How One Person’s Passion Project Became an Award-Winning Game

This Tunic documentary details the development of the indie action-adventure game Tunic and goes behind the scenes of its creation, showing early concept art and early in-game footage. Discover more about developer Andrew Shouldice and the team he assembled. After working at Silverback Games as a programmer for six years, Andrew felt a strong urge to start a new adventure on his own. Having done well at several game jams in the past, he felt ready to create his first commercial indie game. On day one of his unemployment, Andrew didn’t have a concrete game idea or concept yet, but he knew he wanted to create a game that captured the feeling of the vast unknown—the sensation of being dropped into a world full of secrets. The documentary also explores all the design decisions that Andrew made and shows how he landed on the fox designs and why he initially tried to turn Tunic into a point-and-click adventure game.

It also takes a close look at all the hurdles the team had to go through. Choosing to go with an isometric perspective presented unique challenges, like having to deal with geometry that needs to be placed just right or animations that need to be even more polished. Additionally, it was difficult to strike a balance between a 3D style that was abstract and visually interesting while still feeling convincingly real. Adding too much detail made the game lose some of its visual identity, but if it looked too simple it seemed unfinished. It took years to find the right look. Furthermore, Andrew struggled to translate his clear vision for Tunic into a cohesive video game. Everything from interacting with objects to designing UI elements and refining moment-to-moment gameplay required extensive iteration. Lastly, the video takes a look at Andrew’s future and if Tunic DLC or a sequel could be a possibility.

References:

0:00 Part 1
3:29 Ad
4:57 Part 2

Outro song: Thank You R.G.E. - Joe Bagale

#Tunic #AndrewShouldice #GameDevelopment

[Evitrea]

THE SOUND DESIGN TEAM DECRYPTED HIS LANGUAGE AND USED IT TO ASK FOR COLLABORATION
I can't make it up if I try, this is the best story I've heard on teaming up, ever

[spidey]

Tunic was such a special game to me. I reached out to Andrew just to say thank you, and he responded with a very thoughtful message. It meant a lot to me, cemented the whole experience as one of my all time favorites!

[ThatGuyGlen]

Special shoutout to the game's creator, Andrew Shouldice, for providing the concept art and screenshots of the desert area featured in the video!

[cheesymcnuggets]

TUNIC has been my no.1 favourite game since I played it and I don't think I'm ever gonna back down from this hill. Although since playing Outer Wilds, I can't help but see the 2 as equals... when I first finished Outer Wilds, it wasn't even in my top 20 but it kinda just lives in your head and you begin to appreciate more over time until yeah

[user__]

Great video, thank you!

I wanted to add a couple of linguistics notes:
7:02 Tunic doesn't have a new language; it has a new script for an existing language (English). English is usually written using Latin characters, but you can also write it using Tunic's script. Just like you can write Japanese using either Latin script (e.g. "nihongo") or one of the Japanese scripts ( 日本語).

7:51 This is kind of a confusing explanation of phonemes... Tunic, similar to Japanese hiragana or many other scripts, has characters or parts of characters that directly correspond to sounds. That's why it's a phoneme-based writing system. English, famously, is written using characters that map *very poorly* to sounds. "Though" has a silent "gh" and an "ou" vowel that is pronounced a bunch of different ways in different words.

Think of it this way: if you are a child who speaks English, and you learn the English alphabet, you *still* have to learn how to spell. You have to learn that "though" is spelled "though", despite the fact that "tho" would have been much more sensible.

You don't have this problem if you're, say, Japanese. If you speak Japanese and learn all of the hiragana, you can spell almost any word, because by knowing how to say it, you also know how to spell it! This is also true if you want to write English using the Tunic script - just by knowing how to pronounce a word, you know how to spell it.

Hope that helps!

[Wiz_and_Pippy]

Sorry, I'm writing this merely moments into the video because I have to give flowers on the beginning effects. That opening title card with the tv effect was immaculate, I've watched it a dozen times now. And the book opening effect was something I've been striving for. Would you mind sharing how you achieved such a clean book opening and presenting effect? Thank you in advance and again, *incredible* work!

[mot]

i gotta say, the format of this video, how well its edited, and how nice the custom visuals look, are very impressive and just plain fun. your videos are always unique! thank you for making them!

[Coquitox]

I LOOOOVED this game so much. I didn’t have any expectations other than the character looked like Link and it delivered.
It gave me this feeling of nostalgia, a little happy, a little sad. Idk how to explain it. A time when things were simpler and my imagination wasn’t burdened by reality and adult responsibilities.
The lightning is beautiful and the booklet concept was cherry on top.

