You won’t find all the secrets in TUNIC, here is why

What if Link was a cute fox? At first glance TUNIC looks like a beautiful spiritual successor to THE LEGEND OF ZELDA franchise, but as lead developer Andrew Shouldice shares with us in this interview, it also embraces modern "souls-like" gameplay.
TUNIC is filled with lots and lots of secrets, the game was at one time called Secret Legend, and Shouldice said it's all about capturing that feeling of playing a game in the pre-internet Nintendo era where a game feels like limitless exploration.
SIFTER is produced by Nicholas Kennedy, Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Daniel Ang & Adam Christou. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer.
Thanks to Omny Studio for their support of SIFTER.
Join the SIFTER Discord to be part of the conversation www.sifter.com...
Support SIFTER's independent gaming journalism by buying our merch www.sifter.store/
#gamedev #podcast #videogames

[@9r33ks]

I really enjoyed Tunic. I could not believe how well it was put together as a game, although some of the puzzles were completely too hard for me, I had to go look stuff up online. But that's a good thing! You don't want to dilute your games! Also the fact that the manual is written in unknown langugage you are NOT supposed to figure out? Genius. As non-native english speaker I can relate to this so bad. :D Tunic is trully one of the most unique games I've ever played.

[@SIFTERHQ]

You know the fact that you had to had to look things up reminded me of playing games as a kid, you’d go ask your friends at school for all the secrets. It’s incredible too that a lot of the mechanics of the game are in there from the start and you just aren’t told until later on. I can empathise with the language experience too, I had a few import games that were Japanese and I had no idea what it was saying but you just pushed through! Thanks for checking out our interview @9r33ks

[@SeenAGreatLight]

Absolutely, it's such a well-made game! I'm one of the nuts that banged my head against the language barrier until I got it, and man, the excitement was like learning to read for the first time. What an experience...

[@ashleyjaytanna1953]

I'm just sad that I never fully appreciated Tunic when playing the first time

[@SIFTERHQ]

@ashleyjaytanna1953 did you come to appreciate it later or was it just not for you?

[@rawr612]

This talked to me so much that i finished understanding the language and translating the manual. No internet involved XD

[@Sonicgott]

Andrew Shouldice created an absolute marvel of a game. It’s beautiful, engaging, breathtaking, and keeps you thinking.

[@SIFTERHQ]

Why do you think it had such a big impact on you @sonicgott? I loved it too

[@Sonicgott]

@@SIFTERHQ It opened your mind to possibilities never thought possible. A new way to interpret stories, such as the one of the shopkeeper you only get to talk to when you’re a spirit. The language deciphered unlocks a whole new world of stories and incredible depth in the game experience. Beyond mere mechanics, the lore is what I find the most interesting and compelling. Highly recommended title.

[@SIFTERHQ]

For me when i realised that basically no mechanics are locked, they are in there from the start you just don’t know about them, that was so cool. All the hidden paths you can use for shortcuts you only discover from the other side. So clever

[@FriskyFoxx]

I wish I could write him a love letter about how what he intended happened to me entirely and gave me a love for video games again

[@SIFTERHQ]

Incredible what a lovely idea. Send me an email to [e-mail] and I’ll forward it on if you like!

[@i4NiLeon11]

For all those who don’t know, this man is a genius! The level of secrets you uncover in this game is mind boggling. At some points you’ll feel brain fog from how much thinking you will do. There’s 3 languages to uncover. A language of glyphs, a language of sound, and a language of color. There’s also riddles, puzzles, secrets, and so much more. I don’t think we will ever be able to uncover the final secrets of this game in our lifetime.

[@SIFTERHQ]

You know what id love to see ? An old school printed strategy guide like the games of this era had, outlining all the secrets or one of those beautiful coffee table books like Lost in Cult make. That’d be great. They could even hide a secret in that!

