Sitting down with Andrew Shouldice, fresh off the back of a double BAFTA win, conversation immediately wanders away from the topic of how this award-winning game was made, and onto the question of notebooks. Shouldice leans over the table to admire ours, a little black Moleskine affair, and it’s only after a good few minutes on the relative benefits of stitched versus ringbound that we actually get back to the point at hand. An unexpected tangent, certainly – but one that, as it turns out, speaks to the important role such apparatus played in Tunic’s development.
This shouldn’t, perhaps, come as a surprise. After all, Tunic makes clear Shouldice’s fondness for good old-fashioned paper and ink through its in-game instruction manual. Loaded with beautifully illustrated maps, with hints written in a glyph cipher and biro annotations left by some unseen hand, it feels like a gentle suggestion that you might want to keep your own notetaking equipment to hand, in order to track the game’s many secrets, and perhaps even dabble in a little translation if you choose.
Catching up again with Shouldice, now back home in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he produces the notebook that contains the very first inklings of this game, and tells us it dates back to 2010 – five years before Tunic’s development began. Not that players would necessarily recognise its contents, he explains: “It’s got notes for games that did not end up becoming Tunic. Stuff like, ‘What if it was a pixel game where you’re just a little guy who’s, like, seven pixels tall?’”
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
CHANTS OF SENNAAR
How Babel helped a world of stealth become a world of words
MEGHNA JAYANTH
Around the industry in eight games: one writer's journey through indie to triple-A and back again.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist
Sam Fisher's final outing is also his most enigmatic
Post Script
How low should a boss go?
TWO POINT STUDIOS
How a new studio rose from the ashes of Lionhead success not simulated
RAIDERS OF THE ARCHIVE
Wolfenstein-style shootouts are just a small part of the picture in MachineGames' maximalist Indy game
SPLITGATE 2
If it ain't broke, don't fix Split
KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE II
A bigger, better - and funnier Bohemian rhapsody
Narrative Engine
Write it like you stole it
The Outer Limits
Journeys fo the farthest reaches of interactive entertainment