Tunic (video game)

The fox with a stick equipped and health and stamina meters in the bottom left. An enemy is chasing the fox, and a shrine is nearby.

Tunic is an action-adventure game set in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, in which the unnamed player character, an anthropomorphic fox, navigates the terrain and fights off hostile creatures. The player is initially given no directions or instructions, and the majority of the text in the game is written in a constructed language, with only some words presented in the player's selected language, such as English. The 3D terrain is typically displayed from an isometric view, though the viewpoint moves at certain points of the game.[1]

The fox character can move around the game world, which is divided into several large areas, by running and dodge-rolling; after rolling, the fox can run faster until they stop moving. There are numerous pathways and secrets hidden by the isometric viewpoint.[1] The player can freely explore the game world, and there is no mandated path to follow; while many areas require specific actions or items to enter normally, which creates a general order to the game, for most of them there are alternate ways to gain entrance.[2]

The interface has meters for the fox's health, stamina, and, once a magic item has been found, magic. Some actions, such as rolling, use up stamina, which refills after a few seconds, and cannot be performed when the stamina bar is empty.[3] Scattered throughout the game world are chests, which contain items, weapons, or coins that the player can collect.[4] Items can also be purchased with coins from ghostly merchants found in a few hidden paths. Some items, such as potions, restore the fox's health, stamina, or magic. Other items can be used, along with a coin payment, to increase the fox's maximum health, stamina, or magic.[5] Tunic does not have difficulty levels, but has options in the accessibility menu to make the fox unable to run out of stamina or health.[3]

Weapons can have varying effects; the stick or sword can be swung at enemies to damage them, the shield can be used to block attacks at the cost of stamina, and magic weapons can use magic to fire projectiles, grab enemies with a lash, or slow down time. Bombs can be used to cause explosions or bursts of fire, which can set enemies or the fox on fire. Enemies, scattered throughout the game world, will chase and attack the fox on sight, and die if they are damaged enough, giving the player coins.[5] The player can target specific enemies to make attacks always go towards them; this also shifts the camera, which can reveal hidden passages or objects. If the fox dies, they drop some of their coins and a spirit is left behind that returns them once reached.[3] The end of some areas contains a unique boss enemy, which unlike regular enemies must be defeated to progress.[4]

Throughout the game world are shrines with a large fox statue; kneeling at these shrines restores the fox's health and magic, while also reviving any defeated enemies.[3] There are also golden platforms in each area, and kneeling on these transports the fox to a ghostly realm linking all of the platforms, allowing for quick traversal of the game world or access to unexplored areas.[6]

Also present throughout the game world are pages of the game's manual, which does not exist outside of the game. Like the in-game text, the majority of the manual is written in a constructed language, and the player does not encounter the pages in order. The drawings, maps, diagrams, and handwritten notes in the manual pages give clues to the player as to how the game works and where to go next, such as showing the fox offering items to a shrine, which otherwise gives no indication that it can be used that way.[3]

The plot of Tunic is expressed to the player through the experience of playing the game, with the backstory and context given only in the manual in the constructed language. The manual, if translated, is written towards the player as the reader, and does not explain what the fox player-character knows about the story or if they understand the constructed language.

A fox awakens on a shore, and begins to journey through the game world, which is filled with ruins. After collecting a weapon and shield, and ringing two magical bells, the fox enters a temple and enters a spiritual plane known as the Far Shore, where they encounter the spirit of a larger fox trapped in a crystal prison, referred to in the manual as the Heir. The fox leaves to collect the three crystal keys to the prison which can be found within dungeons across the land. Every time the fox is killed by an enemy, they are revived by the Heir.

As they collect the crystal keys, they encounter glowing purple essence, which is used to power parts of the ruins, including the golden platforms, and is relayed by glowing black obelisks. While collecting the last key, the fox journeys through a mine—where purple essence seems to be taking over the game world itself—into an underground factory where the souls of foxes are being forcibly confined into the obelisks. After collecting the Keys and freeing the Heir, the Heir attacks and kills the fox. The fox, now in spirit form, appears in a night-time version of the overworld, with many paths obstructed by the purple essence. Most enemies have disappeared and the land is instead populated by the souls of other foxes, which speak only in the game's constructed language. The fox visits the six Graves of the Hero, which are scattered throughout the game world, and which now each return parts of the fox's spirit and restores them to life.

Collecting enough pages of the manual reveals that there had previously been a civilization of foxes, which looked for power from outside of reality. Seeking immortality, they found a way to entomb the souls of foxes from the past and future into obelisks as a source of power. A religion formed around the power and the Hero who found it, with the faithful exempt from their souls being used. Overuse of the power broke it, however, and the purple essence began to erode reality and loop time. One fox, the Heir, was trapped outside of the time loop, but acts as a beacon to draw in a replacement Heir, continuing the cycle.

