It has been a long time since I have reflected on my love for video game manuals since their existence has been obliterated with the evolution of video games in the last twenty years. However, an adventure game called Tunic, released in 2022, reminded me of the intrinsic value of a good manual in a number of ways. Manuals were the entry point into a video game before even inserting a cartridge or disc and pressing the power button. The words and images held within were informative, instructional, and in the early days of gaming, pivotal to world and story-building. Tunic is a game that reminds me very much of The Legend of Zelda on the NES, where you are dropped into a world with little information and learn how to play through actual gameplay. As you proceed through the game, you find pages of the video game manual along the way, giving you not only instructions on how to play but also solutions to puzzles within the game.
The pages are brilliantly strewn throughout the game, and you are incentivized to find them all to help you complete the game. One missing page could be detrimental to solving a specific puzzle. Since I am a stickler for owning physical copies of games, I was ecstatic to discover that my copy of Tunic came with a physical manual. Flipping through those pages unearthed so much nostalgia for a medium
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