[@hiatusvita1570]

Hello Mr Shouldice, I’m a 36 year old man and I loved video games since childhood. Your game is truly fantastic and I’m blown away by the in game game manual. I literally felt like a child that has trouble reading and for once in a decade I had to actually think and was also challenged by the games combat. Also, the idea with the items that reward you for using them is brilliant, people like me would hoard them if not for this idea! Bless your incredible beautiful creative brain. I hope you have a bright future in the game industry. Please send him this message too 😢

[@darkcrab]

Very nice interview and an absolute magnificent game. Thanks to all of you.

[@SIFTERHQ]

Thank you very much for the kind words @darkcrab 💛

[@epicjuicebox]

I just recently finished Tunic. Beautiful game. Not gonna lie though... I had to use a guide extensively to reach the end! 😅

[@SIFTERHQ]

If you think about the sort of game it is, how heavily inspired it is by nineties games, I think a guide is almost in keeping with the experience. I used to remember buying those printed guides all the time.

[@diligencehumility6971]

I also had to look up a couple of things to beat it, and a couple of more things to 100% it, but damn it was good

[@SIFTERHQ]

@diligencehumility6971 you know I was thinking we had to often get those printed strategy guides in the 90s for games like this (or head to gamefaqs) so that actually feels kinda thematically appropriate

[@nyuh]

oooohh an interview that looks more into the development process ! loved listening to this !!

[@SIFTERHQ]

Thank you so much @Calico Niko ! It was such a fun interview to do

[@espset1234]

Finished this game last night, and I am in awe, its so wonderfully clever and every idea is masterfully integrated and balanced. The puzzles are some of the most inventive I've seen. Some are pushing the limits of what feels appropriate for what they unlock or how much esoteric thinking is required, but for the most part its just a joy to unravel. The language-deciphering had me hitting a wall quite hard tho, I tried to wrap my head around it, but it was just a bit too rough for me, but its definately a cool idea. Loved it so much

[@Dw_Rinku]

I finished the games with all achievement without helping myself with internet. It was such a good game and a good experience that I couldn't bring myself to "disrespect" the work put in every single puzzles of the game. Trying to understand the manual on my own was such an amazingly fun chalenge. I was judging the game a bit, saying it was just a Zelda copy-cat. And a friend convinced me to play it saying it was so much more than that. And gosh, I was so grateful that he opened my eyes. Because I couldn't have been more wrong. A masterpiece like I haven't play for a long time

[@SIFTERHQ]

Have you been recommending it to other friends ? I’m glad you were able to give it a chance

[@TheLinkmaster007]

I love this game!!! So many secrets to discover!!! And the manual thing is genius!

[@SIFTERHQ]

Were you checking every waterfall like I was?

[@FluffyFoxUwU]

i need to find a way to make the fox waves after looking the thumbnail

[@SIFTERHQ]

Oh wow yeah I never actually noticed the fox waving before! 🦊 👋 I wonder if you can actually do that in game?

[@FluffyFoxUwU]

@@SIFTERHQ did you put thumbnail but never notice the fox waving?

[@SIFTERHQ]

@FluffyFoxUwU oh no I noticed the fox waving I just never noticed that it’s not really something you can do in the game until you pointed it out

[@FluffyFoxUwU]

​@@SIFTERHQ ok i wasnt say there 100% a way but there should be because that screenshot exist lol

[@SIFTERHQ]

@FluffyFoxUwU yeah I agree! I’m not 100% sure there is a way either but it’d be nice if there was a “wave at the screen button”

[@hawkbirdtree3660]

Boy, just I thought I lost interest in video games, and this game comes out and resparks my love for the medium. It's not me, then; the games AAA games industry is a shallow mess.

[@SIFTERHQ]

I think one of its strengths is how much it draws on those older games without being a complete copy. There are so many cool games coming out made by smaller teams, indies are our favourites @hawkbirdtree3660

[@xebatansis]

I wish there was a second game.

[@SIFTERHQ]

Wonder if they’ll jump to another era of games? Like go to Ocarina of time era Zelda graphics or something like that!

[@makebreakrepeat]

2nic?

