Sunderfolk (or: couch co-op is so satisfying when done right)
I'm always on the lookout for good couch co-op.
I get that I'm very āold man yells at cloudā here but it feels like online games (and a pandemic) reduced the overall demand in this space - but goddamn if sometimes it feels good for 2-4 people to sit down at one screen, pick up a controller and go adventuring.
And I mean that distinctly - adventuring. The couch co-op genre's usual fair is racing or fighting and there's definitely nothing wrong with a Mario Kart night or a Rivals of Aether tournament (hell, Towerfall to settle an argument is a mood!!) but sometimes you wanna feel progress - you wanna go to a place and do a thing and laugh about it afterwards. (And not have to have four gameboy advances and link cables)
Sunderfolk popped up on my radar recently and I'm kind of surprised I hadn't heard of it sooner. Tactical, grid based gameplay (oh no, not tactics!!) with animal people, yet each player controls their character's movement, stats and ability cards via their phone. No controllers - just a game on the TV screen and info you need for your character on your phone.
The gameplay for Sunderfolk is pretty solid; in missions, there's a hex grid placing player characters, NPCs and enemies. Each player's character has a series of moves / abilities they can do on their turn and it plays out very much like a digital tabletop game with the computer DM-ing a story and calculating numbers for you. Each character class has merit, and there are difficulty options if a higher challenge is needed - but we're still feeling it out. Currently we're in Chapter 1 act 3, just completed the ātimed bomb barrelā level to be as spoiler free as possible and god damn was that tough given our character lineup.
After each mission you return to the town to build relationships with the NPCs (PROTECT ZIHAO AT ALL COSTS but Peryll the Penguin can go fuck himself) and help repair / upgrade - it's a pretty goddamn beautiful place to spend some time.
Oh and a neat touch - at random intervals, individual players are asked to name something in the world. A character, a place, an item - this can lead to, shall we say, interesting conversations lmao
Now this isn't a review so much as a āstill feeling it outā but I should say that while the story is standard fantasy trappings, the voice acting has been the weakest point; clunky, cringeworthy - until you realize it's one person voicing every character just like a GM would in a tabletop game. Anjali Bhimani (probably best known to GAMERSā¢ as Symmetra from Overwatch) feels like she's intentionally hamming it up to make the characters (like the Ogre queen for example) sound worse on purpose which makes it circle back around to being charming, I don't know what to tell you, it just works.
All this said, the possibility space of a game like this where the computer and the phones interact feels so much bigger. I've seen 'board game' translations on to an iPad version where main play is on that screen and hands of cards are on phones but this feels like completely different step forward. I'm much more interested in something designed for this type of couch system rather than "what if we can just digitize an existing board / tabletop or card game".
Anyway if anyone else has fun couch co-op suggestions that aren't:
- Shooters
- Racing
- Fighting
Lemme know!
(Some highlights we've had for others on the couch hunt: Knights and Bikes, Wild Woods, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Buissons, For the King, Untitled Goose Game, Mario 3D World and never underestimate the joy of making a single-player turn based game couch co-op with team input. X-COM and Overland are perfect for this.)