The development journey of Sunderfolk is a fascinating one. Dreamhaven and Secret Door wanted to create a game that accurately reflected the feeling of sitting around a table and playing Dungeons and Dragons or another tabletop game with friends and family. The result is Sunderfolk, a tactical RPG in which players will use their phones as controllers to choose from six adorable animal characters and fight off a range of foes while protecting the town of Arden, bonding with its residents, enhancing its facilities, and more.
Game Rant recently spoke with Secret Door studio head Chris Sigaty, Sunderfolk game director Erin Marek, and art director Daren Bader about the game’s development process. They discussed the original pitch for the game, how Sunderfolk pivoted from something inspired by the Jackbox games to its more TTRPG-inspired final form, why the game includes a Game Master who narrates the adventure, and more. This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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The Original Pitch And Early Development Of Sunderfolk
Q: Let’s go back to day one, or before that. Was there any particular tabletop moment shared by the team that led to the initial Sunderfolk pitch?
Sigaty: In the early days of the studio, there were just a few of us discussing directionally where we wanted to go — what we wanted to do and not do with our first game. At the heart of our conversations was this idea of “bringing people together in positive ways,” which we translated into game experiences that create togetherness.
While it wasn’t a specific tabletop experience, we did have a collective “aha” moment when we realized, for each of us, one of the most impactful moments of togetherness we experienced on a regular basis was playing tabletop RPGs (TTRPGs) and board games with our gaming groups and families. From there, we saw opportunities to tackle some challenges in the tabletop space, which helped us zero in on the Sunderfolk pitch.
Q: How much has the game today changed from that initial pitch?
Sigaty: Quite a lot! The initial pitch was inspired by tabletop and pen-and-paper games and the couch experience that video games like Jackbox provide. After diving deeply into combat and encounter mechanics, we pivoted toward some of our favorite aspects of tactical RPG board games.
There were many points throughout the project where we pivoted the art style, the world conceits, the control scheme, mechanics, character abilities, and more. This usually happened when a new team member joined and made important observations and recommendations to improve the game overall. And, of course, a lot changed and improved through the numerous playtests we did with folks throughout Dreamhaven, friends and family, external players, and more that led to the final version of Sunderfolk that players will experience on April 23.
Q: After that pitch was greenlit and Sunderfolk development officially began, what did “day one” consist of?
Sigaty: “Day One” for us was the first few months. We were focused on deciding what technology to use (we landed on Unity), building a team of talented developers with shared values, and then building preliminary combat systems to begin experimentation. Critical to this moment was getting preliminary phone-to-TV controls working so we could begin feeling out the unique interface between the two screens. This coincided with a lot of early paper design work on the core game mechanics.
Q: How would you describe the first year of Sunderfolk’s development?
Sigaty: A ton of exploration and experimentation! While we knew that the phone and TV interface worked well for party game experiences, we spent a lot of time experimenting with how it worked for more strategic gameplay. We also spent a good amount of time identifying development requirements and growing the team so we could tackle them.
Q: What about the past year?
Marek: Tons of player testing! In the last year of development, we had the entire skeleton of the game and a good chunk of content, so our focus shifted to playing it ourselves, playing it with others, and getting as many feedback cycles as possible in with players.
The final big playtest push was our Closed Beta, where fans lovingly dedicated their time to help us test the game and provide feedback to make it as good as it could be. We can’t always respond to everything or iterate on all areas of the game, so having that additional insight from players really helped us narrow in on the most important areas to close out before shipping!
Q: When you reflect on development as a whole, what stands out the most as the moment you “found the fun”?
Sigaty: There have been several moments throughout development for me where I thought, “I think we’ve found the fun!?!”
Probably the most memorable was toward the end of pre-production when our CEO played with his family, including his daughter, at the office. She was able to pick up the game very quickly and afterward, unprompted, talked about the game for the next couple days and expressed interest in playing with her friends. There are many other moments, including my own early playtests, new team member sentiments, impressed partner demos, and more, but this was one that really stood out for me.
Sunderfolk Features Cozy Aesthetics And TTRPG-Inspired Gameplay
Q: What drew you to the art style of Sunderfolk? Alongside the audio design, how would you describe Sunderfolk’s visual and audial aesthetics?
Bader: We spent quite a bit of time exploring traditional dungeon-crawling characters and styles, but wanted something a little more accessible and lighthearted, so we landed on a style with a touch of humor and a cozy vibe.
Sigaty: On the audio side, our biggest areas of focus were tonally reinforcing the right aspects of the Sunderfolk world and ensuring the audio called attention to the right places at the right times given the unique phone/TV interface.
