Retro (TimeExtension) “The making of Tunic, a love letter to the secrets of retro gaming.”

[PixelKnight]

The Making Of: Tunic, A Love Letter To The Secrets Of Retro Gaming

"It’s wonderful. I feel very fortunate"

www.timeextension.com

Good interview with lead developer Andrew Shouldice about influences here. I said in a thread recently that it was interesting when interviews with developers throw up influences beyond the obvious ones, and the same is true here.

It’s an interesting point about the link between nostalgia and what we don’t understand (or didn’t understand). That game worlds felt bigger (comparatively- you can probably run across Hyrule in Zelda 1 in under a minute) as we didn’t know the boundaries, the hints at hidden secrets drove us onwards to try to uncover them, some only being truly, finally unpacked years later as guides were disseminated on the internet.

“We had a copy of Super Mario Bros. at home," he explains. "One of my memories was finding the Warp Zone for the first time. I want to think of it as this important moment with a lot of gravitas… I was very young at the time. The word ‘Zone’ was an unusual one that I probably hadn’t seen before. Warp was a word that I hadn’t seen before. [Walking along the top of the level], doing something that feels like you would break the game… and then it says a bunch of words you don’t understand. It was paralysing and wonderful. I feel like that moment, being overly poetic about it, rippled forward with unknowable languages and new, secret potential.”.

Obviously this leads into Tunic’s language and, well, I’ll stop there- spoilers etc.

I always think of when one of the staff from Yacht Club games was talking about Shovel Knight and NES nostalgia, and how they aimed to get close to what your memories of NES games were, not literally be bound by the actual abilities of the console. A sort of connection where the modern game is aiming to line-up with your rose-tinted memories. It’s interesting to see that same logic here, that the art of really keying into nostalgia for NES games isn’t in just being a NES game, but capturing feelings. Like flicking through a manual while your friends and siblings play, or feeling like you’ve broken a game, or a sense of wonder when you’re heading along a secret path that was designed to make you feel that way.

More influences and non-spoilery discussion at the link, it’s a good read.

 

[Chaotic Neutral]

I really do love the concept of the in-game instructions manual. I remember almost always reading the instructions manuals before booting up games when I was a kid and they added so much to the experience. I'm all for the digitalisation of the medium (for environmental reasons mostly) but the interplay between games and written addenda and compliments - plus instruction manuals and strategy guides - are definitely getting lost in the shuffle. I think this also contributed to the mass of Minecraft's success at the outset. Most people I know who played the game back in 2009 for more than a session with friends every now and then also read recipes online or in books and fan lore online.

Sorry, this became more of a ramble than intended. But anyway: More screen boundary breaking in gaming, please.

 

[PixelKnight]

I always remember reading the instruction manual in the back of my dad’s car. It was such a big event for me to get a NES game outside of Christmas, I’d be really excited. It was only like a 15 minute drive back from the shops but I’d be poring over every page, looking at the art and memorising instructions!

 

[Supreme Overlord]

While I haven't been able to play Tunic yet -- and I'm sure it'll he a bit of time yet before I can get to it -- everything I've heard of the game sounds amazing, and this is just a further exploration of that.

I really do appreciate this take on game design, and the translation of nostalgia in this space is an attribute I would like to see explored and employed more.

And the manner in which different elements of the creator's particular nostalgia are translated in this case is the creative implementation that will make it work, from the use of secrets to the ubiquity of a cryptic language -- and how these elements came to be. This sort of implementation will manifest differently given individuals involved in creation.

All employed to invoke that sense of wonder, that there's more to the world than just what sits in view.

I'm definitely a proponent of adding secrets to games, especially when they just make sense within the world and expand it further, and the idea of including secrets even with the view that most people might never discover them -- while perhaps infeasible for many productions -- has long struck me as worth the pursuit.

To think this can all still be strived for in the era of data mining. The thought itself brings with it a nostalgic sense of yearning.