Technologies

Sunderfolk Hands-On: A Cozy Co-Op RPG Streaming Tabletop Magic Into Everyone’s Home

Four friends, four phones, one video game. This is how you bring board game night into the digital age.

My party of adventurers walks into a spider-infested cave, and my friends and I start chatting strategy about the plan of attack for each of our heroes — then we leap into the fray by controlling the action through our phones.

This is Sunderfolk, a new roleplaying game and the debut title from studio Secret Door. Made by veterans from Blizzard, Riot Games and fantasy tabletop hits like Descent: Legends of the Dark, Sunderfolk brings board game nights to modern video games. It’s available for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch for $50.

The game looks conventional enough, with up to four players choosing between six animal adventurers packing varying skills to protect their town. The game’s combat and action play out on a shared screen, but the novelty lies in each person pulling up their phone to move their character and look up battle info.

«[Sunderfolk] is built for folks who are already genre-lovers in this space who want to bring in folks who are not genre lovers,» said game director Erin Marek. The game was designed to be intriguing to fantasy tabletop veterans, yet approachable to those put off by complex board games requiring deep dives in manuals.

To do that, the Secret Door team started with a concept of «TV DnD,» as the studio chief Chris Sigaty explained: «It’s like [Dungeons and Dragons] meets JackBox.» That’s the party game where everyone jumps in to play on their phones, and it aptly describes the mediums Sunderfolk attempts to blend. The team wanted to bring the camaraderie of the couch to digital games, all set in an evocative fantasy world.

While Secret Door was kind enough to invite me into a Discord to connect with other players, I knew I had to experience this game with my own tabletop group. My dice-rolling battle-hardened cadre of thirtysomethings has tackled campaigns in RPG systems like Dungeon World, The Sprawl, Blades in the Dark, A Quiet Year, and Stonetop — all of which eschew the staid elements of Dungeons and Dragons in favor of more streamlined approaches to role-playing. That made them great sample players for Sunderfolk.

I attempted to get a game going in-person, but like every classic RPG campaign, we faced the greatest tabletop villain of all: scheduling. Nobody could find the same night to meet. Yet Sunderfolk’s setup allows everyone to play remotely: We just logged into the game on our phones sitting in our respective homes while all watching the same screen.

This is also the genius of Sunderfolk: All players share one big screen. At any time, players can treat their phone screen as a thumb pad to move their cursor around to look up enemy details or battlefield features (like healing shrines or exploding rocks). But it also lets players point and gesture around the map to plan and coordinate moves. We may have been sitting in our respective homes dozens of miles apart, but it felt like my friends and I were gathered around a table in person.

Streaming Sunderfolk to the whole party

But since my party wasn’t in the same place, I used a clever workaround, running the game on PS5 and streaming it through our friend group’s Discord, which everyone tuned into.

Admittedly, this was a bit challenging on the PS5, which doesn’t let you stream to Discord natively from the console — instead, I had to use a workaround I found online to use the Remote Play app to run my PS5 on my PC, and then stream that window through Discord. Complicated! There are alternatives, like streaming to YouTube or Twitch, but those require extra steps before you start broadcasting to the masses. Note that Xbox Series X lets you stream directly to Discord, and PC players will be just fine.

This shows a bit of the double-edged nature of Sunderfolk’s unique setup, but at least the trouble was on my end, and my friends didn’t need to download extra copies of the game — one copy will work for a whole party. All they had to do was download the free Sunderfolk app, watch my stream, scan the QR code on screen with their phone to log into the campaign, and we were off to the races.

How Sunderfolk’s phone-controlled RPG plays out

Once logged in to our campaign, three friends and I chose our quartet of characters from the six animal hero choices — and gave them silly names, as is tabletop tradition. One friend picked the barbarian polar bear (named Bearzerker), another the lamb ranger (Big Lamb), a third the raven spellcaster (RavnAbtMagic), and I picked the bat bard (Bat Stevens).

