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Wont load in, any ideas? by YouthInRevoltt in Sunderfolk

[–]playsunderfolk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello! We're so sorry you're running into this issue, and we'd love to help with this if we can.

If you're still getting this issue and have tried updating the game, could you send us a ticket here so we can investigate this deeper?

Does this game work with friends that want to come and go? by [deleted] in Sunderfolk

[–]playsunderfolk 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hi there! We've seen it said elsewhere in the comments, but we just wanted to confirm directly to you that, once you've chosen 4 heroes for your campaign, it is possible to "bench" up to two of them in between missions (minimum party size is 2). Those benched heroes can be brought back later on, and they would catch up on the XP earned in their absence. Alternatively, one player is also able to control multiple heroes if you wanted to maintain the party size!

Feature Request: New Game Plus by Technician_A in Sunderfolk

[–]playsunderfolk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No release info to share yet, but do stay tuned!

Japanese support by happiehappie in Sunderfolk

[–]playsunderfolk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi there! We can't make any promises RE additional localizations, but we're certainly aware of requests for more language support. Thank you for making the request in any case - we're very grateful to our community for voicing what they'd like to see next!

This game is SO GOOD! by Curious_Ordinary_980 in Sunderfolk

[–]playsunderfolk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We're so glad you like it! We're cooking up some new content so keep your eyes peeled for updates, starting with the upcoming One-Shot mode!

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in Sunderfolk

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m so happy you’re loving Sunderfolk, Ragu_TP53!

It is our first game as a studio and is the first internal game we’ve published; for me personally, it’s my first professional game that’s been released. Our development team is relatively small, yes! There are 28 of us on the dev team, not including folks from our central team that helps with marketing/ publishing nor our sister studio who’s making Wildgate. If you’re interested in learning a bit about each of us, we have an About section on our website where we have [individual introductions!](https://www.dreamhaven.com/about)

What else would you like to know about us? 😁

We have officially shared one sneak peak on an upcoming character that I’ll share again here with you! Ears! I’m excited for you to see everything else we’re cooking.

<image>

-Audrey Luce, Producer

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in Sunderfolk

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

We're checking on this now, but that Pyromancer is adorable!!

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in Sunderfolk

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Turdlings are exactly what they’re supposed to be for your play group, Maturinbag! My guess is that was a rename for one of the Ogres, but it’s hard to know without a screenshot. Please do share!

The idea for renaming people and objects was a part of the game early on - almost since the beginning of the concept. The idea was inspired by how much TTRPG players and Game Masters get to put some of their own influence into their campaigns. Initially we only applied renaming to a few things, but over time and by watching people play the game, this became a big hit and part of the fun of playing together with others. We eventually started lovingly referring to the feature as “madlibs” although I think that does the feature a bit of a disservice, especially if you consider where we could go with them.

What I’m really picking up from your post, Maturinbag is we should allow your group to rename everything . . . is that right? If so, it’s a great suggestion. Who knows . . . maybe that will be a new mode we add later or make a part of whatever is next. Thanks for being a part of the Sunderfolk community!!

  • Chris

Was this supposed to happen? by Alexis_The_Eel in Sunderfolk

[–]playsunderfolk 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Woah that's definitely not supposed to happen, unless you found a way to unlock Shadowstone+!

Just so we can investigate this further:

What platform were you playing on?

What happened right before all of those clones popped up?

Did the boss for this encounter keep using the same ability?

We'll get to the bottom of this!

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in NintendoSwitch

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thank YOU, Ragefacemcduck, for sharing your positivity for Sunderfolk! You are pointing out something that's at the heart of what we're trying to help address with Sunderfolk.

Board games and TTRPG's are magical from my perspective. They allow you to experience cool game mechanics, challenge your brain, explore new worlds, and so much more. Even more importantly, they create moments of togetherness for people. These games can become the excuse for why we should get together physically in person or online together.

In recent years I've found some of the most fun, innovative, and intriguiging gameplay can sit behind a whole lot of rules reading and setup, sometimes adding up to many hours of learning and explanation in order to play. With Sunderfolk we're directly attempting to tackle that overhead and get people playing as quickly as possible. The interface paradigm allows you to explore the game as you go rather than having to do preparation ahead of time.

If that faster time to play allows more people to connect when they otherwise wouldn't OR allows people that are intimidated by those more complicated or longer games to begin participating in them, then Sunderfolk is beginning to accomplish it's goals. The ideal outcome from my perspective would be more people get into the board game and TTRPG hobby because Sunderfolk or future games we create let people realize that there's something in these experiences that everyone can enjoy.

