much more similar to something like #[game:11737:Outer Wilds] or #[game:9643:Return of the Obra Dinn]. I wasn't able to fully complete it (I would estimate I'm ~95% done) on my own and it felt wrong to google the last couple of secrets I have left, perhaps someone else will play it and we can figure them out together.