Tunic has been out on the Switch for a little under a month now after gaining an impressive following on Xbox prior to this. As those of you who have played the game will know (and those who haven’t should know), Tunic is full of secrets and puzzles. Finding pages of the mysterious manual opens up more of the world than you previously knew, but even this leaves more details to find.
One such detail can be found in the game’s audio design which has now been shared on Twitter by Tunic’s Audio Director, Kevin Regamey (@regameyk). In his extremely in-depth thread (below) the artist breaks down how the game’s soundscape directly speaks to the plot and how the role of music may be bigger than we previously thought. To be clear, Regamey’s thread does contain a fair few spoilers for Tunic, so only read on when you feel ready to do so.
We have no intention of going quite as deep into the game’s audio as is achieved above (we’ll leave that one to the professionals), though we will continue to cover some of the information in the thread, and therefore we have to say the following:
WARNING: Spoilers for Tunic below! Read on at your own risk!
Now that is out of the way, Regamey’s thread breaks down how the game’s mysterious language (dubbed ‘Trunic’ by players) can not only be deciphered – a feat that this writer spent many hours trying to get his head around – but also be heard in the game in the form of, what Regamey calls, the game’s ‘audio language’.
That’s right, the intricate code that is used to read Tunic’s symbols can also be applied to its audio design, with different notes on a pentatonic arpeggio (don’t worry, Regamey breaks this all down in his thread) corresponding to the formulation of the game’s language. ‘Tuneic’ becomes ‘Trunic’, if you will.
As demonstrated in the thread, when deciphered, this audio language can be heard speaking directly to the player – announcing ‘heir to the heir’ upon defeating the Heir in ending A, or stating ‘this way, this way, fox friend’ when using the Seeker Spell to assist with ending B.
Regamey states that these tiny, near-unnoticeable details are all part of a phrase which ran throughout the game’s development: ‘content for no one’.
We used that phrase to refer to little (or large) things that we hid deeply in the game, for no other reason other than because we liked creating it, and we liked knowing that it’s there. Will anyone ever find it? Maybe. But maybe not, and that’s okay.
Be it in the details that we discovered with each new manual page, or those which may not be uncovered for years to come, we would argue that this ‘content for no one’ is precisely what makes the game so special. Yes, these details may be for nobody in particular, but that makes them very much for everyone.
What do you make of this hidden detail in Tunic? Had you come across it before? Leave your spoiler-free opinions in the comments below!