Sunderfolk makes for a surprisingly good virtual tabletop night

The “digital board game” has long been an intriguing proposition. Tabletop has always had an influence on its digital cousin, but the reverse has happened just as often. Sunderfolk is the latest evolution in that effort. It’s a video game meant to evoke the feeling of an evolving tabletop role-playing campaign, melding the flexibility of a digital space with the presentation and thought processes of an in-person game night. And somehow, Sunderfolk actually pulls it off.

Sunderfolk was made by a number of former Blizzard developers at Secret Door, under the rapidly growing publisher Dreamhaven. The idea is to, essentially, create a tabletop game night in a virtual landscape. Everything operates through not just a single screen, but multiple devices. You’ll need one big screen, playing Sunderfolk from a PC or console, but gameplay is handled through smartphones rather than controllers.

Opening Sunderfolk on Steam, for example, pulls up a QR code for players to scan, leading them to the Sunderfolk player app. From there, it’s fairly easy to scan the code and join. It’s not quite as simple as the browser-driven Jackbox, but it’s easy enough, and this system deftly avoids hassles like codes or tricky sign-ins. Scan a code, and you’ve got a seat in the game.

From there, the players can choose from several animal warriors to play as, from the towering Berserker (Bear-serker?) to the bat Bard or horned Ranger. The character designs are fantastic, bringing to mind the likes of Redwall, and their archetypes lay out a fairly legible game plan for whoever you pick. The bear likes to battle, the Pyromancer creates fire, etc. But alongside picking your character, you also get to create a name, the first of many times that Secret Door lets players dip their quill and ink over pieces of Sunderfolk. 

Over the course of a week, I played through roughly half of Sunderfolk‘s campaign in a fairly stable trio. (While Sunderfolk makes it easy to run a digital game night, you’ll still have to navigate the human problem of organizing around myriad schedules and conflicts, the archenemy of all social gatherings.) Throughout our campaign, we each got prompts on our own devices to tinker with the world of Sunderfolk. In one mission, I got to change the name of Shrines, a somewhat frequent bastion of healing amid the chaos of battle. I called it a Butt. Another player in our group labelled an enemy class “Zoomers,” and it became so ubiquitous that I cannot remember what the original class was called.

While you do get notified when someone has created a name, it can still lead to funny moments of opening the Tavern and seeing someone has put Baja Blast on the menu, or that the Oracle’s boat has been dubbed Rocinante. It’s not just naming, though; Sunderfolk also feeds bits of lore and world-building to you through the second screen in your palm, whether that’s a helpful hint or some flavor text to amplify the world you’re in.

Interplay between the “main” screen and the second screen works smoothly and with very few hitches. When you’re in town between quests, characters can go off and engage in conversation with townsfolk, building up relationships and making dialogue choices. These all happen on each individual phone, giving everyone their own little respite. Downtime is metered by what your group wants to do, and on the main screen, character icons jump all around as each person builds up their own side stories. The dialogue tools caught me by surprise too, as characters remembered choices I’d made about my backstory or even romantic interests and responded in kind.

Once everyone’s geared up and ready to roll out, you head to the gates and vote to select a mission. In practice, battles play out like one would expect a tabletop role-playing game to play out. It’s turn- and grid-based, and each character has a lineup of skills to use that gradually grows over time. My Berserker was a potent frontliner for the team, comfortable with charging into the fray, throwing enemies around, taunting and drawing aggro, and swinging in wide arcs. Our Bard played off this, opting to manipulate positioning, and even moving me around a bit to help set me up for objectives or holding a chokepoint.

Controls for combat are fairly remarkable in their own right. Rather than use a smaller version of the board, the “main screen” acts as the pseudo-tabletop for battles, and players can use their mobile devices to move a cursor around like a mouse. It was surprisingly intuitive and accurate, and aside from a few mis-taps (some of which I will ascribe to user error), the tech works very well. I also love having tabs where I can pull up my abilities, other players’ abilities, and even monster and environmental info, all as the fight is playing out on the main screen. It cuts down on clutter but also gives you all the information you might want from a manual or book right there in your mobile phone.

The maps quickly get inventive and interesting, too. Different obstacles and hazards start to litter the field, and Secret Door gets creative with some of the scenarios. I liked how certain missions felt like really solid, novel encounters that a creative DM might invent. A standout for me was a mission where we had to get the “mine carts,” which were giant beetles, online again. Each turn, between our squad’s and the enemies’, the beetles would surge forward on their tracks, slamming everything in their path. Pulling enemies onto the tracks and locking them in place to get run over by beetles never got old.

