Tunche News

Welcome back to an all-new Tunche Development Blog!

As you may already know, one of the reasons we decided to make Tunche was that we wanted to show players other ancestral cultures in Latin America besides Inca and Maya. Even our own country, Peru, has more than 10, each with rich enough folklore and lore to make a whole game about.
When we decided to make a game about the myths and legends of the Amazon rainforest we knew we had to exalt every single aspect of the culture: lore, creatures, and an integral part of the amazon folklore, the music.



The music of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest

There are two main types of music from the area that we are focusing on: the timeless sounds of the tribes of the Amazon and the more modern sounds of “cumbia chicha” music.

Traditional Music

This music is inspired by ancestral tunes and rhythms of all the different tribes that live along the Amazon River and beyond. It is heavily influenced by winds that resemble the sounds of the animals and mystical creatures of the rainforest.

Tribal music

Whenever we hear these kinds of sounds, we imagine a tribal setting deep inside the jungle with shamans dancing and performing rituals. The music emanates the mystical and magic aspect of the cultures of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest and it is something we want to show all of you in Tunche as well.



Cumbia Chicha Music

Next, cumbia chicha. This type of sound is the modern equivalent of tribal music. It is meant to be a reevaluation of the traditional customs and folklore of the amazon people while also modernizing it in order to make it fit in modern times.

One particular thing about this kind of music is its use of a special kind of guitar, one we call here at the studio the “chicha guitar”.

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As you can see, this type of guitar is somewhat psychedelic. Its distorted sounds are the ones that transport you to an oasis-like setting when you listen to them and in Perú I can certainly tell you that when we hear this type of sound we instantly think about the riverbed of the Amazon river. It's quite ingrained in our imagination. These iconic sounds from the rainforests are the pillars of Tunche music.



Fusing it all together

Once we knew what our pillars were it was time to turn them into actual songs for the game. Because of this, we had to establish some rules

- Every single track should have the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest’s music DNA.
- Every track must have the necessary energy worthy of an action game.
- Every track should have both low energy and high energy versions in order to change between combat and non-combat states.
- Instruments should enter and exit the song dynamically in order to make every single run through the worlds of Tunche sound a little bit different.



To make this possible we partnered with the ultra-talented team at The Audio Hive. They have made the soundtracks of games such games as Dauntless and Remnant: From the Ashes and we are really excited for you guys to listen to what we have created together.
The task was not easy, as we had to fuse both chicha music, traditional amazonian music and what would you expect from an action game (guitars, drums, and so on) but after so many versions I really think we have struck gold. Here is a sneak peek.

River teaser

You can hear the chicha guitar playing at full force with an upbeat rhythm and being accompanied by some amazon winds and percussions like timbales. This is what we meant by keeping the Amazon DNA, every single part of the pillars is there, we are just fusing them with other elements to make your adventure even more powerful.


Jungle teaser

Here is another example where the amazon winds take center stage and make you reminisce of the typical amazon tribal sounds that we talked about in the previous section. Again, this type of fusion is what we consider 'the sweet spot' of sorts and we hope you'll love it as much as we do.



What should you expect?

From a chicha induced battle theme to empowering hard rock tunes and many different kinds of weird stuff, these tracks are designed to connect you to the cultures of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest while also making you feel like a total badass while playing Tunche.

For those of you who have never heard the culture’s music before, we hope these tracks serve as the first step in your journey of discovering the amazing sounds the Amazon rainforest has to offer.

We hope this post makes you as excited as we are for the game’s music and we will have more info to share with you soon.

Stay safe.

Francisco - Tunche’s lead programmer.

Hello, everyone!

It's our great pleasure to announce that Tunche is heading to PAX 2020.
You can catch us on the PAX show floor during the event at the Hypetrain Digital booth here

Hello again!

Hope you are all doing well. It hasn’t been that long this time. Has it? But just like I said last time, we want to keep the communication between the dev team and our fans a bit more frequent, so here I am writing a new devblog letting you know what is up in the world of Tunche’s development.

The team is still hard at work here in Lima, Perú, and the situation is still as complicated as last time, with the COVID-19 pandemic still going strong. However we are doing our best to make sure the game is as good as possible and in order to do that, we have to work on each and every aspect of it.

And since we have already talked about the characters and you have had the chance to try out our demos and experience combat directly, I think this is a good chance to talk about something we haven’t mentioned that much before: How will we tell our story?

Tunche has a story? You might be asking. Isn’t it just about beating monsters and bosses to become stronger? Well, it is, but there’s also a plot behind the adventure.

But before I get too much into it, I want to assure those that might be worried about spoilers that I will not ruin anything important for you (or for us. After all, that would be leaking info we don’t want to get leaked)

1. The World of Tunche

As most of you know, Tunche’s story takes place within the Latin-American amazonian jungle. This is a beautiful place full of exotic plant and animal life. But also full of magic and legends people tell their children about. Some of these are terrifying stories about beasts such as the Mapinguari or Tunche itself.


It is not our intention to retell any of these folklore tales directly in-game, but to take many of their elements and make them our own in a whole new tale. This way characters from other legends, like the aforementioned ones, become a part of ours.





When people have asked me about this, I like to (humbly) compare our use of these myths to the way the God of War series uses greek mythology. Mapinguari, Boutu, and the other fantasy beasts from the jungle become our bosses and also allies to the main villain of the story. Each one of them is the master of their own territory and commands their own personal army of lesser magical beasts.





The player, taking control of Rumi, Qaru, Nayra, Pancho, or Hat Kid will get the chance to face each one of them after defeating their minions and eventually meet with the main bad guy behind the chaos in the jungle.

But, as is usually the case, these heroes have embarked in a mission not only to do good but for other personal reasons as well.

