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The Guide #33: From Elden Ring to Tunic, 2022's best games so far

The Guardian

I'm Keza, the Guardian's friendly local video games editor (and writer of our games newsletter Pushing Buttons), taking over this week's Guide to fill you in on what's worth playing while you wait for the next episode of Better Call Saul to drop. Whether you're in the mood for a vibey skateboarding game, pretend badminton or a grand fantasy epic, 2022 has been very kind to us so far. You never know, I might be able to persuade you otherwise.) First up, a game that seems directly aimed at everyone who's ever taken a look at a Mondrian painting and said "But anyone could have done that": Please, Touch The Artwork (PC, smartphones) is a puzzle game about abstract art, telling the genre's origin story by letting you mess around with iconic paintings, trying to recreate their lines and colours. It makes you think about the art, how it's constructed and what it means, and it's also chill and unpressured, with no time limits or objectives to hurry you through.


Tunic review – recaptures the lost magic and mystery of video games

The Guardian

This long-awaited indie game stars an adorable little fox, and his green apparel leaves no doubt as to where the game's affections lie. Aesthetically and structurally, this is a Zelda tribute, with cute-yet-menacing baddies to bash with a sword and repel with a shield as you gradually uncover more and more of a sprawling world that stretches far underground and up into snowy mountain reaches, through gloomy dungeons illuminated by mysteriously glowing pools. But it is not a pale imitation. Tunic displays not only a deep love for Nintendo's adventure classic and games like it, but a deep and even subversive understanding of what makes them tick. Tunic is surprisingly tough, taking just as much inspiration from Dark Souls. The world fits together like a clockwork model, full of pleasing shortcuts and hidden paths, and so pleasing to walk around that I felt compelled to draw it out in a notebook to see how it connected.