The creation of Tunic’s invaluable in-game manual

blog.playstation.com:

Hi everyone! My name’s Andrew, and I’m the primary developer on Tunic, which is coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on September 27. 

Tunic is an isometric action-adventure about a tiny fox in a big world, where you explore, fight monsters, and find secrets. At its core, however, the game is about mystery and discovery. Well before I started work on the project (which was originally named Secret Legend) I wanted to make a game that captured the feeling of the vast unknown — that delicious feeling of being dropped into a world full of secrets. A stranger in a strange land, ready to uncover its mysteries.

One of the ways I wanted to help players feel like they were in a world that wasn’t meant for them was to fill the game with a strange, unreadable language. Instead of a signpost telling you what’s around the next corner, it would show you some baffling symbols. Instead of the inventory screen labeling things sensibly, it would use the same unknowable runes. It was meant to evoke a feeling of transgression — like you were playing something you shouldn’t. When I was a young kid learning to read, I would play games and be bewildered by the words in them. What better way to evoke that feeling of childlike wonder than to have the text itself be a mystery!

The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that my love for this kind of mystery came not just from the games, but from the manuals they were packaged with. (Or “Instruction Booklets” as they were often called.) I would pore over these documents endlessly, while my friends were playing the games themselves. They filled my head with thoughts of grand adventures, incredible treasures, and terrible creatures — all untempered by the realities of the cartridges