The tunic manual was physically crafted for in-game authenticity

The adorable fox-themed tunic is making the jump to PlayStation and Switch soon. Ahead of these releases, its developer shared some behind-the-scenes details of the game’s manual, including how a real one was created to ensure the game’s authenticity.

Sharing on the PlayStation Blog, Tunic lead developer Andrew Shouldice expressed his love for old-school playbooks. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my love for this kind of mystery came not just from the games, but also from the manuals they were packaged with,” Shouldice wrote, stating that he would “examine these documents endlessly “.

Shouldice’s love for these manuals was such that he decided to incorporate one into the gameplay of Tunic. In this case, the player picks up pages for the manual as they go through the game’s mystery word. These are then pieced together, allowing the player to uncover more of Tunic’s many (many) secrets.

But just having a manual alone wasn’t enough for Shouldice. He wanted it to feel as authentic as possible and capture the feeling of flipping through those old-time brochures. This led the developer to recreate a physical manual, which he then crumpled and tore to give it that weathered look.

“It’s fine to look at a nice, clean image, but it’s more enjoyable to flick through something that looks like an actual object,” Shouldice wrote.

“We’ve gone the extra mile to replicate the artifacts of old printing processes, even going so far as to have visible staples in the middle of the book. Pressing the X button will let you zoom in on each page and drink in the details To help make it as real as possible, I built a real version of the manual and then destroyed it, folded, tore, taped and stained.

Shouldice went on to state that he then scanned every page of his “destroyed” manual into the game itself. These pages were left blank, however, to give the team the flexibility to “compose whatever [it] necessary without reprinting and re-stressing a new manual.”

Shouldice concluded that the overall effect of this method is “subtle”, but that he thinks it is “worth it” for the game.

Eurogamer gave Tunic a rare Essential badge when it released earlier this year, with Donlan remarking how the game “transforms its many influences into something that feels both familiar and gloriously new”.

Tunic will be released on PlayStation consoles on September 27. It will also be coming to Nintendo Switch on the same day.