If you regularly watch events where games get revealed, you’ve likely seen the adorable isometric action game Tunic at least once, and maybe wondered when you’d finally be able to play it in full. Fortunately, today during The Game Awards Tunic finally got a release date of March 16, 2022.
Tunic was first revealed way back in 2017 and charmed instantly with its little fox protagonist, a distinct top-down Zelda vibe, and apparently quite challenging combat. It’s since appeared at various shows and events since then, and had a demo available earlier this year. Incidentally, it's got another demo across both Xbox and Steam that already was made available on December 7, and is will remain up through December 14.
Why did it take so long for Tunic to get here? Put simply by publisher Finji’s Rebekah Saltsman in an interview with IGN, games are hard to make. It took Tunic years to discover itself, effectively, and for the team to make the most “Tunic-y” decisions possible at each juncture. Level design alone, she says, changed often because so many of the things its developers thought would work ultimately didn’t.
“There was a big level design thing that we were doing, and…we took Andrew [Shouldice, game director] to Disney World,” she said. “Sounds weird, but Disney World has great level design. So, we took him to Disney World in November of 2018. And what's really interesting about Disney World is there are very few places where you walk in a straight line for a really long time. And this was already something everyone was thinking about.
“And when we came home, we were like, ‘So, what feels really, really bad is if you just run straight forever.’ And something about Tunic, specifically, it just does not work. There has to be a certain type of level and pathway through things…So, there are a lot of things like that that came up.”
Aside from the level design, Tunic’s been in the works for a while in part because the team making it is so small, though Saltsman wants to emphasize it’s not just Shouldice working on it as a solo project. There’s Eric Billingsley, who came on in 2020 and who is responsible for much of how Tunic’s level design ultimately shook out. There’s also producer Felix Kramer, audio designer Kevin Regamey, and composer Terrance Howard on board.
But even with that crew and Finji’s help, it’s been challenging to build something as intricate as Tunic aims to be. Shouldice’s background is in hidden object games, and he additionally has a passion for retro gaming and old Nintendo games from the mid-90s. He especially wanted Tunic to be absolutely stuffed with secrets, and purposefully vague on what the player is meant to do next.
“The whole idea behind Tunic is you're in a space where maybe you're not supposed to be as a player,” Saltsman said. “Maybe you got ahold of a ROM out of Japan where you can't understand anything that's in it. And you're just hobbling along trying to figure it out as you go. There's 1500 English words, maybe, and half of them are ‘OK’. Because all the signs are in fake script on the screen because you're not supposed to know what it says.
“You're supposed to, as a player, engage with the game where it stands. And then maybe your friend is also playing. Do you know where you're supposed to go next? That would have been really hard back in the '80s and '90s when we're hanging on to our Nintendo powers, hoping to find a secret. But now, we have the internet where you can post up with friends and experience Tunic together.”
Tunic’s release date came alongside a new trailer at The Game Awards showing off gameplay we haven’t yet seen, though it’s still quite recognizable as the little fox swordsman we’ve been following for years. We got a hands-on preview of Tunic way back in 2018 and loved the much more recent E3 2021 demo on Xbox.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
Continue reading...
Tunic was first revealed way back in 2017 and charmed instantly with its little fox protagonist, a distinct top-down Zelda vibe, and apparently quite challenging combat. It’s since appeared at various shows and events since then, and had a demo available earlier this year. Incidentally, it's got another demo across both Xbox and Steam that already was made available on December 7, and is will remain up through December 14.
Why did it take so long for Tunic to get here? Put simply by publisher Finji’s Rebekah Saltsman in an interview with IGN, games are hard to make. It took Tunic years to discover itself, effectively, and for the team to make the most “Tunic-y” decisions possible at each juncture. Level design alone, she says, changed often because so many of the things its developers thought would work ultimately didn’t.
“There was a big level design thing that we were doing, and…we took Andrew [Shouldice, game director] to Disney World,” she said. “Sounds weird, but Disney World has great level design. So, we took him to Disney World in November of 2018. And what's really interesting about Disney World is there are very few places where you walk in a straight line for a really long time. And this was already something everyone was thinking about.
“And when we came home, we were like, ‘So, what feels really, really bad is if you just run straight forever.’ And something about Tunic, specifically, it just does not work. There has to be a certain type of level and pathway through things…So, there are a lot of things like that that came up.”
Aside from the level design, Tunic’s been in the works for a while in part because the team making it is so small, though Saltsman wants to emphasize it’s not just Shouldice working on it as a solo project. There’s Eric Billingsley, who came on in 2020 and who is responsible for much of how Tunic’s level design ultimately shook out. There’s also producer Felix Kramer, audio designer Kevin Regamey, and composer Terrance Howard on board.
But even with that crew and Finji’s help, it’s been challenging to build something as intricate as Tunic aims to be. Shouldice’s background is in hidden object games, and he additionally has a passion for retro gaming and old Nintendo games from the mid-90s. He especially wanted Tunic to be absolutely stuffed with secrets, and purposefully vague on what the player is meant to do next.
“The whole idea behind Tunic is you're in a space where maybe you're not supposed to be as a player,” Saltsman said. “Maybe you got ahold of a ROM out of Japan where you can't understand anything that's in it. And you're just hobbling along trying to figure it out as you go. There's 1500 English words, maybe, and half of them are ‘OK’. Because all the signs are in fake script on the screen because you're not supposed to know what it says.
“You're supposed to, as a player, engage with the game where it stands. And then maybe your friend is also playing. Do you know where you're supposed to go next? That would have been really hard back in the '80s and '90s when we're hanging on to our Nintendo powers, hoping to find a secret. But now, we have the internet where you can post up with friends and experience Tunic together.”
Tunic’s release date came alongside a new trailer at The Game Awards showing off gameplay we haven’t yet seen, though it’s still quite recognizable as the little fox swordsman we’ve been following for years. We got a hands-on preview of Tunic way back in 2018 and loved the much more recent E3 2021 demo on Xbox.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
Continue reading...