For tone, we wanted Sunderfolk’s lighthearted moments to be equally offset by capturing the real stakes Arden’s townsfolk face. A lot of this is done through the masterful music created by Jonas Friedman, Sunderfolk’s composer.
Calling attention to the correct interface (phone versus TV) via audio indicators has required a lot of experimentation to this day. Considering the unique interface, we will probably continue to experiment on this in the future.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about the approach to Sunderfolk’s gameplay and combat? What was the “guiding light” there?
Marek: When developing Sunderfolk, there were three core pillars driving a lot of our evaluation of systems and content.
● Inviting Experience
● Collaborative Play
● Deep Strategy
“Inviting Experience” is what drove us to make the game accessible to new players — those who were being brought into this genre of games for the first time. We focused a lot on tutorialization, the roll-out of systems, and depth of content to make sure new players wouldn’t feel overwhelmed, leveraging intuitive UX design and building an approachable world and story.
“Collaborative Play” leaned into the togetherness we were seeking to create with the game through meaningful social interactions. For gameplay, we thought about how teamwork would lead the group to better outcomes. Even though you could succeed on your own, your success would be so much greater if you were collaborating, planning, and solving problems with others. This pillar also encompassed the idea of facilitating player stories.
Much like our favorite tabletop or pen-and-paper games, the social dynamics, challenges faced, and choices made together create a new story you want to share and come back to again. This often meant building permutations in outcomes, so the gameplay isn’t always predictable.
The last was “Deep Strategy.” We wanted to make sure we were still building a game that would appeal to those who love TTRPGs and board games. To achieve this, we had to include calculated risk. You need to be able to weigh an outcome and understand the chance for both success and failure, and allowing players to make the choice is at the heart of many tactics games. We also wanted to make sure that player choice would impact success by rewarding planning and creating compelling tradeoffs.
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Why Sunderfolk Includes A Game Master
Q: Can you talk about the decision to include a Dungeon Master narrating the game and its characters? What does this add to the game as opposed to a more “traditional” approach?
Marek: I am a game master, and I run with a group every Saturday. The idea for this kind of hit me when I was running one of my sessions. I walked myself into a corner where I unfortunately had two NPCs who needed to converse with each other. This can be tricky for players to follow, so on the fly, I gave them both ridiculous voices to make sure it was clear which was speaking when.
The players had a good laugh about it, and we all kind of shared this special moment of realizing we’re all just playing make-believe together. Unless you’re a TTRPG player, this is something many folks never get a chance to experience. I wanted to bring that feeling into Sunderfolk. There’s a certain storybook feel, a harkening to the child inside us, with having a game master who voices every character.
For our game, it made even more sense since we were attempting to bring in folks who have never played games like this. Having a singular narrator helps familiarize them with the kinds of gameplay, stories, and experiences they might have if they played TTRPGs. The game master concept in Sunderfolk is just another way to try to make that element a little more approachable and understandable.
Q: What would you say about Anjali Bhimani’s performance as the DM? What made her the perfect fit for the role?
Marek: When looking for a game master to voice the game, we wanted someone who was already in the TTRPG space and really understood the nuance of what it’s like to be a game master. Sometimes you’re telling a grand story, other times you’re trying to direct and lead the players, and yet in certain moments, you’re teaching and partnering with them to see the players succeed. That tonal difference isn’t something to explain and just comes with experience.
Anjali has such a rich background in playing TTRPGs, voice acting, and game mastering. She checked all the boxes for what we needed. Then, when hearing her first takes on the Button Shroom and Grove Tender, it was just obvious that we needed her on this project! Her skill in voice acting and the number of voices she could just whip out were astounding. But even more than all that, she brought so much enthusiasm and energy that it was impossible to really see anyone else in this role.
Q: How did you come up with the name Sunderfolk as the title?
Marek: Sunderfolk has a few layers to it that we really loved. The first is that Sunder means to cleave or split and separate. The story we’re telling in Sunderfolk starts with a world divided, where factions are isolated and at odds. In the deeper lore, we’d always known there was this sundering event that led to the world as players know it at the start of Sunderfolk.
While the world is divided, it’s also a warm world with animals trying to find a way to survive together in a harsh environment. Folk invokes a cozy feeling of shared camaraderie. The game is about coming together to play through a story with loved ones, which “folk” harkens to in a meta way.
Together, Sunderfolk became the name of the denizens in our game, but also represents the experience of the narrative we’re telling about a small piece of the world that is fractured but finds its way back together.
Lastly, the game is set underground, and having “under” in the title is a subtle nod to that.
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