The mystery of Tunic's hidden 'devworld'

The mysterious "dev" save that is created when the player works on solving the golden path in Tunic hides more than just a piece of that puzzle...it hides an entire hidden world. Let's explore that to see what might be hidden within.

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#tunic #devworld #secrets

[nespace]

I'm pretty sure the devs went out and said that the inclusion of this Dev world/accessing it was intentional. The fact that they would update the game to remove page -1 further confirms this as if this area was unintentional, then it would make more sense to remove it entirely to prevent any further bugs rather than to only remove the page.

So, assuming this area is intentional, we can come to one of three conclusions:

1) This is just a fun little Easter egg to show off some dev assets and scrapped stuff.

2) There is actually some sort of secret hidden here yet to be uncovered.

Or 3) The presence of this area itself is supposed to have lore implications. If the world of Tunic is all within the cartridge of a video game, then where does this Dev world lie within this world? Does this possibly hint towards the presence of other, hidden dev worlds or worlds yet to be accessed? Or could this Dev world have had some sort of impact on the normal world? Additionally, are the unfinished/unused enemies we see here somehow connected to the enemies in the regular game?

Another element (I think?) people may have been overlooking is the fact that Tunic supposedly takes place entirely within a game cartridge. Judging by the shape of it shown on one of the blackboards, I think the assumption is that it is something similar to a NES cartridge. How a game like Tunic is able to even be stored and ran in NES cartridge is beyond me, but let's just assume it can.
Considering how Tunic wants you to think of itself as a multi-layer world based within game cartridge, I feel like understanding this world may require an understanding of how game cartridges were made, how they stored data, and the components within. I personally don't know much about that kinda stuff, but maybe someone out there with knowledge of how game cartridges are made and their components might be able to draw parallels to the lore and characters within Tunic.

And lastly, I wanted to point out the constant use of RGB colors in this game. I feel like there's even more to that than what is currently understood. They're used in screen overlays for areas, the eyes of the far shore, the holy cross, the "cores" of Tunic's residences, the Will/Stamina/Soul bars, and probably more places that I'm forgetting about. I feel like there's something to the three specific RBG values used, how they interact, and how they are represented within Tunic that needs to be further looked in to. Maybe overlaying game footage or other things in the game with one or more of the colors might reveal something idk.

[andrewdiedrich]

The fact that a hidden dev world fits the in game canon is so so cool. Few other games (like ddlc and oneshot) allow for this kind of experience where both the in game world and our world fit the narrative. Great find.

[rhyano_]

I saw something on Reddit that I loved but the they said their headcannon isn't that the Librarian knows he's in a video game, but that he figured out the shape of the universe is this arbitrary shape that we know to be a cartridge.

[Gunbudder]

I'm pretty convinced the pause screen and red, green, and blue pixels are part of a secret. When you pause, you are taken out of the point of view of the heir and given the point of view of a character playing Tunic, reading the manual while the CRT screen is on in the background. and the colors of the game distort in a really interesting way that show you the individual pixels. furthermore, you can zoom and then move the manual out of the way. it seems crazy to me that the devs would add in this feature where you can see a CRT screen with a special button on the controls assigned to moving the manual to the side and then letting you even zoom in closely to the CRT screen. It could just be devs showing off a cool feature, but it seems a bit too elaborate to just be showboating.

at any rate, the librarian seems close to "breaking out" of the game they are all in, and i think passing through the CRT screen would be a part of that. and their entire world being made up of RGB pixels also seems to be playing a roll. I try not to think about the deeper puzzles too much because i will become obsessive over them to an unhealthy degree. someone needs to solve the game so i can stop the nagging feeling i have about it!!

[rustyshackleford]

I found that after escaping out of bounds with the jelly cube you can reach the back of the truck (by the SS Anne) and roll into it to activate a secret Pokémon battle and catch mew.

[Nukestarmaster]

It honestly feels like there are secrets yet undiscovered, but there seems to be a complete lack of remaining threads to pull. It's not like in Noita where there are obvious major puzzles left unsolved (like the eye puzzle), in Tunic there's the Eyes of the Far Shore that give the Rosetta Stone for Tuneic, which reveals a number of lore snippets, but no further puzzle. And then there is the things like the Dev World where you would expect new puzzles (why else would they let us access it if it wasn't important), but there's ... nothing.

