Just over two months after its launch, Tunic is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful surprises of this year 2022 on Xbox for now. The one who has long been called Secret Legend during its six years of development has convinced by its visual aspect, its influence drawn from Zeldaits gameplay, but also the themes it highlights.
The game indeed deals with the attraction of the unknown, of secrets, of the attraction for things that are not visible. Moreover, speaking of secrets, the players are far from having discovered all those contained in the title.
Read also: Tunic: our interview with Andrew Shouldice, the creator of the independent game
Tunic is a game where the secret word takes on its full importance
This is the concession bluntly admitted by its creator Andrew Shouldice who recently participated in an interview with our colleague Dom Peppiatt. Prior to this interview, the editor-in-chief of VG247 first gave his own take on what games with secrets are usually like.
For him, most of them use the term secret “lightly”. He takes for example softs like God of War or Halo in which the secrets that you must find, are clearly exposed to you. This, he says, is good game design that makes you think you’ve gotten there on your own, but very often you’re lured and lured in by an invisible hand.
Then comes the moment of the interview where Dom asks whether Tunic really revealed all its secrets and Andrew Shouldice’s response was not long in coming:
It would be doing someone a huge disservice to tell him that he bled the game from the ground up and can now go home, there’s no fun to be had in that. People have done a great job finding lots and lots of stuff, but much like a lot of creative work, there will always be things that are just right for us. Things that have special meaning to us, or secret things that aren’t just built into the game code. It’s just a little deeper than that.
Intrigued, Peppiatt then bounces on this last sentence and asks him what we should be looking for? To which the respondent responds:
In my mind, there are different levels of secrets depending on how flavorful they are. The basic secret is a little treasure hidden around the corner, or not knowing how to open a door, then doing it and finding out what’s inside.
Better than that, it’s the ones where you realize there’s more play here, you know? That there are more things than I thought, and there are actually more question marks, the question mark of a closed door is replaced by several. Maybe a whole new area to explore, or a whole new direction to take.
But the best secret, for me, is realizing that there’s not just a little extra at the end, but everything you’ve seen actually has a new dimension. Someone was telling me about his experience playing Tunic, and he described it as observing a square. It feels like playing a square, but then you realize that you’re playing a cube, and there’s this extra dimension where these little collectibles have this fun little nostalgic trip, but wait, no , there is important information here. Then, you realize, once again, that there are even more and that it was in front of your eyes from the beginning!
The Tower of glyphs is a bit like the place of the ultimate enigma
What many people call Tunic’s “final puzzle” comes after the main part of the game is over. By using certain commands there and solving quite subtle puzzles, you can unlock golden treasures. If you unlock enough of them, you’ll open a portal leading to a mysterious new place, a place people call the “Tower of Glyphs”.
Although there seems to be little interest in these places, at least at first sight, you can discover more indirect clues in the game manual, then you will be directed to a specific URL.
This address will take you to a video of a Cthulu-like monster whose eyes resemble the three keys you need to find in Tunic, as well as a download link to a MP3 file through website source.
Along with a thank you note that you’re supposed to “be here,” some of the web’s most determined sleuths have discovered things hidden in the audio file’s waveforms (very fashionable for the audio manager Kevin Regamy). The runes in the waveform roughly translate to: “we are the eyes of the distant shore.”
The Tower of Glyphs actually exists for a very specific reason, Shouldice explains:
The Glyph Tower is meant to help people realize that there is yet another dimension to this experience. You could call it the Kevin Dimension, to some extent (Audio Manager and Shouldice exchange a smirk during the Zoom interview), but the idea that there’s just a bit more and it’s was hidden away for you to experience all this time, it’s my favorite kind of secret.
I love the idea that people can get to the ‘end game’ and then turn around and see or hear the world in a new light.
One thing is certain, Tunic hasn’t revealed all its secrets yet, it’s patiently waiting for you on Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S to do so. You can also play it if you own a abonnement Xbox Game Pass.