While there are numerous ways to simply move and do damage, more often than not, Sunderfolk has interesting ability interactions that play with positioning, hazards, and map control as much as they deal with raw numbers. Characters like the Ranger or Bard can create traps for the enemy, while the Berserker can displace and throw foes. Putting bad guys in a bottomless pit is always entertaining, and even when the plan is just to do damage, there are usually a few extra decisions to make that had our group planning and counting tiles. Add on Ultimates, which are powerful abilities with a team-wide cooldown, and we were frequently encouraged to communicate, discuss, and work together. Though we each still found opportunities to sneak away from the fight for a little bit of gold to fill our personal coffers, of course.

Rather than rolling dice, every player has a deck of Fate Cards, which they draw whenever they use an ability. These fall into three categories: Blue (positive), Black (neutral), and Red (negative). So if I went to damage an enemy with an attack that normally deals 4 damage, drawing a Blue card might bump that up to 6, or a Red card could drop it to a measly 2 damage.

Over time, players build up their Fate deck, affording tons of options for swapping them around and specializing. While you take a 10-card deck into battle — 3 Blue, 3 Red, 4 Black — you can add many, many more to your collection, adding a little deck-builder twist. While a “+2” can be powerful, a “+1 and add 1 Strength” makes for a compelling replacement.

My Berserker finally “clicked” for me when I realized his newest weapon, a hammer made of bone, activated its weakening powers whenever I drew an especially low Fate card. Normally, this would be a tough exchange to offset. But as our crew spent money upgrading the town back home, visiting the Oracle for more Fate card options, and leveling up, I started getting Red cards with interesting side effects. One might be a -2, but it would also Heal or Shield me for 2 pips, or deal 2 damage to every enemy around me. Now, I had a build that could turn those drawbacks into fuel for my tanky bear’s frontline capabilities.

These little touches all make the digital aspect of Sunderfolk incredibly appealing. I was regularly taken aback by how easy it was to do a mission, have a tight 10-to-20-minute combat encounter, and then have a quick stretch and social break before the next one. Sunderfolk finds a natural cadence in its balance of uptime and downtime. Venture forth to quest, fight, and win; return home to spend hard-won resources on buying new trinkets, building relationships, and upgrading town facets. There’s an even balance of collaborative combat and solo town time that’s empowered by the second-screen structure.

Sunderfolk‘s strengths also mean it is a bit more of a multiplayer-focused endeavor. While you absolutely can play solo — I booted it up myself and verified as much — the appeal isn’t quite the same. That natural cadence and feeling of collaboration, of sitting around a digital table and planning out each turn, swaps over to feeling busy and a little tedious when you’re doing it alone. Even in games where we had an absent player and I needed to pilot two characters rather than one, I could feel the experience start to trudge through molasses.

I also wish some of the “catch-up” options were a bit more lenient. We had a late joiner to our trio, which meant adding another character to our roster. But while they got to level up and match our overt power level, they missed out on some of the end-of-act goodies and mission-to-mission loot we had accrued over time, putting their Ranger on the back foot compared to our war-weary squad.

From the jump, Sunderfolk is gunning to be your next game night, and it certainly can fill that role. My crew has been talking about seeing the campaign all the way through together, not out of obligation, but from genuine interest in wanting to see our characters through to the end. The story is fine, though it’s bolstered significantly by actress Anjali Bhimani playing the GM role, which includes her voicing every character. It’s a smart choice that lends Sunderfolk even more of that tabletop feel, much like Amelia Tyler’s narrator in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Sunderfolk captures the feeling of cracking open a premade box, a module designed for your players, meant to be explored in discrete chunks over days, weeks, or even months. There’s enough here for everyone to find a character they gel with, dig into their deck and skills, and create a memorable journey for themselves and, on a larger scale, the group. It’s already a compelling concept, just as an easy co-op game for a Discord group to make part of their rotation.

Factor in the second-screen capabilities, though, and it’s clear Secret Door is onto something. This is a form factor that could really click, if handled well. The thumb-cursor and easy access to information, plus the clever use of isolated downtime and joining back up at the gates for another quest, made every session flow smoothly for my team.

For a group that likes to play tabletop games together but wants a digital option, especially for remote friends, Sunderfolk should suit their needs. It’s a story of good and evil, filled with fantasy and animals and magic, and ready-made to take a crew through some haphazard adventures. Hopefully it’s not the last time we see these kinds of swings at it, either.

Sunderfolk will be released April 23 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PC using a prerelease download code provided by Secret Door. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.