Like any good tabletop RPG, the campaign opens up in a tavern. Here we learned basic mechanics and ran through our early move selections, which differed for each character, before spilling out into a proper brawl outside. The local ogres had descended on the town to raid and pillage, but our brave heroes fended them off.

Though fights feel familiar for fantasy RPGs, like using different attacks to whittle down enemies, Sunderfolk has a heavy emphasis on moving around the battlefield. Our spellcaster teleported around (and likewise ‘ported enemies hither and thither), while I used my bat bard to swap places and drop power-ups around the area, encouraging different playstyles while never staying put.

That all led to The Moment. If you’ve ever played a tabletop RPG, you’ll probably remember the first time it became suddenly clear that you could do anything. When you tried something so spectacular that, succeed or fail, it was vividly memorable. In Sunderfolk, our next encounter had us chasing the ogres onto a bridge — and one by one, each party member found an attack or movement ability that let us shove our foes off the edges.

«What we’re stealing a little bit from tabletop games is those moments where something that should never have happened, happened,» Marek said. «You have that moment, that storytelling with your friends that you carry through with you and try to explain it to other people, and they don’t get it because they weren’t there.»

There are things we couldn’t do that a regular tabletop game would’ve allowed, like trying to talk to the ogres or bribing them to leave. Sunderfolk trades that in for fewer but still potent possibilities — just ask my party of thirtysomething men, gleefully cheering each other to boot enemies into the wild blue yonder — and the streamlined system with codified rules that a video game enables. From personal experience, it is a joy to have the game handle all the monsters, quest progression and more, meaning our regular dungeon master could join in, too.

As we wrapped up our first adventure, we chatted with townsfolk and grew relationships, did a little shopping and unlocked new abilities — standard RPG stuff, all wrapped up in a 2-hour session, which I later learned was the target time the Secret Door team set for a night of adventuring (quests take about an hour, and every two quests should result in a level-up awarding new skills). While I had a good time with the game, I was impressed that everything worked smoothly — even though I’d never used my phone to play a game this way.

Designing a new way to play old games

Sunderfolk’s team is full of people who have taken games from other platforms and mediums to adapt to play on the humble smartphone. Before joining Secret Door, Marek worked on Wild Rift (League of Legends on phones) while Sigaty worked on Hearthstone (a digital card game on PC and phones). Kara Centell-Dunk, Sunderfolk’s campaign designer, has over a decade of experience making tabletop games — including working on Descent: Legends in the Dark and Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth, which have smartphone app assistants to help with play.

On an interview call with the three Secret Door creators above, only the fourth hadn’t worked in the intersection between phones and tabletop — Daren Bader, art director at Secret Door, who didn’t play Dungeons and Dragons or tabletop at all despite submitting fantasy art for Monster Manuals and Magic: The Gathering cards. «I was kind of the perfect guinea pig for the team,» Bader explained, as someone who would need to be dragged into the game. His conversion into a tabletop gamer during Sunderfolk’s development is a proof of concept.

«My favorite thing is that we created a game that I want to play, to tell you the honest truth,» Bader said.

Designing a game that would be «TV DnD» as Sigaty described was a process. Gamers don’t look down at their controller or mouse and keyboard while playing, but Sunderfolk would have lots of essential information on the phone app — what the team found was that players were staring at their phones instead of the action on the screen. The solution lay in another TV implement.

«One of our UX/UI designers, Hasiba Arshad, was actually looking at Apple TV remotes and how they use their paradigm … and she came up with this idea of what if you’re actually controlling a cursor?» Marek said — almost like drawing with a drawing pad.

It took years of evolution and lots of playtests with friends and family to get the controls just right (even in release form, the app on the phone tells players to look up when important gameplay is happening on the main screen). Other parts of the design took time to refine, like having each move arrayed in a row for players to tap and swipe between, like they’re holding a hand of cards — and then swiping the one they want upward to start their turn, like a sort of skeuomorphic motion.

