Tunic is an indie videogame by Isometricorp that is usually described as having (early) Legend of Zelda-style gameplay combined with (apparently) Dark Souls-esque combat.
(Don't worry if that sounds like something you wouldn't like - there's settings that you can use to make things easier and more fun!)
At the start of the game, you are given as little information as the game can get away with; no backstory, no goals, relevant button prompts at most.
Instead, throughout the game you pick up pages from the game's manual, which slowly teaches you how to play and what to do.
There are puzzles.
Honestly? If you at the very least don't mind games with hidden puzzles, then I'd recommend it to you.
On top of that, I'd also recommend it if you like any one of the following:
Don't forget, there are settings that you can use if you don't like the combat. There's no penalty for using them, either.
This is one of those games (like OneShot and Outer Wilds) that you really should go into with knowing as little as possible about it.
So, if you haven't played it and you think from the brief summary above that you might enjoy it, stop reading this now.
(In the following sections, the spoiler markers also kind of serve as headers. Click on them to reveal the spoilers)
This is the first instance in the game where you realise how helpful the manual can (and will) be - page 18 teaches you how to offer relics to improve your stats.
The mechanic used to do this is obscured without the page, as the game gives you a different button prompt (to heal & reset) in front of statues.
ooh look a plot twist!
The first time I encountered tzuu fax shox (the spirit world/fast travel area) after making an offering I noticed that my stats were reset.
This made me think that "haha, wouldn't it be really mean if there was a boss fight here?"
I then realised that where the Heir's sword was located looked ominously like an. arena.
...so uh. Yeah. The fox that you've been trying to save all game kills you!! And now you have no more stats!!!
"(The golden path) is the best puzzle in all of videogaming" - Pointcrow, 2023
Once you know of the golden path, it's completely impossible to not see it when you look at the manual ever again. To the point where it's hard to believe that you missed every single segment of it right until you knew about it.
I know this section has a spoiler marker, but. I can't even put into words how much I love this puzzle. (To the point where I bought a physical copy of the manual lol).
But that's not everything that this game has to offer.
(Fun trivia: the golden path is exactly 100 inputs long!)
First things, as a person who is interested in conlangs, I can't call Trunic a language. It's not. It's a phonetic cipher for English.
Anyway, I may or may not have the entire thing memorised. Here's an image that describes how the cipher works.
hopfuuli yu haav tzuu fant loduud.
An interesting pattern/mnemonic that I noticed is that in every voiced/voiceless consonant pair present, they are always vertically mirrored. Some examples:
Additionally, almost every consonant can be derived either from its English counterpart or from that rule. Here are the ones that look like English letters, somewhat:
| b | f | h | j | k | l | m | n | p | r | s | t | þ (th) | w | y | z |
| b | f | h | j | k | l | m | n | p | r | s | t | th | w | y | z |
And here are the ones that can be derived from the above using the voicedness rule:
| ch | d | g | ð (th) | v | |
| ch | d | g | tz | v | |
| j | t | k | þ (th) | f | ← Derived from |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| j | t | k | th | f |
These are the only exceptions (but sh/zh still follow the voicedness rule!):
| sh | zh | ng |
| sh | zh | ng |
As for memorising the vowels, memorising things in flipped pairs like this was helpful, but it was definitely trickier than with the consonants.
okay but like, imagine if there were more secrets than the hidden holy cross puzzles. wouldn't that be wild?
wait.
Yeah so once you've both figured out how to solve the glyph tower puzzle (which you only unlock after getting a few golden statues and finding the statue room), it gives you some trunic text:
du yu fix tzi aiz oov tzuu fax shox . ko
This translates to... a link. To doyoufeartheeyesofthefarshore.co. This site has a very ominous audio file playing in the background, which turns out has some trunic text that is visible when viewed as a spectrogram.
More interestingly, though, is that in this view some arpeggios are visible alongside the trunic text, which as it turns out is another cipher, dubbed Tune-ic.
(I don't have this one memorised lol)
Anyway, that's all of the hidden ciphers that we know of for this game, but there is another one that's still unconfirmed, (T)hue-nic.