[botterminator]

Just finished this game on the Switch, got it on sale and didn't know anything about it going in.
Spent many hours trying to figure things out on my own, when I got to the website part after collecting the treasures I was a bit disappointed because it felt like the egg hunt was over.
When I heard about this dev world, I jumped in and had a look around and then looked up on YouTube to see other people's thoughts and came across this video.
I've worked on a few pre-planning, planning and pre-production phases of game development as a contractor and this looks a lot like a final version of a whitebox testing level.
Some of the unused assets have actually been remodelled and redesigned, so they did "technically" make it into the game, just as something else.
What we do in whitebox testing during the planning and pre-production phases is to test how assets behave by examining the code, and all of these assets are placeholder. This is why they look the way they do. A lot are just ideas taken from paper and applied to the 3d environment. So some are used as baselines to create something in the production phase and others are scrapped or reworked depending on relevance and project scope. I think the devs thought it would be interesting to let the players see their old whitebox testing world to show how far they came. I don't think it's meant to have any hidden meanings or messages in it. Also as a side-note, why some enemies don't have AI programmed yet, or proper physics is because those assets were most likely tested in other versions or later in the development cycle. This could just mean that they could only limit the testing to enemies they were 100% set on using, such as the small pink blobs and the white spiky shooters. The spinning polygon was used for Slorms, the polygon knight was used for sword/shield Rudelings. The red and black static assets were most likely repurposed as a sword rudeling. The wolf asset was probably scrapped. As for the large pink blob, there's a few reasons this was done such as boundary/collision testing, camera angle and perspective testing for large enemies, and the most obvious one interaction and physics testing. If anything, this shows how impressive and dedicated their whitebox testing was, because most are quite basic.

[ssencipe]

Was waiting for this to be covered. The other big thing of interest are the minor changes made to the main world in new game+ runs. Could be connected to secrets in dev world, could be nothing, could be an unrelated secret. Hard to say with this game.

[CongaYT]

That's so freakin cool, I love the idea of a hidden world you can only access through using game mechanics you're familiar with, but might not think to apply to the specific scenario

Hidden worlds and areas in general are always cool as hell

[veralium]

I found this during my playthrough back in May! I couldn't find anything online about it, and I've always wondered why it was there

[LimitedWard]

Knowing the devs and the fact that they removed that manual page pickup, it seems almost certain that they intended for players to discover this place.

[bluedrake]

I thought I stumbled apon a few areas in the devworld where there was something close to the lines used for the golden path, but every single time before the line could get more than a few directions long something would happen that would break the line or make it impossible to tell where it was going from there. the podium and the path across the pilers that leads to it scream secret code, but it's almost impossible to tell how the path should continue. beyond that I remember a few other select times it felt like there was only the start to a code sequence that got cut off to short. I feel that if there is anything else to do in the devworld it will have to do with inputting certain codes using the holy cross and some leaps in logic

[lm]

Interestingly I've looked into the save file and the Golden Path is named "Purgatory" which fits the how the looping hallway works. Even looking further I've checked the name of the DevWorld to be "Posterity" which is a noun meaning 'all future generations of people.' I find that interesting. Also I even gave myself bombs and the grappling hook, and the grappling hook causes you to freeze in place (like the animation bugs out) on the unused enemies and you have to shield bash to get out. Though it is interesting to say the least. What cool is that if you pick up the second sword the save file actually counts you as having two swords even though the inventory doesn't reflect it. Oddly it also unlocks a spiritWorldUnlock for Posterity. I can't recall the exact name though, but i think it unlocks when you use the campfire. (I think the spiritWorldUnlock is the fast travel point in the spirit world. Like those yellow squares in the main overworld)

[p_clove]

The bloopers at the end were so delightful LOL amazing content thank you so much for all the work on tunic guides

[twodragonsmessingaround]

A funny note, though not particularly useful in any way: when I was messing around here, I actually clipped through the level geometry at the small islands where 100 bits (A) is located. I don't recall being able to walk too far, but it was definitely funny.

Honestly, rolling (and dashing later on) is definitely more than able to break through terrain; I accidentally clipped through the world and fell out of bounds by rolling into a corner by the bridge near the fairy cave, and could consistently clip into the void by dashing against the remains of the teleporter in the graveyard. Again, nothing useful here, but definitely fun.

[MaxIzrin]

This game is less of a rabbit hole of secrets, and more of a bottomless pit of anigmas.

[thejuggercat]

I wouldint be surprised If there were Secrets that required out of game trickery, wether It be file editing or otherwise.
I mean, theres an arg already...

[yaveker]

Neat that the bridge is using the pro builder trigger texture, wonder why it's green instead of orange tho. Probably not marked as a trigger correctly either considering you can see it, wonder if you can clip inside of it to activate it anyways

[Tcj]

Exploring game files is discouraged in the Tunic community, but as a fun fact I believe the map name for the devworld is "Posterity"

[TRaddcliff]

just seems like the initial test, until they got a flow, and it was populated with placeholder assets and creatures. I LOVE seeing the design process