[Review] Tunche - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: LEAP Game Studios
Published By: HypeTrain Digital 
Categories: Roguelite, Beatemup
Release Date: 11.02.21

So wait, is Tunche more of a beatemup, or is it more of a roguelite? Well, if you like either genre, you’re going to love this game.

Te be honest, you might not even notice much of the roguelite aspects of the game. Upfront is a beatemup in the vast Amazon jungle, full of mystery, full of power. While you can go in alone, the game allows and I’d argue incentivizes you do it with friends. Four Player Co-Op. This is something that you really don’t see very often anymore in beatemups. It’s either solo, or two players. Seeing bigger groups like the old Konami games is awesome and makes any game better.

Combat is simple, you get your standard attacks, launchers, and a magic attack. You can just beat up everything and not die, carry on. But you might notice that letter grade, this game has a style meter like Devil May Cry. Spice up your moves, get cool with it, don’t get hit. This might seem a bit difficult at first, but later in the game you can unlock new attacks and abilities, that make it a more fun time. Launching enemies is really fun, as if you do it right, you can group a bunch of enemies together and just juggle them, which really does well for your style meter.

So what exactly makes this a roguelite, lets discuss that. First thing you’ll encounter, the power ups, these last as long as you die and stack. There’s plenty of them too, and they all have their own little spark that makes me want to grab all of them that I can. Gliding lets you shoot spikes down to make that defensive option offensive. Healing every kill or when you get below 25% health. Random chance of lighting strikes when you style gets high enough? Great stuff. You can even later on upgrade those powerups if you find them again.

Then we get to alternate paths. It’s kinda shallow with this, every room looks practically the same, but different rooms will have different rewards, different waves of enemies, and some even just power ups, or even a challenge room. Those challenge rooms are really fun and are definitely worth your time, since they give you essence, for upgrades.

There’s five characters, four fit into the theme, and then there’s Hat Kid for some reason. They all play differently, all have their own moves, and all level up and can get upgraded separately. That’s some damn good replayability. If that seems like a grind, then again, the game does have co-op, take advantage of that. While I wouldn’t say that it’s a skill tree, it’s definitely not completely railroaded in it’s approach, so you can choose what moves you want and don’t want. I played as Nayra for most of my play time. She fights with her spear and trusty snake. She’s pretty good at longer range moves, especially when you can upgrade her snake whip to be longer.

Tunche is a gorgeous looking game. We’ve been getting a lot of great looking beatemups on Switch, and Tunche is no different. The easiest comparision is that it looks like a cartoon mixed with a beatemup. It’s not just good looking in stills, but animates well too. Music isn’t incredibly hype or bombastic, which I like to see in beatemups, but it is good music and definitely fits the mood of the game.

While I very much like how simplistic most beatemups are, I do like the more RPG mechanics added that the roguelite DNA Tuncha includes. I liked this game a lot. Play it, grab three of your friends and play it. Even if you don’t, it’s still a good time solo.