2. Story Rooms / Lore Comics

This is where Story Rooms come in. These specialized rooms can be found within each procedurally generated level and present a little bit of our character's backstory and will.

Once a player enters one of these rooms, they will trigger a special scene where they will be able to read a comic lovingly drawn and painted by our studio’s artists. Each comic tells, through 4 or more pages, one of the chapters for each hero’s tale.





The stories we will tell through the story rooms will change depending on which character the player (or players) is using when they go into the room. For example, Rumi’s story will focus on her past and her responsibilities as part of a tribe of jungle shamans and magic users, Nayra’s story will focus on her current journey to prove herself as a worthy warrior to her people and so on.

Each one of the game’s levels holds one chapter of a hero’s story and this will depend on which character you are playing as. This means that in order for you to know the full story of Tunche you will have to play with each one of the available playable protagonists and go through the whole game at least once.





As you can see, there’s a lot more than just slaying monsters and plowing through enemy filled levels in Tunche and we really hope you take the time to read these comics and learn more about our characters, their motivation and their world.

That’s it for today, but I’ll be back soon with more info to share with you!

Stay safe!

Jorge - Tunche’s game director

Hello, everybody!

It’s been a long time since the last dev update. Hope you are all doing well. I know we have kept quiet lately, but we were working hard on Tunche. We are beginning a series of monthly Dev Blogs in the months leading to the release of the game!

Even though we are currently in the middle of quarantine in our country (Peru) the team at LEAP Game Studios have been hard at work from each of our homes developing Tunche and what better way to get in touch again that to let you know about some of the many things we’ve been working on since our last update.

So let’s begin.

1 - Our final playable character: Pancho

Many of you had the chance to try out Tunche’s most recent demo during Steam’s Spring and Summer Games Festivals. In both of them, the players could pick from 4 different characters: Our original hero Rumi, the small bird-boy Qaru, the fierce and quite popular warrior Nayra and of course our beloved guest character HatKid from A Hat in Time. However, they are not the only playable protagonists that will be included in the final game.

There’s a fifth hero, the big but gentle music-loving Pancho is the latest and final one to join the roster for Tunche.



Even though he clearly fits in the “big guy” category, he is also quite agile like the rest of the team. Pancho uses his fists and body for his melee attacks and combo finishers and makes up for their lack in range with his magical guitar which can produce sonic waves that can actually hurt many enemies at once.

We have put a lot of effort into making Pancho another viable option for Tunche’s players and hopefully, he will be a favorite of many of you once you get the chance to play as him.

2 - New backgrounds and procedural structure

As stated from the very beginning of our campaign, Tunche is a procedural beat 'em up title. As such, and as many other games with rogue-lite mechanics, all of its levels are formed by combining many playable blocks one after the other. You could consider these blocks as the equivalent to “dungeon rooms” in games like Rogue Legacy or Hades.

Of course, most of Tunche’s environments are not closed rooms or dark dungeons, but parts of the jungle. Whether you are fighting in the middle of the jungle, near the amazon river, or within a cave, you will always find nature-based backgrounds and elements in each one of our playable blocks.



On all of our public demos, including the original Tunche Arena demo, we have always made sure to only include blocks from our first level, which we commonly refer to as “The Jungle” (not the final name) We did this on purpose in order to keep as much of the game’s world as a surprise for the final game.

Then again, we also know this might make some players feel like all of the blocks are way too similar. That is why I wanted to show some a bit of what levels 2 and 3 will look like while also letting you see how even within the same levels, backgrounds will constantly change to let the player know they are getting closer to each boss lair.



Our artists have been hard at work to make sure that, even though blocks are procedurally generated, they look different enough from each other while keeping the beauty of Tunche’s art direction intact.

3 - Backer Enemies and other Backer Content

One thing all of Tunche’s level will have in common is that they will all have enemies within for the player to face and defeat in combat and here’s where our dear backers have helped us out during these last few months.

Back during the Kickstarter campaign, many of you earned the chance to be a part of the game design process by lending your creations to the game in the form of new enemies, collectible items, or power-ups and we couldn’t be more thankful for that.




This time, however, I wanted to write specifically about our backer-designed enemies. Our design team received many interesting and amazing creatures from you and managed to work together in an effort to make sure they fit within the universe of Tunche. Thanks to that developer/backer team effort we managed to animate and code many really cool enemies for our heroes to fight, some of which I’d like to share here. As a matter of fact, one of those enemies was already present in our latest limited time demo!



I want to send a special thanks to each enemy’s creator for their time and support and I’m sure you will all be happy and satisfied with your monsters once you finally get the chance to fight against them.

4 - The Future

And on that last note, I don’t want to close this dev blog before saying a few things related to the long time Tunche’s development has been taking so far.

Even though we do not have an exact release date yet, we have not stopped working and the game is getting closer to completion every day. I just ask you to please wait for a little longer to allow us to make the best game we can and for you to be proud to have been a part of this campaign.

Like I mentioned at the very beginning of this update, we will write a lot more often from now on (at least once a month) until the game releases. Which might be sooner than you think.

Also, as a final extra little bit of news, Tunche will be featured on Day of the Devs along with many other really cool games this Monday, July 20th, in a whole new video. Here’s the link to the announcement. Don’t miss it!

That is all for today, but I’ll be back with many more Tunche news soon.

Stay safe!

Jorge - Tunche’s game director

As part of the Steam Summer Fest, we are planning to hold a Q&A session a day before the dev stream!
Ask the devs anything you want to know about the game, it's mechanics, the games unique hand-drawn style, the characters, and more!

Tune in via Discord
or ask your questions on Twitter

Don't forget to try out the demo and tune in for the Q&A session on June 19, 5 PM UTC