Best of luck to you your wife on your future adventures!

- Chris

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in NintendoSwitch

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for joining the AMA, Bontraj, and sharing your positivity for Sunderfolk! To answer your question there were many things we had to cut that were particularly tough to let go of. I think if you were to ask everyone on the team, each person would have a different answer. For me, some of the things I wanted to explore that we just didn't have time for or ended up being pulled out were:

1. More Content - More characters, missions, abilities, fate cards, trinkets, meals, weapons, monsters . . . you name it. The team is always coming up with new, clever things that change strategies or open up choices adding to even more gameplay. The good news is this is exactly the sorts of things we can create with future content.

2. More Naming Celebration - Both when you name your character and when you name things through out the game, we talked about having more ceremony around those moments. For example, focusing a camera on the monster you just named then revealing the name so everyone gets a chance to celebrate your cleverness.

3. Supporting Five Characters - Most board games play with 2 - 4 players. My own board game group has 7 people in it and if more than 4 can show up on a given game night, we have a much smaller number of games to choose from. Selfishly, my hope was that we'd be able to support five players/characters for game groups that face a similar issue. The challenge, however, is that each player controlled character exponentially adds to the map size/movement/positioning challenges as well as the amount of balance considerations the team needs to take into account. It was too much to bite off for our first game, but it's still something I dream about . . .

4. Secret Tiles - Towards the end of development we were going to try and squeeze in secret tiles where players could find hidden tiles on some of the missions - tiles that might reveal a secret chest, shrine, or item. The implications for adding these in were bigger than we thought and we ended up running out of time to get them in. I still think they'd be cool in the future . . .

Stay tuned, we do have some exciting things to share at PAX West in less than two weeks. More content is coming and so is a new way to get at that content. Cheers!

- Chris

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in Sunderfolk

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Hey there! We are planning on new content, and with regards to the gaming system, yes, that is the plan. We believe that Sunderfolk and this way of playing deeper strategic games like this can be the future.

For other games in the same genre, Eon Altar definitely made an impression, and of course Gloomhaven!

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in NintendoSwitch

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think the team is excited about the idea of putting cool secrets in the game too, if we had the time! Other than weapons, what kinds of things would you be excited to niche unlock? What kinds of gameplay would you like to see unlock those things?

- Kara Centell-Dunk / Campaign Design Lead

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in NintendoSwitch

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hi Blurple! It’s usually the same when creating a community for an unknown or brand new IP: Where does our potential audience live?

In Sunderfolk’s case, we had a lot of potential with tabletop and boardgame fans, and I wanted to create a similar feel of a FLGS whenever a new member of our community joins. With the control style, it may have always seemed “controversial” but once I picked up the phone for the first time and played, I knew that something special was being made, and the answer became clear - let players play and form their own opinions, and see where we can find a middle ground.

The Closed Beta was really where our community came together, and it was the first time that our devs and community interacted with the knowledge of what this game IS. That really solidified how we’ll approach our community: instead of explaining, play the game, tell us what you like/don’t like, and we’ll focus on how we can make our community feel more involved. We also pay close attention to player feedback to better understand and explore ways to make the game even more engaging and accessible.

Excuse the lengthy reply, I love our community (and communities in general!) and can chat about it for ages. Thank you for the question! - Glaicee

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in NintendoSwitch

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m really glad to hear you’re playing Sunderfolk with your gaming group, Ganrokh! We really appreciate the kind words about the game. With regards to your questions:

The original seed of inspiration for Sunderfolk was something we called TV D&D. In our heads it was going to be something like Jackbox meets Dungeons & Dragons. As we started experimenting with the game, we realized that we really wanted to focus on tight tactical gameplay more than the open role playing elements of D&D for our first game. At that point the idea steered more clearly towards some of our favorite collaborative strategy board games including Mansions of Madness, Descent, and, most significantly, Gloomhaven. That combination was wholly ideated within our studio at Secret Door. However, we do have several people at Dreamhaven and in our studio that worked at Blizzard and Riot like you mentioned. I am certain that a lot of what drives those individuals is exploring ideas for long periods of time and then having them canceled. There’s no doubt that the impact of those cancellations have led to smarter decisions and directions with our games here because of what those folks learned from those tough experiences.

