Tunic's instruction manual and the Zelda art that inspired it

As several members of the RPS Treehouse can attest, I have not been able to stop playing Tunic this week. I was a little cautious going in, having not particularly gelled with the E3 demo from last year, but in hindsight, that early glimpse was nothing but the tip of a tiny fox nose peeking out of its burrow. In its full, regal splendour, Tunic has become an early game of the contender for me, and a large part of that is down to its wonderfully clever in-game instruction manual. When Imogen (RPS in peace) interviewed Tunic dev Andrew Shouldice last September, they talked about how instruction manuals were a fundamental part of a game's design back in the days of the NES, and at one point he even pulled out his old instruction booklet for Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link to demonstrate some of the "tantalising hints" they'd offer to curious players. As Brendan (also RPS in peace) noted in our Tunic review, the in-game manual is indeed a critical part of what makes Tunic special, and the act of piecing it together page by page really does capture that feeling of discovering some great secret that only you and the dev team know about. But here's a secret between you and me: it's not by chance Shouldice pulled out that old Zelda II manual during our interview last year. His fox hero may be cut from the same cloth as Nintendo's green sword-swinger, but the art inside Tunic's instruction manual also pays a wonderful tribute to those Zelda booklets of yore, too. Read more