Sunderfolk

Introduction

Sunderfolk sets out to be a board game night in digital form: up to four players build a party, adventure across the fantasy Sunderlands, and work through tactical encounters together, with only one member of the group needing to actually own the game. Developed by Secret Door, a studio founded by former Blizzard developers, and published by Dreamhaven, it released 23 April 2025 and has held a large, healthy Steam review base ever since — 91.1% positive across 1,760 English-language reviews, 89.8% across 2,230 all-language reviews, both comfortably Very Positive, with recent sentiment (91 of the last 100 English reviews) if anything slightly ahead of the lifetime figure. This review reads the 100 most-relevant of the English negative sample and finds a corpus with an unusually singular complaint at its centre.

A genuinely generous, well-built co-op tactics game

Start with what the reviews agree on, because it's substantial. Sunderfolk's headline structural decision — that only the host needs to buy the game, with up to three friends joining through a free companion app — draws real, repeated praise as a rare piece of consumer-friendly design in a genre that usually charges everyone at the table full price. "They need to market the free-to-share aspect a lot harder," reads one 74-vote review, describing almost dismissing the game over its sticker price before realising the whole group only needed one copy between them. On the tactics side, the comparison that recurs most often is Gloomhaven, and it's usually meant as a compliment: one detailed, high-playtime review calls it flatly "better than Gloomhaven," crediting accessible but genuinely tactical encounter design. Writing and tone earn similarly consistent credit — several reviewers specifically say Sunderfolk is one of the few digital adaptations that actually feels like sitting down to a real tabletop RPG session, rather than a videogame borrowing the aesthetic.

The phone controller is the review

Read the negative sample in bulk, though, and one issue swallows almost everything else. Sunderfolk ships with a design built around using a phone or tablet as each player's controller — reading cards, selecting actions and moving pieces on a companion touchscreen app while the shared view plays out on the TV or monitor. Forty-four of the 100 negative reviews read for this piece raise that scheme directly, and the sharper version of the complaint isn't really about local couch co-op, where the concept at least makes some sense — it's that several reviewers report the same requirement applies to solo play, with the campaign-selection option "simply greyed out" on keyboard and mouse until a phone is connected, and no explanation offered anywhere in the game about why. "There is no way to play the game on PC without also using a smartphone app, even when playing singleplayer," reads one representative review, echoed closely by several others encountering the same wall during the free trial or opening minutes.

The complaint sharpens further around a specific, checkable inconsistency: Sunderfolk carries Steam Deck Verified status and a controller-support listing on its store page, and Steam's own metadata for the game shows no formal controller support at all. One reviewer put it bluntly: "How do you even get Steam Deck Verified without controller support? Steam Deck Verified requires full controller support through the entire game." Whatever the technical explanation, several reviewers independently arrived at the same conclusion — that the badge and the actual control requirements don't line up — which is the kind of specific, verifiable friction point worth flagging plainly rather than folding into a general "controls are annoying" complaint. Beyond the requirement itself, the touchscreen implementation draws its own separate criticism: swipe-based selection is described as clumsy and imprecise compared to a simple button press, with battery drain on the connected phone raised as a secondary annoyance by reviewers playing longer sessions.

Smaller cracks beneath the big one

A quieter but real complaint cluster concerns encounter design and difficulty consistency, distinct from the control scheme entirely. A handful of reviewers describe specific boss fights — one featuring a scripted late-game betrayal — as close to unwinnable on a first attempt regardless of play quality, more of a memorisation puzzle than a fair tactical challenge. A smaller number raise unclear victory conditions and RNG-driven objectives as a source of frustration, in terms similar to long-standing criticisms of the tabletop games Sunderfolk draws inspiration from. None of this approaches the volume or intensity of the phone-controller complaint, but it's worth a mention for readers weighing whether the tactical layer itself will hold up over a longer campaign.

Final Verdict

Sunderfolk succeeds at what it sets out to do for the group that accepts its central premise: a generous, well-written, genuinely tactical co-op fantasy RPG that turns one purchase into an entire game night, earning real comparisons to Gloomhaven along the way. Where a large share of its own reviewers push back, hard and specifically, is the phone-as-controller requirement that several report can't be avoided even solo, compounded by a Steam Deck Verified badge and controller-support listing that a meaningful number of reviewers say doesn't match what the game actually demands. That's not a matter of taste so much as a concrete access problem for a specific kind of buyer — anyone hoping to sit down alone with a controller in hand. Try the free trial first, and know going in whether your group is one that will embrace the phones or resent them, because this review's sample suggests there isn't much middle ground.