Tunche is a side scrolling beat em up with roguelike and RPG elements, it's from developers LEAP game studios and published by Hypetrain Digital.
The first thing everyone will notice about this game is it's beautiful, hand drawn characters and backdrops. I really have a soft spot for games like this, it's essentially owning and interacting with a piece of digital art. But looks alone don't make a great game....
Tunche is set with the backdrop of the Amazon rainforest where you take on the role of one of 5 characters, either solo, or with up to two other players in local co-op.
You progress through side scrolling 2D levels combatting enemies to continue you journey, the whole time amassing resources you can use to upgrade your character's skills and abilities as well as learning new movies.
On paper, Tunche ticks all the boxes to be a fun action adventure game. However in reality that doesn't really pan out.
For it's aesthetics alone I really wanted to love this game, I tried so hard to... but I just can't.
The controls are fine, the premise is fine. The game just lacks variety and reasonable progression. Either one of those issues in a game like this would be an issue, but combined, just kills the game dead.
It's boring to the point of tedium and has a level of grind that's reserved for Korean MMORPGs.
The same enemies just repeat over and over again. While new ones are introduced, they're too few and too infrequent. The game tries to compensate for this by simply adjusting the make up of any individual wave from it's existing "baddie pool".
These enemies prove no real challenge to defeat, even in greater numbers, they are however, enormous "bullet sponges" each one taking way too many hits to put down, I mean a laughable amount of damage.
You might be thinking "that's ok, it's a rogue like, you'll get new skills and level up, then kill them faster" and yes, you'd be right. But the amount of resources earned are pitiful when compared to the price of upgrades. This then becomes less a battle against repeating enemies and more against patience and boredom.
It really is such a shame that such a beautiful game is hobbled by the cadence of it's progression. The game is fundamentally broken at it's core and would really only appeal to someone with the patience of a saint.
A quick glance though the time played in the Steam user reviews shows that very few players made it past 4 hours of gameplay, those that did probably fell into a coma whilst playing and just couldn't turn off their PC.
Tunche is available now, on Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PC for $19.99.
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