[@WhiteSpears]

11:22 "I don't want to go into spoilers too deeply" 11:46 *proceeds in deeply explaining the Mario warp zone secret 😂

[@DJSweep75]

Tunic is beautiful, I have not spent that much time in a game in the last 15 years. Even after having played through.

[@SIFTERHQ]

It really encourages you to explore in a way that doesn’t feel forced. It’s an incredible game! What was your favourite part Marcell?

[@DJSweep75]

@@SIFTERHQ The world design, the music especially, the whole atmosphere of the game, finding out about the alternate ending, after you have found all the pages of the manual, which I don’t want to spoil. I still pick it up for a few minutes every day just to find more stuff I haven’t found in my first playthrough.

[@SIFTERHQ]

For me I just love that it makes me feel like a kid again , telling my friends “oh I found this new secret in Tunic!” we might not be at recess but it takes me back to that time like no other game I’ve played.

[@StyxDescension]

After finishing this game, I immediately purchased a real-life game guide from their store alongside a shirt. Tunic is truly an incredible game and is super under the radar, Andrew deserves nothing but the absolute best for this fantastic masterpiece. I hope he's working on a sequel of sorts!!

[@SIFTERHQ]

Any cool secrets in the guide that you’ve discovered?

[@StyxDescension]

@@SIFTERHQ Unfortunately, to my knowledge there's nothing different from the in-game version. It's just a really cool piece of merch that appears to be 1:1 with the in-game game manual. It's a cool piece of merch tbh! I've heard the shirt has a secret message on it in trunic, but it doesn't have any meaning, just a silly easter egg

[@tonyn2524]

I enjoyed Tunic, this man Andrew is a genius! Beautiful game masterpiece

[@MistressMajora]

It was so great to hear Andrew's thoughts on the creation of the game, but a question I have is why can't I find all the secrets in Tunic? I didn't really hear anything in there that dissuaded me from finding all the secrets or said "there are secrets designed for you not to find them". The most I heard was "there's a lot of secrets in the game", the game is based around finding secrets, and that Andrew and his team really like them. I'm not complaining that I stumbled upon an interview with the creator of the game, but the title was very misleading. I also want to say that I know about a lot of the secrets that have been found which utilize an out-of-the-box way of thinking and I assumed this video was going to talk about that or about a puzzle that hasn't been broken yet.

[@SIFTERHQ]

Thanks for watching @MistressMajora, glad you enjoyed it! Well this video was recorded more than a year ago now, and at the time many of those secrets were yet to be broken or documented. So at the time, the average player wasn’t likely to find them all. Some of the secrets like the soundtrack based oscilloscope visual secrets require a very technical understanding, you generally won’t stumble across that. Hope that makes sense?

[@rogervega6531]

Simply fucking awesome 😎❣️👍

[@SIFTERHQ]

Cheers mate

[@jbrowne730]

Probably the best game to come out since Hollow Knight. The gaming industry needs to focus on these of games and take notes. Challenging, but mostly bug free and fair. No need for super realistic graphics if the game plays like a cartoon potato. Looking at you EA Sports & CoD.

[@angelomattei2304]

We have to wait 7 years for a sequel? 😭

[@SIFTERHQ]

Hopefully not! Have you finished the game Angelo?

[@TruthbtoldMD]

He didn't mention why there is a holy cross related to the potion or other items.

[@SIFTERHQ]

You know the first Legend of Zelda had crosses in it too? The shield is the most obvious example

[@thedoctoradvocate8251]

It has to do with a certain feature on the controller, not religious iconography.

[@jimmyryan5880]

Skip to 2:00

[@SIFTERHQ]

Thanks Jimmy we’ll go through and add a few more chapter markers!

[@darassylmoniakam]

why he refuse to show us the secrets of his game?

[@SIFTERHQ]

The secrets ARE the game ! Finding them yourself is an important part of playing

[@SeenAGreatLight]

In a sense, "secret" really is the name of the game! :)

[@مهدي-ش6و]

العبة جميلة🌹

[@keithtorgersen9664]

Their most epic secret of all made the game way too creepy for me and i stopped playing the game.