If the restored fox defeats the Heir, they become the new Heir, and the game ends, with the option to continue from just before the battle or a New Game Plus mode. If instead they follow the "golden path", collecting every page of the manual and solving the puzzle at the top of the mountain that uses the pages, then they can confront the Heir with the knowledge of how to break the cycle and free them instead.

Shouldice at Game Developers Conference 2023

Andrew Shouldice began working on Tunic in February 2015, using the working title Secret Legend.[7][8] Shouldice, who had previously made small games for Ludum Dare competitions but never a larger solo work, quit his job at Silverback Productions to make the game without having a firm design. He posted screenshots of his work on Twitter and Vine, attracting immediate attention.[8][9] Within weeks the game had its fox protagonist, isometric graphical style, and action-adventure single-player gameplay.[8] Shouldice had initially wanted to have a human protagonist customizable by the player, but was unable to design a character model he was satisfied with; he switched to an anthropomorphic fox instead, which he says made sense because "foxes get into trouble".[10] He quickly decided that his experience as a programmer was not broad enough to create the commercial game he envisioned. In March 2015, at the Game Developers Conference, he met with composer Terence Lee (aka Lifeformed) and audio designer Kevin Regamey of Power Up Audio, who would soon become the composer and audio designer for the game.[7]

Aesthetically, Shouldice wanted to combine challenging gameplay with "gentle and pleasing" visual and audio design. The colorful design was inspired by NES games like The Legend of Zelda (1986), and was intended to inspire players to be "brave" and explore new areas of the game that may be more challenging than they were ready for. Shouldice wanted players to feel, both in combat and outside of it, that they were journeying into unexplored areas or places that they were "not supposed to be right now".[7][11] He wanted players to feel "genuine discovery and mystery", both in finding parts of the game that they didn't yet understand, and also in learning things that re-contextualized parts of the game they thought they already knew. He had a design goal of adding "content for no one", meaning details and secrets that did not need to be found by all or any players to be worth including.[2]

Additionally, Shouldice was inspired by the sense of mystery he had as a child when reading through game manuals such as for Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991) while a friend played the game, without being able to understand everything he was reading due to lack of reading ability or context.[11] He wanted to give players a sense of being presented with something that has meaning, but which wasn't yet understandable by the player or necessarily meant for them.[12] These desires led to the use of the pages of the manual, written in a language that players were not expected or required to translate, as a major design element.[7][11] Shouldice also hoped that the sense of mystery would lead to a sense of community, with players working together to solve puzzles and give hints to each other.[11] A version of the manual and its pages with the constructed language was integrated into the game by June 2015.[9]

In addition to Shouldice's experience with The Legend of Zelda games, he was inspired by Bloodborne (2015) for both the combat design and the story. The combat was intended to be, as he found Bloodborne's, "technical" and "challenging", with a rhythm of attacking and dodging at a quick pace. The story of Tunic also drew from that of Bloodborne, using the idea of scholars finding a source of power, worshiping it, and as a result "introducing horrible corruption from planes beyond comprehension". Tunic also shares Shouldice's interpretation of Bloodborne and other Soulslike games as having the player-character be a small figure moving through a larger world that is ambivalent towards them.[13] Other major inspirations for the game were Monument Valley (2014) and Fez (2012). Monument Valley's isometric viewpoint and graphical style was an influence on Tunic's visual style.[14] Shouldice was inspired by Fez to create the dual endings of the game, following a similar mechanic in that game, as well as to make the constructed language in Tunic not be a transliteration of English, as in Fez, as players would now immediately check if something that looked like a fake language was a simple cipher of an existing language.[12][15]

After a couple years of development, Shouldice was joined on Secret Legend's development by Felix Kramer, who became the game's producer, leading to connecting with publisher Finji in 2017.[7][14] The game was announced as Tunic at the E3 2017 PC Gaming Show in June 2017, developed by Isometricorp Games and published by Finji, with an expected release year of 2018.[16] It was presented again at the E3 2018 Xbox showcase in June of the following year, this time without an expected release date.[7] By 2020, the game's design was largely complete, and the development team expanded: Eric Billingsley, who was working on his own game partially inspired by Tunic, joined as a developer and level designer, while Terence Lee, who had been intermittently composing music for the game for five years, was joined by his wife Janice Kwan.[7][17] The pair composed the music to be primarily an "atmospheric" soundtrack that was connected to the world and exploration, rather than the fox, as the player did not know the fox's background or motivations and the pair did not want the music to define it for them.[2] The artwork in the in-game manual was done by artist ma-ko.[18]

