Did you know Tunic has a secret musical language on top of its cryptic game manual?

Tunic Team’s audio designer has revealed all

Anyone who’s played the charmingTunicknows that it’s a little cryptic. There’s an immediately nonsensical language to try and decipher, for one thing. Then you’ve got anin-game manualthat’s been pulled apart, with pages strewn around the world to find before you can figure out how to do everything your little fox is capable of. Well, now audio designer Kevin Regamey has explained a whole other secret side to Tunic, and it turns out the game’s soundtrack hides a whole other language.

Spilling the beans via aTwitter thread, Regamey delved into how players could discover Tunic’s audio secrets, and how they can be decoded. It’s probably best to be aware there’ll be some spoilers involved, so do take care.

“Early in development, we imagined the game having a ‘voice’ of sorts - a voice that the player was not equipped to interpret,” Regamey said. “SO. I designed a musical cipher - heard throughout the entire game, but never acknowledged.”

Tunic’s mysterious written language of “Trunic” is phonetic, Regamey explained, with its characters generally representing paired consonant and vowels. Figuring this language out can lead players to the Glyph Tower, which directs them to thiswebsite. Download the site’s audio and view it in spectrogram mode, and Tunic’s secret audio language is revealed. These are composed of glyphs too, but correspond directly with pentatonic arpeggios. Regamey says players have dubbed this audio language “Tuneic”.

Regamey’s audio shenanigans with Tuneic require a little music theory to understand perfectly, and I’m about as musical as a windchime in a microwave, so I’ll spare you any long-winded, botched explanations. Essentially, the arpeggios are the musical equivalent of the game’s written Trunic language, hiding ‘words’ throughout Tunic’s soundtrack. Here are some examples:

Anyway! “Tuneic” shows up all over the game.It’s in UI sounds, like when you start a new game:pic.twitter.com/HQRzi9apgj

Finding a secret directs your attention:pic.twitter.com/rSYhBvAXbj

And of course, the door in the mountains:pic.twitter.com/QvJ5HFop7L

Tunic is onSteam,GOG, and theEpic Games Storefor £25/$30/€28, and you can also play it onGame Passif you’re a subscriber.