Game News TUNIC: the Zelda-like of the year may not have revealed all its secrets!
Released a little over nine months ago, TUNIC would not have finished keeping players busy. The designers of this indie nugget have returned to the secrets of the game and ensure that there are still more to discover. Stuffed with mysteries, with a unique textual and audio language, Andrew Shouldice’s software would still have some nice surprises in store for the most attentive players.
A world full of mysteries
Among the indie nuggets of the year, TUNIC clearly stood out from the crowd with its colorful world and gameplay inspired by the best Zelda games. Andrew Shouldice’s title also surfs on the nostalgia of players on several occasions, in particular with its game manual explicitly recalling the manuals included in the boxes of our favorite titles, in a now bygone era.
But if the software has worked so well with players, it is also thanks to its universe filled with mysteries just waiting to be solved. The game is full of secrets that are sometimes complex to elucidate, and even includes its own language: “trunic”, the name given by players to the system of written glyphs, and “tuneic”, the speaking language.
A complex language to decipher
From the start, Andrew Shouldice wanted to immerse the player in an adventure subject to specific rules. The purpose of the trunic was to reinforce the feeling of loss of bearings. A feeling that goes through the panels, the manual, all the inscriptions being transcribed in trunic.
The visual component of the language was something that existed very early on as part of the design where it was just meant to make you feel like you were somewhere you didn’t belong. There are hidden things. It’s unreadable. People often refer to that feeling of getting an import manual and not being able to read it. This is the feeling that should be evoked. -Andrew Shouldice
An idea that works wonderfully, sublimated by the work of Kevin Regamey, who supervised all the audio design of TUNIC. Very soon after meeting, Shouldice and Regamey understood that they had to work together. For the game, Kevin Regamey has completely embraced his colleague’s idea and has been busy designing an audio equivalent to the trunic – the tuneic – which is found in the dialogues and even in the music. “Content for no one” as described by Regamey, which has nevertheless attracted a large number of players.
All you need is someone who’s just a crazy, passionate nerd who’s like, ‘This game is for me’. “This puzzle is what I need in my life. And they just put it online and now everyone knows it.” (…) Hiding all the secret stuff… was more about player recognition from the designers point of view. It’s really hard to hide things in games these days. You can just dive into it and decompile it (…) So hiding all the secret stuff…was more about player recognition from the designers point of view. It’s that special moment when, you turn over that rock and there’s something waiting for you there. And we’re so grateful to you for looking under that rock. – Kevin Regamey
The sound designer now has fun talking with the community about the many secrets he has disseminated in TUNIC. On Twitter, he had just shared a thread in order to bring some points of clarification. Warning, if you haven’t traveled the world of TUNIC yet, this thread contains many spoilers.
Spoiler alert, of course. If you haven’t played yet, you might want to turn back now. D:
Seriously. Very, very heavy spoilers.
— Kevin Regamey (@regameyk) October 20, 2022
More secrets to discover
The community’s enthusiasm for TUNIC came as a pleasant surprise to Andrew Shouldice and Kevin Regamey. Players have now solved most of the great mysteries of the game, alone or with others, by exchanging the information collected over each session. But if we are to believe Shouldice, other secrets could still be hiding at the bottom of the world of TUNIC. Secrets that are more abstract, more complex to decipher, and even more personal for developers.
After a while the definition of a secret changes. There are things that are literally secret just to me that aren’t game content anyway. (…) It’s not like there is a chest that no one can access or that no one discovers. But there are other things like meaning and connections. I’ve seen people look at the history of the game and come up with fascinating theories about it. I imagine that could count as a secret. Perhaps that enduring gift is people reinterpreting things that exist that are no longer data on a CD. -Andrew Shouldice
There are therefore probably several mysteries to be solved in the world of the little fox. Players are already working together to try to understand the entire message hidden by Andrew Shouldice and Kevin Regamey within this shimmering universe and it’s up to you to bring your stone to the building by going on an adventure. right now.
