Which games have awesome manuals from 2010 or later? Some indie games have PDF manuals but I don’t know of any standout examples.
Do players like manuals? Are they just a fun thing for the devs to make?
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This has to be Tunic.
Although I don’t like that the physical version comes with a printed one. Feels like it severely ruins the point.
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It doesn’t. It’s the best but it also doesn’t diminish the 2 or 3 other game manuals that are good from 2010 onwards
True to both this forum and my nature I’m going to bend the rules immediately. The bloodborne art book that came with the special version for special boys.
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idk if it’s the same on the original game, but the Fallout 3 GOTY edition that came on the lunchbox had a big ol’ chonker of a manual in the style of the first game’s vault dweller survival guide
i also enjoyed reading and analyzing SOCOM Confrontation’s pretty detailed manual, even if it never really made me better at the game. i remember it being pretty thick too, but it was probably because of multiple languages
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Tunic’s fake language and collectable manual pages disqualifies it from being a manual. It isn’t a document you can engage with in the same terms as other manuals.
also bending the rules, the last awesome manuals I remember are
La Mulana (2006 freeware original) english translation by Aeon Genesis, and stuff for DS like Contact, which was also around 2006.
Though the NICALIS remake was released in like 2012, and just now I looked at the manual for the first time, and it’s still cool even though I’d never prefer to touch the remake over the original.
The manual is still pretty cool, check it out here!
this is a great topic though, lets see some real 2010+ manuals that are great. I skipped that generation of games for the most part so I’m drawing a blank.
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The game TIS-100 comes with “TIS-100 Reference Manual.pdf” which is made to resemble a computer hardware programming manual for the fictional in-game computer. For a certain kind of person alive for the 1980s home computer era this evoked a lot of memories. It’s both essential to the game but also an incredible mood setter, which is I think what the best game manuals were.
It doesn’t have any visual art though.
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Going to swerve and recommend an electronic manual: Super Mario Maker (Wii U) is a thoughtfully created manual with everything you want. Tables of mobility, cute illustrations, extra personality, and all that. It also has a bunch of videos, animated antics, and bits of fluff only viewable on the system. Stuff I’ve seen no other game do! On top of all that, it is trying its damnedest to guide a wide array of people into how to think about Mario level design and that’s pretty amazing.
There are some 3DS e-manuals that are pretty alright too, but they’re mostly done in by the crunchy resolution and slow browsing speed. For example here’s: Xenoblade Chronicles and Samus Returns. The theming is there, at least!
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Oh wow, I hadn’t even thought of that. The electronic manual support on the Wii U was awesome at the time. It was probably clunky by today’s standards, but being able to pull up a manual on the small screen and read through it without booting up the ol’ laptop felt nice. I probably used the Xenoblade Chronicles X one the most.
If I recall correctly, Virtual Console games came with a digitized manual as well.
And if my memory is doing really well, I’m pretty sure the Earthbound one was an interactive version of the player’s guide from the 1990s. It was clunky, but it was the right idea.
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Had no idea about the Earthbound manual! That is wonderful. Only thing missing at that point is using the stylus to scratch the smelling cards!
I created PDF manuals for all my Playdate games. Links at:
- https://play.date/games/yoyozo/ my favourite, also it was a GOTY 2023
- https://play.date/games/fore-track/
- https://play.date/games/icarus/
- https://play.date/games/bender-2-bend-harder/
I was inspired by the great manuals for old Japanese games by Tengen etc.
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I took a skim of yoyozo’s manual. I love the small-page setup and the font choice here. Very cool.
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