Tunic, the tiny fox adventure which recently gained a great demo on Steam and Xbox, still lacks a release date. Alas, despite having a long chat about game secrets with Tunic's creator Andrew "Dicey" Shouldice, I could not uncover the date we will all explore Tunic's world further.

But there are promising signs Tunic - already some six years in the making - is finally coming soon, and interest in the game is growing. Apart from the obvious audience of Zelda fans, this dinky adventure has also caught the eye of the speedrunning community.

"Of the entire team, I'm the person with the least experience shipping a title like this," Shouldice says, "like on a console and stuff like that. I had to do a lot of learning, especially early on, about what it means to design a game."

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Tunic has always looked like Zelda and it's always looked beautiful. How long now have we gazed down into this balmy isometric world with its neat pointy thickets of grass and ancient slabs of sun-warmed stone? How long have I stared at that plucky little fox in his green outfit, all ready to go off and save...what? The kingdom? The world?

Now, in honour of Gamescom, there's a demo out. I've played it, and you can play it on Steam here if you hurry because it's only up for a short time. It's exactly what I was hoping for. And it's a delight.

I've ducked in and out of this demo a bit and it's a proper charmer. You turn up in the sunny overworld, master the dodge-roll, venture into a cave to open a chest and equip a stick to hit things with, and then head off into a dungeon.

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You'd be forgiven for missing Tunic's appearance during Microsoft's E3 2018 media briefing, sandwiched as it was between reveals for mega blockbusters such as Halo and Gears of War.

But this indie game, which one developer has spent over three years crafting, is certainly worth a closer look - and it's got one unique mechanic in particular I think is super cool.

At first glance, Tunic looks like Zelda viewed from an isometric perspective, except instead of playing as a young elf-like boy you play as a fox. There's more to the game than that, of course, but the influence of Nintendo's early Zelda games cannot be denied here. I mean, it's called Tunic, after all.

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