REVIEW | Tunche

LifeisXbox’s Tunche review | Some games have you falling in love with their very beautiful art style. Tunche, an action game with roguelike elements by LEAP Game Studios is one of those games. When you first lay eyes on the store page of Tunche, you’ll immediately notice the hand-drawn graphics and can’t help but find them charming. Published by HypeTrain Digital, Tunche is a beat’em up hack and slash game where you face the evil that lurks in the Amazonian forests by playing with one of five characters. I know I was sold on the art style, but was the gameplay able to charm me equally? Find out below!

The game has a certain charm that you can’t deny and this shines through very clearly during the entire game.

ℹ️ Reviewed on PC | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.

What we liked!

• Characters | In Tunche, you get to choose between five different characters. Four of them fit in with the theme of the game perfectly: Rumi the sorceress, Pancho the musician, Qaru the bird boy, and Nayra the warrior. The fifth character is a bit of a surprise: Hat Kid from the game A Hat In Time. It was quite cool to try out the various characters as they each have their own style. Even though the differences aren’t too big, I did enjoy playing as Rumi the most, but playing as Hat Kid was really funny as well. I do believe it would have been fun to just start with the four characters that acutally fitted in the game, and maybe unlock Hat Kid at some point, rather than getting access to this character from the start, but hey, that’s just personal taste.
• Gameplay | The gameplay in Tunche is really quite wonderful. You get a bunch of different moves and attacks, but it gets cooler the further you progress in the game. You unlock and learn more skills and abilities, making your characters even stronger. In Tunche, you travel through a total of four worlds, each with their own aesthetic, enemies, and boss fights. Basically, you do run after run, trying to get to the boss and defeating them. You’ll also run into NPCs where you can buy stuff, complete challenges, and more. Everytime you die, you get transported back to the base camp, where various NPCs that you meet during the runs set up camp. This is where you upgrade your skills, spiritual cores, and so on by spending shards, essence and more things you gather. The game is very generous and lets you keep everything you’ve earned during a run after you died, so it honestly never felted like a failure when I got killed. I just got another opportunity to strengthen up and try again!
• Combat | Combat is incredibly fun in the wonderful Tunche. You got singular attacks but also combos, ensuring you to kill enemies whichever way you please. The game encourages you to combine different types of attacks as a letter is shown on the left side of your screen representing a stylish grade system. You start with a D, but getting to an B or A is not that hard as long as you change up your moves and go up against the enemies with a bunch of different attacks and combos. Try going for even better if you dare! The letters will fill up, clearly showing you if you’re doing a good job or not. Or if you don’t want to focus on this, you can just use the same attacks again and again and you’ll probably make it through some levels as well. Enemies come in some variety as well (more would be welcome but it was acceptable). There are basic opponents that only require a few hits to kill, but there are also more difficult enemies that prove to be bigger pains in the ass. Moneys that throw stuff at you, or boars appearing in the screen and exploding at a certain point. And that’s only in the first wolrd! The good thing about these enemies, is that their moves are shown in advance. For example, you can see where a boar is coming from, and a circle forms around it when it’s going to explode. This gives you plenty of time to remove yourself from that spot.
• Stunning art | Something that will immediately attract players to Tunche, is the art style. The hand-drawn graphics are absolutely beautiful. The game has a certain charm that you can’t deny and this shines through very clearly during the entire game. The four Amazonian characters each have their own unique look and they simply look adorable. The Hat Kid falls out of place a little, but it’s really cute as well. The enemies and NPCs are amazing to look at as well, and I really enjoyed meeting new characters. Even though the four worlds are simple, they are good-looking. You can only expect so much variety from four different worlds all set in the Amazon rainforest, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy the surroundings as much as I did.

Somewhere between

• Repetitive | If I’m being totally honest, the gameplay is really fun but can get a tad repetitive. I did not play this game for hours on end, and prefered playing like an hour to max. two hours a day. Essentially, you’re doing the same runs over and over again, and even though the developers managed to keep the gameplay interesting, there is only so much you can do. If you play Tunche for too long, you’ll probably find the game to be a bit grindy, so be aware of this. I do have to add that this won’t be the case for everyone. Even I sometimes had mixed feelings. At one time, I could easily do 10 runs in a row, while another day, I got sick after 2 or 3 runs. This just heavily depends on the person who’s playing.
• Co-op | Even though there are five characters, you can play with three friends rather than four. A tad confusing, but playing with four people is chaotic enough as is. Playing locally with friends definitely makes your runs a lot easier, and it does offer some extra fun. I was missing an online co-op function, an option that has become ever so important with the ungoing pandemic that we’re experiencing.

What we disliked

• Off screen | I didn’t really encounter any bugs except for one very, very annoying one. Your enemies come from left and right, but when you attack them, they sometimes get pushed back. For some reason, it’s perfectly possible for these enemies to be pushed off the screen, so you loose track of them for a little bit. Did I kill em? Is it still there? Who knows, you can only wait and find out! This was quite frustrating at times, and I do hope the developers take care of this quickly, as this is pretty much the only thing that really got on my nerves during my time with Tunche.

How long to beat the story | About 5 hours per character
How long to achieve 1000G | Over 20 hours

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