Tunic, by Andrew Shouldice in 2022, is a once-in-a-decade game. Top-down Zelda-like on the surface, but the in-world manual is written in a made-up language and the player must learn to read it. Nothing fully replicates the experience. This list from the team at Tyrian Games is ten games that share the design principle: the player's knowledge, not their character's stats, is the progression.

TL;DR

  • Tunic is a one-of-a-kind experience: top-down adventure with a mostly-untranslated manual the player deciphers.
  • Closest matches include Outer Wilds, Fez, Manifold Garden, Obra Dinn, and The Witness.
  • All share the design principle that the player's knowledge is progression.
  • HAWKER isn't a knowledge-puzzle game, but shares Tunic's quiet trust in the player.
  • The "knowledge as progression" design is rare because it requires specific craftsmanship that small teams are more likely to manage than large studios.

The ten

1. Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital, 2019). Knowledge-as-progression. The best comparison. Your only progression is what you learn about the solar system. The Echoes of the Eye expansion in 2021 pushes the knowledge-puzzle design further.

2. Fez (Polytron, 2012). The original knowledge-puzzle indie darling. The manual-decoding tradition Tunic builds on runs directly through Fez.

3. Manifold Garden (William Chyr, 2019). Spatial puzzle with discovery-first design. The game teaches you its physics rather than explaining them.

4. The Witness (Thekla, 2016). Pure observation-puzzle. Every puzzle is a line on a panel, but the game's depth emerges from what the panels teach you about the world.

5. Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope, 2018). Deduction-as-progression. The player assembles a ship's fate from fragments, and the game measures progress by knowledge confirmed rather than by combat or exploration.

6. Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017). Atmospheric exploration with deep lore. Not strictly knowledge-puzzle but the hidden lore layer runs in parallel.

7. Animal Well (Shared Memory, 2024). Discovery-forward metroidvania. Every tool opens a new type of puzzle the player has to learn to read.

8. Chants of Sennaar (Rundisc, 2023). Language-decoding puzzle game. Five cultures, five languages, and the player translates them through observation.

9. La-Mulana (Nigoro, 2005, remastered later). Knowledge-dungeon grimdark. The ruins are an archaeological puzzle, and progression requires reading the cryptic clues the dungeons offer.

10. HAWKER (Tyrian Games, September 2026). Not a knowledge-puzzle game, but shares Tunic's quiet trust in the player and some discovery-based lore systems. Different form. Wishlist on Steam.

What Tunic trusts the player with

Four design choices Tunic makes that most games wouldn't risk.

An untranslated manual. The in-world manual is written in a script the game never explains. Players who want to progress have to work out the script on their own, and many players simply refuse and look up solutions. Shouldice trusted enough players to engage anyway.

Navigation as puzzle. Tunic's geography has secret paths the game doesn't flag. Progression often requires noticing that a shadow leads somewhere. Most games would put an arrow on the shadow.

Combat as optional difficulty. The game has hard combat sections, but it also has a "no-fail" mode that lets players focus on the discovery. This respects players who want the knowledge game without the combat challenge.

The ending that rewards both playstyles. Tunic has two endings. One rewards completion of the combat game. The other rewards completion of the knowledge game. Players who engage with either can reach a satisfying conclusion, which is a generous design choice.

A first-hand Hawker example

Tunic isn't a game Hawker mechanically resembles, but there's one specific thing we took from Shouldice's design. It's the idea of the in-world document as a player tool.

In Tunic, the manual isn't cutscene material. It's an actual physical artifact the fox is reading. The player reads over the fox's shoulder. The document has stains, folds, margin notes, all suggesting a history.

Our first Hawker codex was a menu. You opened it and read the entries. Playtesters didn't engage with it. We rebuilt the codex as an in-world book the Hawker carries in his pack. He can pull it out at the caravan, make notes, find pressed leaves, see the wear on the pages. The codex is a physical object in the fiction rather than a UI screen.

The engagement changed. Testers started treating the codex as a character, referring to "what the book says" rather than "what's in the menu." That's the Tunic lesson. Documents that feel physical carry more emotional weight than documents that feel like text windows. Shouldice's willingness to treat the manual as a prop rather than as content was the key, and we tried to learn the principle even though we couldn't replicate the specific mechanic.

FAQ

Is Tunic grimdark?

Tonally grim in its later sections, but softer aesthetic. It belongs in the grimdark conversation loosely, not strictly.

What's the closest match to Tunic?

Outer Wilds for the knowledge-progression design. Fez for the manual-decoding tradition. Chants of Sennaar for the language-puzzle specifically.

Is there a Tunic sequel?

Andrew Shouldice hasn't announced one at the time of writing. Shouldice has been notably quiet publicly since Tunic's release.

Is HAWKER like Tunic?

Only tonally, with the quiet trust in the player. Different form.

How long is Tunic?

