Bloodborne paved the way for Tunic, one of 2022’s breakout indie hits

2022 was a weird year in videogame history. I’ve already taken to calling it “the chaotic-good year” of releases. This has not yet caught on. A few big blockbuster trailers opened the doors for ongoing games that captured our attention. They allowed for redundant sequels to win our hearts, and indie games of every size and shape to become known. There are few games that can best illustrate this camp than TunicAdventure game about a lonely fox living in dangerous, strange and vibrant world.

Tunic It sports its Legend of Zelda-inspired green sleeves. As in the 1986 game that kicked off one of the medium’s most recognizable franchises, Tunic It drops the protagonist in a vast world filled with secrets and puzzles, complete with an assortment of tools that will help him get through. There’s a shield covered in primary colors. There’s a grappling tool that pulls you to distant locations. There’s even an in-game manual, styled in the same vein as those that came in game boxes in the ’80s, ’90s, and early aughts.

Image Credit: Andrew Shouldice/Finji

The adventure game is charming, but the mechanical design of the game, despite its cute trappings, can be attributed to FromSoftware, a developer. Even though Tunic’s fantasy-wilderness setting recalls the worlds of Dark Souls and Demon’s SoulsThe breakthrough hit pulls much more. Bloodborne, From’s 2015 Gothic-horror masterpiece.

“I really love the sword and sorcery of the Souls games — a real classic adventure vibe,” Andrew Shouldice, Tunic’s creator, tells Polygon. “I didn’t play Demon’s SoulsHowever, Dark Souls hit me right in the heart with the Dungeons & Dragons-like ‘let’s go on an impossible fantasy quest’ thing. I think that same kind of adventuresome questiness is what makes the first Zelda sing — here’s a big world, you’re gonna die, bet you can’t find the sacred treasure, etc.

“However, the combat design of Tunicwas becoming a lot more snappier than Souls Combat. I love me a zweihander (I’ve got mine up to +16 in Elden Ring), but that kind of combat pacing wouldn’t click with a game where you’re supposed to feel like a nimble little fox. It just felt so much better when attacks came out fast.”

Image: FromSoftware/Sony Interactive Entertainment

Enter: Bloodborne, a propulsive game about getting your shots in before backing off to evade an enemy’s counterattack. You will need to adapt your strategy every time you upgrade your character or find new tools in this Bram Stoker-esque environment.

Tunic’s combat is also quick, responsive, and malleable. From a simple act of swinging a stick of wood at foes, it becomes an intricate balance of sword strikes and shield blocks. There are more options when it gets heated, the more the fox has to use the tools he’s got.

“Zelda meets Dark Souls is the tritest, most ‘white guy making an indie game’ sort of thing,” Shouldice says. “But that’s sort of what happened. It was my attempt to know how to combat a Soulslike. It was something I began to work on, then I finally played. Bloodborne. I was like, ‘That’s the ticket. That’s where the inspiration should come from.’ It showed me that it was possible to have technical, challenging, Souls-y combat with the speed turned up a bit.”

Photo by Andrew Shouldice/Finji via Polygon

Tunic doesn’t lift wholesale from Bloodborne’s combat, however. As Shouldice tells it, an earlier incarnation of the indie game prohibited attacking when the player’s stamina bar was empty. The final version was published. Tunic Allows the player to continue attacking until their stamina runs out. The bar is only drained when the defense maneuvers of dodge rolls and shield blocks are performed. As if an animal is being pushed into a corner. Tunic’s fox can still lash out, even when it’s exhausted.

A similar version is available in an earlier edition of Tunic mimicked FromSoftware’s brutal habit of dropping all of the player’s resources when they died. In Bloodborne, players could return to the spot where they died to collect the blood echoes they lost, provided they didn’t die again before recovering them. Dark Souls did the same with its eponymous souls, and last year’s Elden Ring It followed its lead with its runes.

Yet, it’s much more. Bloodborne’s stamina system, this sort of economy just didn’t make sense in Tunic, which — without spoiling anything — wraps its upgrade mechanic in its own layer of mystery. To add FromSoft’s risk/reward dynamic to an already compelling progression system would muddy one of Tunic’s signature conceits.

Image: FromSoftware/Sony Interactive Entertainment

Shouldice was still impressed. Bloodborne’s overall approach to world-building. Like many of From’s games, it doesn’t direct the player down each critical path, and it doesn’t highlight every point of interest. Most players’ first foray into Yharnam’s alleyways is an act of tense exploration and timid wandering. Players discover a wide variety of secrets, shortcuts and nooks as they learn the terrain. Similar findings can be found in TunicThis is the home to one of most difficult meta puzzles I have ever seen.

“I really like Bloodborne’s slow introduction of otherworldly horror,” Shouldice said via a separate email. “I think that probably contributed a fair bit to the story of TunicIt’s true: Ancient scholars discovered a mysterious power beneath the Earth and used it to their advantage. They also built a religion around this, and introduced terrible corruption from planes that were beyond our comprehension. There’s a fair amount of overlap, honestly.

“But the things that I still cherish about FromSoftware’s games — and I hope this has persisted in Tunic — is that you are exploring this player-ambivalent artifact. You’re an archaeologist moving through a space. You are ignored by the game. You are tiny and insignificant and you’re just plopped into this world and told to explore.

However, despite these influences Tunic uses From’s strengths without transmuting them wholesale. Bloodborne is less a foundation, and more the “design scaffolding” that once wrapped around the project, Shouldice says. You can reexamine Tunic All through the process of development and evaluation Bloodborne Shouldice was able to create something unique from the traces of water that had seeped into its design. And as with many buildings that have been covered in scaffolding for years, it’s a joy to see the structure beneath the facade once it falls away.