#9 - Tunic’s Secret Legend

Explicit content warning

07/29/21 • 36 min

Press Play

In 2017, an adventure game was shown to the world for the first time at The PC Gaming Show at that year’s E3. Then initially known as Secret Legend – shorthanded by certain players as ‘Fox game’ – it was given new life under the name of Tunic. Numerous showings of Tunic at various events and multiple trailers have given it many comparisons to The Legend of Zelda with an adorable fox.

But Tunic director Andrew Shouldice wants you to come away with the thought that it’s more than merely just its Zelda inspiration.

“Occasionally, you’ll see someone say like, ‘Oh, I sat down to play this cute game and I was pleasantly surprised that it was not what I was expecting,” says Shouldice. “‘It is challenging, it is mysterious, it is not putting all its cards on the table at once’. And that’s great. That’s what we want.

“Occasionally, people will see it and be like, ‘Oh, I thought that this would be a game that I could sit my four-year-old in front of and just have them have no problem with it’ and they might be a little bit disappointed about that.

“I wonder if people will see it and think, you know, ‘breezy Zelda clone’. And what I hope is that they are able to experience it on its own merits and be excited to explore a challenging, mysterious world full of secrets around every corner.”

Ahead of its impending launch soon...ish – a release timeline isn’t forthcoming when we talk – Shouldice talks in part of how Tunic intends to charm the world through adventure, mystery and more.

But Tunic director Andrew Shouldice wants you to come away with the thought that it’s more than merely just its Zelda inspiration.

Previous Episode

#8 - The Road to PlayStation 5

It all starts again for Sony tomorrow.

By the time this goes out, PlayStation 5 will launch in two waves, starting tomorrow in North America, Japan and other countries (in fact, it's already rolling out in Australia and New Zealand) - but not the EU and UK. That’ll come next Thursday. With those two launch waves and the global launch of Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X yesterday as this goes out, it marks the end of another transition between the now outgoing-gen and the just starting next-gen.

By right of being the more successful first-party from what we’ll now refer to here as the last-generation, Sony should be going into this incoming generation with PlayStation 5 the market leader. But despite that, it also faces a more game (no pun intended) Microsoft this time round with Xbox Series S/X who’ve not put a foot wrong in the build-up to this generation unlike last time with Xbox One or even Sony’s past mistakes with PlayStation 3. And even this time round, Sony has slipped up in one or two big ways.

With PlayStation 5 24 hours from release at this point, the second of two episodes of Press Play this week takes a look at how we got to this point in time as we head towards tomorrow's first launch wave and then the second wave next Thursday.

Next Episode

#10 - Button City and the Power of Friendship

If you only go in from the outset of Button City thinking its core theme is being a love letter to games, you wouldn’t be that far off. Subliminal Gaming co-founders Ryan and Shandiin Woodward certainly helped shape Button City with that motif in mind. But there’s another aspect too that feels instrumental to what Button City is about at its core: friendship.

“A lot of their tactics to try to save the arcade just don’t fully help, honestly,” says Ryan Woodward. “I think that was something that we kind of wanted to be like, ‘Hey, sometimes, things are a little bit bigger than just you, you know’. But I think it’s really more about the friends you made along the way or something like that.”

Adds Shandiin Woodward: “I hope people are able to see the characters and find characters that they resonate with. We tried to really make a very colourful, diverse cast. People with different family structures, characters with disabilities, characters with different personalities and dynamics. And I hope people find someone that they can relate to or latch on to.”

Several years after development began, next week, Button City will release into the world. Here, the Woodwards go into detail about how it was shaped, its themes of friendship, the slice of life influences and more and how the power of friendship shines through the game.

[NOTE: This is a change in a previously-advertised episode on Skatebird. That will, however, arrive next month just before the game launches]

Links: Play Diaries|Twitter|Facebook