[@Humblemumble7]

Deaths Door was terrible compared to Tunic!

[@bodabodaguy3193]

Didn’t know i was signing up to play some jank darksouls game, some of these enemies are truly unbalanced for this poor fox who only has 3 rolls hopefully we can lvl him up because that shit is going to really stink

[@SIFTERHQ]

You know what I did? I just turned off the damage at a certain point. Have you tried giving that a go? I wish there was something in between no damage at all and some damage but some of the bosses have some complex mechanisms so I found it way more fun to do it that way. You still get the puzzle solving and mystery discovery

[@bodabodaguy3193]

@@SIFTERHQ i completely forgot that was an option!! I will try that next time i hop back in the game. i was beginning to drop my steam deck due to frustration. 6 hours in so no refund option, i was just like damn this is not what i signed up for😩😤😭. I mostly picked this up because i never got to finish the links awakening remake on my old switch. Also great interview. I was playing tunic while listening.

[@SIFTERHQ]

Yeah I had exactly the same feeling when playing it. I’m not a souls player at all I find them very frustrating, so when I hit one of those bosses I was like “nope” but turned off the damage and it was so much better. I really liked that link’s awakening remake but I loved it back in the day on gameboy too. Thanks for the kind words!

[@meisalonowo9064]

He had added "Reduced" difficulty now that halves the damage you take, but honestly its not supposed to be easy the idea is repeating and learning and mastering the techniques in the end of the day the game has like 4-5 mechanics to master, Dodge, swing, Magic, Movement and Shield you just to try and understand and learn and not try to brute force it.

[@SIFTERHQ]

Oh that’s good to know, I might have to give that a go, thanks for letting me know. I do understand the appeal of the pattern matching combat but it has never been my thing. The mystery and puzzle solving is way more appealing for me personally

[@markcouture4726]

I feel like this guy is super full of him. He *thinks* he's super clever, but I actually think most of the secrets are goofy and I wish they had spent more time on the gameplay itself, which I found lackluster. For example, embedding characters from their contrived representation of English into an audio spectrogram is super dorky, but it's neither relevant to game play nor meaningful in any way. (It also assumes a certain kind of scale, both time and frequency, to be readable.) And calling the D-pad the "holy cross" is nauseatingly lame.

[@camdenwyeth316]

bro... what

[@SeenAGreatLight]

The secrets may have seemed dorky to you, but I loved every one of them. For me, the thrill of figuring out the language was like learning to read for the first time, and the way he's got it embedded in the music blew my mind. Regarding the "Holy Cross," it struck me as a callback to the first Legend of Zelda game that had a cross on Link's shield and an item literally called "Bible" in the original version. That's about as on-the-nose as you can get. XD I think he *should* be proud of his work, though I don't see the "full of himself" attitude myself. I just see a guy who loves making puzzles and pours a lot of passion into it. May I gently suggest a more gracious approach to criticism? We've all got different tastes.

[@markcouture4726]

​@@SeenAGreatLight The issue is the stretch in these contrivances. So, for example, my criticism about the D-pad wasn't that there was a religious tone; it's that, even in this world, calling the D-pad on the controller a holy cross is just lame, in and of itself. Why is a part of the controller holy? And why I am explaining something so blatantly obvious to someone on the internet who clearly is a fan and not open to any criticism of the game?

[@markcouture4726]

@@SeenAGreatLight Yes we've all got different tastes, and we've all got different ways of expressing them, too. And with everyone blowing sunshine up this guy's ass, I am not inclined to be "gracious" - it's not needed here.

[@SIFTERHQ]

I’m with you! It’s so incredibly well thought out, so many Easter eggs ! The music in particular was such a lovely touch from the composer also contribute to the overall themes of the game

[@jbrowne730]

Probably the best game to come out since Hollow Knight. The gaming industry needs to focus on these of games and take notes. Challenging, but mostly bug free and fair. No need for super realistic graphics if the game plays like a cartoon potato. Looking at you EA Sports & CoD.