All of this work would amount to a novel proof of concept if the game weren’t fun to play, but it is. It’s not the most complex RPG to start, but it’s designed to ramp up — as Centell-Dunk explained, the game’s philosophy is simple parts that, when combined, become complex. So those spiders I found lurched over merchant loot that scatter when I hit them? That can be combined with other movement abilities to get the tactical advantage.

As my friends and I wrapped up our second session, having delved in the vibrant underground worlds Bader designed — full of light and mushrooms, friendly animals and vicious ogres — we called it a night. But not before my tabletop-tested friends gave it their seal of approval by asking when we’d play the game next.

Ahead of us was the thing Centell-Dunk was most proud of: boss fights, and the systems she made for them.

«I hope players also enjoy being crushed by our bosses,» Centell-Dunk said.

Technologies

PlayStation Classic Themes Are Returning to PS5 in Next Update

Those 30th anniversary themes for the PlayStation 5 proved much too popular for Sony to ignore.

If you’re anything like me, gaming hasn’t quite felt right without the impactful sights and sounds of the PlayStation 2’s start-up menu. If that is the case for you — for starters, you’re probably also turning 30 this year, and we’ll get through it together — but also, Sony has great news: The classic themes for the PlayStation 5 are coming back, this time for good.

Sony confirmed this news in an official blog post on Wednesday, laying out the new features coming to PS5 in the next system update. In addition to some nifty new audio options, you’ll once again be able to deck out your console’s UI with themes based on its classic predecessors: the PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4. These were first introduced as a limited-time offering for the PlayStation brand’s 30th anniversary last year, but they went over so well with longtime fans that they’re back for good.

«Due to the overwhelmingly positive response from our community, we’re happy to bring back the look and feel of the four console designs for players to customize the home screen on PS5!» the post explained.

The update that includes these classic UI themes will go live on Thursday, April 24.

«It’s a great move for Sony to give players the option to reskin their UI to remind them of their treasured days booting up their first PlayStation games,» CNET Senior Reporter David Lumb said. «Seems silly to have kept the themes around for a limited time only to return them now, but I’ll take what I can get. That PS1 boot-up sound deserves to live outside my head.»

The initial offerings last year also included a more general 30th anniversary UI theme that will not be returning in this update, though I doubt most people even remembered that one.

Based on Sony’s announcement, it’s unclear whether these new themes will alter the PS5’s appearance during its start-up sequence or if the changes are limited to the sights and sounds of the main menu. Sony did not respond to CNET’s request for comment before publication.

Other things coming in the PS5 update

The triumphant return of these nostalgic themes is clearly what most will want to focus on, but the update coming on Thursday will also give the PS5 some cool new ways to tweak the system’s audio. According to the blog post, these new features will be dubbed «audio focus» and can be reached by going to [Settings] > [Sound] > [Volume] > [Audio Focus]. If you’ve ever tweaked settings on a soundbar or used the Apple TV streaming box’s dialogue enhancement feature, these options should feel familiar to you, and it’s pretty great to see the PS5 expanding its options for folks like me who sometimes struggle to make out dialogue in movies, shows and games.

The audio focus options are as follows, as laid out by Sony:

Boost Low Pitch: Amplify low-frequency sounds like roaring engines and rumbling noises.
Boost Voices: Amplify voice chats, character voices and other middle-frequency sounds.
Boost High Pitch: Amplify high-frequency sounds like footsteps and metallic noises.
Boost Quiet Sounds: Amplify low-volume sounds in a wide range of frequencies.

Technologies

Hubble Space Telescope Is 35: Don’t Miss These 4 Dazzling Anniversary Images

The world’s most famous telescope is celebrating in style with new views of Mars, nebulas and a galaxy that reminds us of home.

The most famous telescope in history has reached a major milestone — it’s 35 years old. The Hubble Space Telescope launched on a grand scientific adventure to study the cosmos on April 24, 1990. NASA and the European Space Agency are pulling out all the stops for the telescope’s 35th anniversary with the reveal of four stunning new space images.

