Today, multi-studio developer Dreamhaven, founded four years ago by former Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime, announced its first internal game, Sunderfolk. It’s a tactical cooperative adventure game inspired by tabletop roleplaying games and set in a fantasy world made by Dreamhaven’s Secret Door team.
Sunderfolk features an unfolding narrative that will take adventurers on a quest through the Sunderlands, starting in Arden, their idyllic home village, which they’ve been recruited to save. As they battle their way through the mines, wilds, and labyrinths of the game’s fictional world, players will meet colorful characters, discover hidden secrets, and develop new cooperative strategies to defeat their enemies. One of the twists of Sunderfolk is that each player can use their phone or tablet to control their character during a session that can be either local (couch co-op is fully supported) or online.
Chris Sigaty, Secret Door’s studio head, said:
We have a bunch of dedicated board and tabletop game fanatics on the team at Secret Door—getting together for game night has been a regular highlight for many of us going back years and years. As developers we also like to look at what inspires us and think about how to make those types of experiences easier to get into, so that more people can enjoy them as much as we do. With Sunderfolk, we’re excited to offer players a game that’s easy to pick up and play, while still challenging to master, and we can’t wait to share it with the world.
Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Dreamhaven, added:
The team at Secret Door, and really all of us at Dreamhaven, are all about bringing players together around fun experiences. Sunderfolk is a beautiful game, it’s full of personality and charm, and it also creates epic moments where everyone is engaging directly with each other to work out strategies or celebrate victories. There’s nothing quite like it, and we’re really looking forward to seeing what players think.
Sunderfolk features six different heroes (Arcanist, Bard, Berserker, Pyromancer, Ranger, Rogue), each with their own strategic role and passive abilities. Players can customize them and equip them with weapons, armor, items, and skills as they level up. In battle, players must strategize positioning and turn order, selecting from their deck of Skill Cards to perform moves, attacks, and use items. Luck is also a factor, with Fate Cards played each turn that can affect their effectiveness. As missions are completed, players gain experience and rewards, gradually unlocking ways to customize their decks. After the missions, players will return to Arden, the party’s base of operations, to upgrade merchants for new items and equipment and befriend the townspeople for rewards.
Interestingly, when Sunderfolk is released at some point next year on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and Nintendo Switch, only one copy of the game (which is a premium title with TBD pricing) will be required to start a four-player session, clearly an attempt to incentivize non-hardcore gamers to try it.
Progress from one session will carry over to the next (tied to the host’s game), so groups can pick up where they left off without having to start over. If a party member is unable to make a session or has to leave early, the host can choose to take control of that person’s Hero so that the Hero is ready to continue the quest when the person returns.
Similarly, if one or two players miss a session, the remaining players can continue the adventure without any problems. When the missing players return, they’ll gain the same level (and corresponding Skill Cards) as the rest of the party, but they’ll lose any gold and other items collected during the missed missions. (However, players can trade gold and items with each other while in town, so the loot from all missions can eventually be distributed however the players wish.
players choose).