[socksthefox]

It just goes to show how deep the secrets get that despite my love of the game from the first day I saw it and learning a bunch of the little background secrets, this video still showed me a couple new ones.

[jupitersky]

I actually decoded some of the letters in the game. Certain patterns matching to different words, like "button" or "hero". I never fully decoded it, but it was a fun part of the experience for me getting a pencil and writing stuff out of inspiration from a game in a notebook for the first time in many years.

I drew the entire map of the original legend of zelda game by hand in a grid paper notebook so I could navigate easier, noting where secrets were or places I hadn't yet figured out. I didn't give Tunic the same treatment, my ability to memorize an environment has improved quite a bit now that I'm older, but it was still really fun and nostalgic for me.

[TheKirBoi]

One of the best surprises of my life was finally getting into and subsequently finishing this game a few months ago. I'd known of this game for a while before getting it on my Switch a couple of years ago and I went in knowing nothing. I could tell at a glance that it was obviously Zelda inspired, and while I'm not really a Zelda fan I enjoy those kinds of games fine enough and it's graphics really sold me. I then, over the next two or so years, started the game about 4 different times and dropped it about an hour in each time (I simply had other things going on in life which pulled me away) so when I decided to get the game again on Steam, I really decided to dedicate some time to it just to see what the game was like and I was blown away.

It was one of the most euphoric gaming experiences of my life, and I've been playing games for pretty much all of it. That moment when the penny dropped with the D-pad codes and everything I had seen was re-contextualised, like the game had just started up for the first time again, was a moment I actually hope I forget so that I can reexperience it "for the first time" again someday. The moment when I finally realized how to solve the "door" puzzle was one of the single most vivid peaks of my gaming life I ever had and I fear I won't get another one like it. Having a game, in modern day no less, actually make me grab scraps of paper to write down codes for later was a thing I genuinely never thought I'd either get, or want, to do - but this masterpiece of a game gave me that reason to.

I think it's safe to say that, for me at least, Andrew Shouldice's desires for what emotions and experiences he wanted this game to evoke in the player occurred seamlessly. Sorry for the bible read, I just had to gush about this game I love so much.

[ric]

After months of ignoring this game you now totally sold it to me.

[poppymuffinseed]

It's funny knowing that he also made that old, super pixelated horror(?) game HIDE; it's so totally different and it was a surprise to find out I had already played a game by him! If you can find it, I'd recommend it, very short but interesting game. May be hard to find due to it's name and age, but if you just want to see what it was I know Markiplier and Jacksepticeye played it at least!

[theoteno]

I played Spring Falls for a while, but got stuck at some puzzles then. Good to know its developer also worked on Tunic later!

[The-EJ-Factor]

I actually found this secret myself. Based off the question I had “what happens if I die here” which by hindsight is a pretty morbid question out of context. I wasn’t expecting to end up somewhere completely different

[SkaiaMechanic]

I've always seen Tunic as two complete games. The first game is a colorful and challenging action game with combat a mix of Legend of Zelda and Dark Souls. You unlock more abilities as you progress, but most of them are just tools rather than true "keys" like a Metroidvania. The game concludes with a final boss and sends you on your way with a vague ending. The greatest part of this first game are the "Was that always there?" moments that never stop coming. It's a solid game with broad appeal.

The second game is a puzzle game using the first games world, as the player scours the game for hidden secrets. From 25% secrets to 5% secrets, this game feels completely different, and if you are in the niche to enjoy it will make Tunic one of your favorite games of all time. If you have the patience to keep searching and not look up the answers, Tunic endlessly delivers. There's even the 0% secrets beyond the true ending that require tearing apart and decoding the audio files as we see in the video.

Anyways, great video on how this fascinating video game was made!

[RedCroissantGames]

it is legitimately my dream to get my game in a video, great work as always :D

[Justdoingsometing]

I really liked the game, i liked how it gave information not abilities kind of like outerwilds.

[ComfortChef]

My favorite moment in Tunic was a late night playing and taking notes when I finally hit a critical mass of recognized words that the language construction finally clicked and I just spent the rest of the night finding examples all throughout the pages I collected to decipher the alphabet. The moment I was able to read full sentences without glancing at my key is one of my top moments in gaming and one I will cherish forever I think

[PanupatChong]

Encourage players to work together - my god you have no idea how far astray the game's Discord has become. After a few weeks of everyone being friendly, I mentioned in there that I looked up some secret and the community immediately showed so much hatred towards me for not figuring things out by myself. It's gotten so bad I had to just leave.