Andrew Shouldice

Andrew Shouldice is a Canadian game developer and the creator of Tunic, an isometric action-adventure starring a small fox in a world full of secrets. Before going independent he worked on point-and-click adventure games at Silverback Productions and made small games for Ludum Dare game jams. In early 2015 he left to work on his own project full time, a game first known as Secret Legend.

Shouldice designed, programmed, drew and animated most of Tunic himself in Unity, working for years essentially as a one-person studio under the name Isometricorp Games. Over time a small group of collaborators joined: composers Terence Lee (Lifeformed) and Janice Kwan, audio designer Kevin Regamey of Power Up Audio, producer Felix Kramer and, later, developer and level designer Eric Billingsley. The game was announced at E3 2017 with Finji as publisher.

Tunic launched in March 2022 on PC, Mac and Xbox, including day one on Xbox Game Pass, and came to PlayStation and Switch that September. Its signature idea is an in-game instruction manual, written largely in an invented language, whose pages the player collects to slowly decode the world, inspired by the mysterious instruction booklets of NES-era games. The game won Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game at the D.I.C.E. Awards and BAFTAs for Artistic Achievement and Debut Game, and Shouldice gave a well-received GDC 2023 talk on designing secrets.