The game was finished over the next two years, with the release date announced at The Game Awards in December 2021, and the game launching for macOS, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on March 16, 2022, with ports for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 following on September 27.[7] The ports were completed with assistance by 22nd Century Toys.[14][19] A digital album of music from the game, Tunic Original Soundtrack, was released by the composers on March 16 alongside the game.[20] Shouldice has said that the game took longer than expected because it followed an iterative model of development, wherein he redesigned and redeveloped nearly every element of the game "at least once or twice" as he became more experienced as a developer and revised the design of the game. Lee and Billingsley, however, instead credit it to the small size of the team compared to the scale and complexity of the game.[7]

Tunic won the Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game award at the 26th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, and the Artistic Achievement and Debut Game awards at the 19th British Academy Games Awards.[28][29] It was additionally nominated for several other categories at those awards, as well as for categories at other awards such as The Game Awards 2022, the Golden Joystick Awards, the 23rd Game Developers Choice Awards, and the Independent Games Festival.[30][31][32][33]

Critics were "generally favorable" towards the game, according to the review aggregator Metacritic; it was ranked as one of the top 30 games of the year by aggregated score for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5, and the eighth-highest scored Switch game of the year.[21][22][23][24] The graphics and aesthetics were highly praised; Jill Grodt of Game Informer and Richard Wakeling of GameSpot noted the "simple-but-beautiful visual aesthetic", with the GameSpot reviewer terming it an "extravagant diorama".[3][4] Ryan McCaffrey of IGN, Anne-Marie Coyle of PC Gamer, and Indee of Jeuxvideo.com praised the colorful and "delightful" art style, with Jeuxvideo concluding that it was a very successful art direction that resulted in a beautiful and mysterious universe.[5][26][27] Game Informer, IGN, and Jeuxvideo also noted the music as beautiful and serene, with Game Informer adding that it made "an intriguing contrast to the tough battles".[4][26][27]

Tunic's plot received less attention than its gameplay from reviewers, with mixed opinions. Zoey Handley of Destructoid applauded the way the story was told without words, while Jeuxvideo's reviewer found the game's ending interesting.[25][27] The IGN and PC Gamer reviewers, however, both found the plot interesting but secondary to the rest of the game, with Coyle of PC Gamer concluding that it was "a nice addition to the game rather than a compelling reason to play".[5][26]

The gameplay was highly praised, though some aspects had a mixed reception. Multiple reviewers described the combat as challenging but satisfying; Jeuxvideo concluded that Shouldice had tried and succeeded to make the game difficult enough to make the player feel unwelcome in the world.[3][4][5][27][34] PC Gamer and IGN also liked the boss battles, with PC Gamer considering them even better than the rest of combat, though Grodt of Game Informer and Brendan Caldwell of Rock Paper Shotgun felt that they were too difficult compared to the rest of the game.[4][5][26][35] Game Informer, however, along with the reviewers from Gamespot and Jeuxvideo, applauded the accessibility options to make combat easier as allowing players to continue exploring the game without being restricted by the combat.[3][4][27] Reviewers in general described the game as a mix between the gameplay of Zelda and Soulslike games or as a tribute to those games, though Handley of Destructoid and Christian Donlan of Eurogamer went further to desribe it as based on an understanding of what gameplay design worked for those games rather than just a copy.[4][25][26][34]

The exploration and secrets aspects of the game were heavily praised as well; Game Informer's Grodt concluded that "Tunic's fighting is great, but discovery and exploration might be its most impressive elements."[4] Critics highlighted the exploration and finding secrets as the core of the game, with Nicole Carpenter of Polygon describing it as pushing the player to "have the courage just to try".[1][5][34] The puzzles, especially the use of the manual, were listed as especially worthy of praise, with Gamespot calling them "utterly fantastic", a sentiment echoed by Eurogamer, Jeuxvideo, Rock Paper Shotgun, and Game Informer.[3][4][27][34][35] Jeuxvideo, Rock Paper Shotgun, and Game Informer's reviewers did all note, however, that the obscure and challenging nature of the puzzles meant that players could get stuck, particularly near the end of the game, without any hint of what to do next.[4][27][35] Destructoid's review concluded that the game had no major "missteps" in its gameplay or design, IGN concluded that it was "charming, multi-layered, and immensely rewarding to solve", and Game Informer concluded that the overall game was a game "brimming with genuine, triumphant discovery".[4][25][26]

• Official website