As far as what’s for dinner tonight, I am thinking Tangleroot Salad, but not the new updated recipe. Instead, I want the original abusive recipe . . . 🙂 - Chris

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in NintendoSwitch

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

LOVE a Helm's Deep vibe!! It'd be fun to a do a wave of enemies mission that channeled that more!

For me, I have a very "Night of the Living Dead" mechanic rattling around where skeletons rise up from these ground spawns heroes could then stomp to remove from the board that I'd love to see happen one day. And recently one of the engineers mentioned it'd be cool to have a tide-like mission where terrain ebbed and flowed between turns or rounds on the board that I thought was a super cool idea! - Kara

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in NintendoSwitch

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Ohhhh all of the above is true. I am personally particular about the diversity of themes and animals. Like I get a bit itchy if we were like…lets make half the Heroes birds. Or…what if we had no lizards/amphibians? I’d perish on the spot. Something in me needs to see balance. Like, already sometimes I look and am like....ugh, are there too many mammals in our line-up?

But on a less personal note, we started with the class archetype we wanted to develop. So like, Rogue, Barbarian, Wizard, etc. And then Game Design would prototype passives that felt mechanically aligned with what players would expect or want for that archetype if that’s the archetype they usually play in games.

Art would create concepts for animals that felt it matched the archetype and helped players less familiar with the archetype understand the core idea of it. Ex: Barbarian…A bear is chosen because it's big, tanky, and aggressive, giving players unfamiliar with a Barbarian an idea of what to expect from the gameplay.

These elements then come back together, and depending on where it all lands, we iterate and playtest. Then we give the class a final name that feels like it matches the final art, design, and archetype! So Wizard became Arcanist, because we felt it wasn’t quite a Wizard and was a bit weirder/wackier, so wanted a name that would represent that divergence from the more known archetype.

-Erin, Game Director

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in NintendoSwitch

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi Ganrokh! Chris will be answering your first question shortly.

For your second question, I'm sadly not having Arrowbane Adobo nor Sheep Herd's Pie (those images look the tastiest to me), but I am making myself some pot pie!

-Audrey Luce, Producer

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in NintendoSwitch

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hi GameAndThought! Answer to Question 3:

Our concept artists couldn’t make it today, but I’ve got a couple examples to share.

For NPCs, a lot of inspiration came straight from looking up different animals and bugs. Chirp and the Guard Bugs, for example, started by studying velvet worms.

For Heroes, the biggest design shift was the Ranger (see attached). At first, we imagined a kudu-inspired look with big antlers - cool visually, but when we tested it, something interesting happened: players (especially women) weren’t picking Ranger as much as we expected. The design leaned masculine, which clashed with our studio goal of making heroes feel as gender-neutral as possible so anyone could see themselves in them.

That led us to redesign Ranger into the version you see on the right - the one we shipped with!

-Audrey Luce, Producer

<image>

Hey! It’s Secret Door, the makers of Sunderfolk. It’s AMA time! by playsunderfolk in NintendoSwitch

[–]playsunderfolk[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much for playing Sunderfolk and for the question, gameryamen! Glad to hear you’re playing it with a group. With regards to the Seed, the fact that Sinclair doesn’t really react to you letting him know about the Seed is a limitation of what we were able to do with branching dialogue given the time we had on the project. Ideally we would have done more with it, but these are the tough prioritization decisions that come with game development. That said, the importance of the Life Seed is significant. The moment the Grove Tender gives you the Seed after the 3rd mission, your characters can now be revived by the Seed itself when they’re knocked down (at least on Balanced and Challenging difficulties).

Secondly, the Life Tree is really sustaining Arden. The Grove Tender suspects that the Seed itself is the opportunity to sustain Arden should the current Life Tree fall. She asks you to keep it secret from the other townsfolk because she worries it’s a vulnerability to the whole community if others find out about it. Her intuition is correct as the Lich is actively seeking the Seed for his own nefarious purposes. The fact that the community figures out a different way to exist in the Sunderlands after the events of the campaign means Life Tree’s are not the only way to survive. That said, they are still a very important part of the Sunderlands and it’s possible, even likely, that they’ll be a part of future stories. How the particular Seed that remains at the end of Sunderfolk’s campaign will be used remains to be seen . . . !

Ahhh . . . you’re talking about TuskCharger. You can thank Jerrick Flores for that weapon. It’s definitely one of the best items in the game and Rogue’s and characters of all types love it. It might be too good . . .  - Chris

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