Sunderfolk review: A casual tabletop RPG in a neat, digital package

You know a game is good when someone asks “Can I do this [insert wild thing]?” and its answer is “Yes, you can.” Sunderfolk, the casual digital tabletop RPG from Secret Door, is one such title. You’d be excused if you didn’t believe it after taking a quick glance at it.

Its visuals are of the run-of-the-mill mobile type, something you’ll easily forget the minute you lay it down, which is both a bit of a shame and a bit odd. It’s a shame, because the characters in the game are quite well designed. There is a little salamander sorcerer, a burly bear berserker, and an old turtle lady. There is a bat bard, an ugly but kind of endearing ogre called Mudmouth, and a whole other array of creatures somewhere between adorable and disgusting. There is a ton of character variety. And the reason it’s odd that this forgettable style of visuals was chosen is that Sunderfolk doesn’t need to run on mobile phones, even if you use them as your controller.

See, to play the game with a group of friends – you can form parties of up to four adventurers – only one actually needs to own it. You then sit together in front of a TV (or stream the screen on Discord) and play using a free app on your phone, the screen showing what’s happening. In tabletop terms, the screen is the battlemap in the middle of the table where the miniatures are, the phones are your character sheets and dice. But the phone doesn’t have to run the game — a PC or console does, and so the art style and animations could really have been a bit more elaborate than ‘generic early 2020s mobile title.’

What the setup does well, though, is make Sunderfolk easily approachable. I roped members of the DBLTAP team into playing with me and we had it going in a matter of minutes: I streamed on Discord, everyone scanned the session’s barcode on their apps, and we were off choosing our characters and playing.

It’s not without its challenges either. Moving characters around was somewhat tricky for us, the positions we indicated on our phones not always resulting in the exact maneuvers we intended. Having an auxiliary grid on the phone might have helped in this regard, lending players a hand with navigation. It also proved difficult for us to keep track of both screens. At one point one of us couldn’t input any actions until we realized that they had to follow the game’s instructions to check out some new information in the game guide on their phone first by clicking on one very specific area of their screen.

The game was quite good about teaching us stuff in general – a necessity for its target audience – but it was challenging for us to overcome the natural focus on the bigger screen and pay much attention to the phone. It doesn’t help that the phone app’s UI isn’t always super clear about where you can find what and that instructions you need to carry out on your phone don’t show up there, but only on the other screen.

These issues aside, the gameplay makes up for it, especially with the way the game opens up after a couple of opening missions, adding layers of systems on top of each other to simulate the depth and complexity traditional TTRPGs can reach. There is a town upgrade system, you can gain the trust of NPCs (and even romance them) depending on your dialog choices, and trade items between players. Everything involves some form of teamwork as well, so everyone can pitch in to improve the town’s buildings and then vote on where the funds should be spent.

What’s really cool is that people get to name stuff to leave a lasting mark on the world. Players may get to name the town’s market or get to decide what name ogre archers are called or can title the story’s current McGuffin. While Sunderfolk is pretty light on impactful story decisions, this is a great and fun way for a party to still make the world its own.

The story of the game isn’t anything special – it’s your run-of-the-mill save the town and the world type gig – but that doesn’t really matter too much, because if you’re sitting on a couch among friends or have them in your ear via voice chat, you’re not going to pay much attention anyway. That said, the way the narrator/game master changes her voice to play different characters like real game masters would do in a TTRPG deserves a shoutout. What the visual presentation lacks sometimes, she definitely makes up with sheer effort and creativity. 

The mechanical heart of the game is its combat, which takes place in a turn-based system on a grid with hexagonal tiles. Every character – you get access to the typical classes: sorcerer, wizard, ranger, berserker, rogue, and bard – comes with their own strengths and skills, presented as part of a deckbuilding system. As you level up, you gain access to more abilities, but you can only bring some of them to each mission. 

Simulating the dice rolls of a real TTRPG is another card deck, which adds or subtracts numbers from your abilities’ damage. By playing and upgrading the town, you’ll get access to more cards you can slot into this deck, though, adding tons of passive effects to it that can help you and your team. We were all quite impressed with this system and its possibilities to tailor our decks to our characters and playstyles. 

Speaking of which, the general fantasy class archetypes are very well executed. My little lizard sorcerer casts fireballs here, there, and everywhere, being able to deal tons of damage, but the flames may become a detriment to my allies. The bearserker is great at taunting enemies and protecting allies, while the bard creates buffs other characters can use, and so forth.

The mission variety is pretty good, some being completely combat-focused, while others mix it up by introducing little puzzle elements or having you escort NPCs and such. Plus, aside from dealing with the challenge at hand, there is always the competitive factor. You may work as a team to complete a mission, but everyone picks up their own gold and treasure. A certain bald bat bard on our team quickly became notorious for prioritizing their own greed, earning them a wave of cheers when one of the treasure chests they went after turned into a hungry mimic.

The combat really made coordination and teamwork shine, naturally leading to us discussing our tactics as we started into a new turn. Oh, and there were so many “This is just like Baldur’s Gate 3!” shouts when we pushed dangerous enemies down a cliff for some sweet insta-kills.

You will have noticed that I’m writing a lot of “we” and “us” — that’s because even though you can play this title by yourself, you really should do it with a group of friends to get any fun out of it. Much of what makes this game shine is in that social aspect. 

Its own story is indeed almost negligible, but Sunderfolk shines in its ability to be a catalyst or stage for self-generated stories and connections between you and your fellow players that will resonate even outside of the game. In this way, the devs at Secret Door truly succeeded in creating a digital, more approachable version of the TTRPGs we all love, even if it’s one with room to improve. I’m very excited to see where they can push this concept in the future.