Main content runs 12 to 20 hours for most players. Completionist runs that fully decode the manual push past 30 hours.

The knowledge-as-progression category's wider shape

A brief observation on where the category sits. Games that treat player knowledge as the progression are rare because they're hard to design. Outer Wilds took years. Tunic took years. Obra Dinn took years. The category rewards the patient designer but punishes studios trying to ship on tight timelines.

The upside is that successful entries often have disproportionately long commercial tails. Outer Wilds still sells. Tunic still sells. Obra Dinn still sells. Players finish, talk about them, recommend them. Word-of-mouth is the category's distribution model, and the games that enter it join a small but durable club.

The next knowledge-puzzle game worth watching

A handful of 2026 indie releases are targeting the same design space. Animal Well expansion content continues to land through the year. Chants of Sennaar successor projects have been rumoured. Several smaller Steam Next Fest demos have featured knowledge-puzzle mechanics. The category doesn't produce many releases per year but the releases it does produce tend to be worth the wait.

Why HAWKER shares some of Tunic's texture

HAWKER isn't a knowledge-puzzle game. But we borrow Tunic's trust in the player to read carefully and notice details. Our in-world codex, our NPC dialogue's compounding memory, and our slower-pace scavenging sections all expect attention. Players who played Tunic with a notebook open will recognise the register even though the form is completely different. That texture isn't accident. It's lineage.

Extended genre notes

Worth naming a few observations about the broader indie gaming landscape this category sits in across 2026. The indie market has grown significantly since 2020, with Steam alone now publishing thousands of titles per year. Discovery is the category's biggest challenge, not production. Most players find new games through a combination of algorithmic recommendation, word of mouth, and curated lists like this one.

The 2026 commercial story for the category favours studios that ship with clear positioning rather than studios that ship as genre-default entries. A game that knows who it's for tends to find its audience even at small scale. A game that hopes to be liked by everyone often ends up being recommended by no-one. HAWKER's positioning (grimdark shopkeeper roguelite, Breton folklore, thirty-day clock) is deliberately narrow because narrow positioning travels better than broad positioning in 2026's crowded indie market.

The audience for this category tends to cross generational lines. Players who grew up on 1990s PC games, players who came in through the 2010s indie boom, and players new to indies through 2020s word-of-mouth are all represented. The category isn't age-coded the way some indie genres are, which means studios can build for breadth rather than specific cohorts.

Practical buying advice

If you're using this list to build a reading-and-playing library, a few practical suggestions. Most of the games mentioned go on Steam sale at least twice a year, often at 50 percent or more off. Adding them to your wishlist and waiting for the next sale is usually the most cost-efficient approach. Many of the older entries are cheap year-round. The newer ones often go on sale first during Steam's summer or winter sales. HAWKER's Early Access price is below the planned full-release price, which is standard indie practice.

If you play on handheld (Steam Deck, Switch 2, ROG Ally) most of the games above run well on these platforms. The category tends to be performance-friendly because the production values prioritise tone over graphical fidelity. This is worth knowing because category fans often play across multiple platforms.

For readers who want to go deeper

A closing note for curious readers. Every category above has subcategories we didn't fully explore in this piece, because an individual article can't be everything. If a specific entry hooked you, most of the games in this piece have dedicated communities, Subreddits, Discord servers, and developer blogs worth finding. The wider indie gaming press, including Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, and Polygon, often does deeper coverage on individual games than a cross-category list can.

For players using this piece as a buying guide, the sales cadence on Steam is predictable. Summer and winter sales are the biggest. Smaller themed sales happen throughout the year. Most of the games mentioned have dropped to 50 percent off or more at least once across 2024 to 2026. Wishlisting the games that interest you is how you'll catch the right sale for the right game. Save HAWKER to your wishlist while you're at it if the grimdark shopkeeper roguelite angle interests you.

For developers reading this piece, the practical takeaway is that the category rewards specific positioning more than broad appeal. Every successful entry above knows exactly who it's for. Studios that try to hit multiple audiences with a single game usually hit none of them. Pick a specific shape, commit to it, and ship the version that audience wants rather than the version you hope will please everyone.

Spoiler wall

Everything above keeps Hawker at the level of design lesson and tone. The codex, the caravan, and the in-world books are all shown in our trailers. Specific late-game codex contents sit behind this wall.

Closing

Tunic's mechanic is hard to copy, but its spirit is widely shared. The ten above each capture some of it.

Watch HAWKER's Steam page.

Next read: Grimdark indie games in 2026.

Further reading

For related context see what is a shopkeeper roguelite, HAWKER release date and Early Access guide.

External citations

Appendix: one more useful note

The category's audience tends to overlap with adjacent indie genres, and the games above often share core players with titles from cousin categories. Players who love one of these games frequently enjoy at least three others. Building a library of three to five titles from this list gives you months of reliable play with variety. Track HAWKER on Steam if the grimdark angle fits alongside the games you already enjoy.