The celebratory views include Mars, two nebulas and a galaxy. The variety of targets shows off Hubble’s versatility and ability to see not only into deep space, but also into our own solar system.

NASA dropped a host of superlatives with words like «transformative,» «evocative,» «engaging» and «accessible» in its anniversary release statement. It’s all true. Hubble’s discoveries have been covered in over 22,000 papers, but its influence reaches far beyond science journals. It has shaped the public’s view of our universe through groundbreaking images like the Pillars of Creation and the Hubble Deep Field.

Check out the anniversary images.

Mars, the frosty marble

Earth may be humanity’s favorite planet, but Mars is a close second. Hubble turned its gaze on the red planet at the end of 2024. The crisp views highlight the planet’s northern polar cap at the beginning of the Martian spring. Gauzy clouds make Mars look like a frosty marble.

Planetary nebula NGC 2899, a space butterfly

A white dwarf star lingers at the center of planetary nebula NGC 2899. This is one of the cosmic objects you can let your imagination run wild with. It resembles a misshapen butterfly or a moth in flight. ESA suggested the pinched middle looks like a half-eaten doughnut.

Gas and dust give the nebula its unique look. All this beauty traces to the tumultuous death of its central star.

Rosette Nebula and gas clouds

Hubble’s look at the Rosette Nebula focuses on a small part of a much larger formation.

The nebula is a place of active star formation. «Dark clouds of hydrogen gas laced with dust are silhouetted across the image,» ESA said. «The clouds are being eroded and shaped by the seething radiation from the cluster of larger stars in the center of the nebula.»

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335

NGC 5335 is a barred spiral galaxy like our Milky Way. Hubble’s image shows the distinctive bar across the middle of NGC 5335. «The bar channels gas inwards toward the galactic center, fueling star formation,» said ESA. «Such bars are dynamic in galaxies and may come and go over two-billion-year intervals.»

Hubble hangs on

Hubble orbits Earth. Space is a tough place to live. The telescope’s designers planned to get 15 years of use out of it, but Hubble handily outlasted that goal.

Hubble’s longevity hasn’t been easy. The telescope has weathered an array of technical problems over the years. NASA dispatched five space shuttle servicing missions to Hubble, with the last in 2009.

There are no more space shuttles in operation, so the Hubble team handles all fixes from afar. That has meant some big changes to Hubble’s operations, particularly with the gyroscopes that help point it in the right direction. The Hubble team has had to get creative, but they’ve kept the aging observatory up and running and delivering fresh science and imagery.

Every Hubble anniversary feels like a triumph for the elderly space telescope. It may have a few more anniversaries left in it. NASA hopes it will continue operations into the 2030s. Long live Hubble.

Technologies

Apple and Meta Hit With EU Fines, Ordered to Improve Consumer Choice

The European Commission has demanded that the two tech companies give people more scope to decide how their data is used and better access to deals.

The EU’s crackdown on Big Tech began in earnest on Wednesday, as the European Commission issued the first fines under the Digital Markets Act, a piece of regulation designed to keep major players in the technology world from abusing their dominant position in the industry.

Apple’s fine, the bigger of the two, totals 500 million euros ($570 million), and follows an investigation into whether the company has been preventing customers from viewing and accessing offers that could save them money — cheaper streaming subscriptions, for instance — if they paid outside of its App Store ecosystem. The European Commission found that Apple prevents app developers from informing people about cheaper ways to pay, and has ordered the company to change this practice.

Meta, meanwhile, has received a fine of 200 million euros ($228 million), due to the fact it provides people in Europe with a binary choice to either use Meta’s platforms — including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — for free and accept the company will combine your data across services, or pay a premium to ensure an ad-free experience in which your data is kept separate.

Since the European Commission initially told Meta this model did not comply with the DMA, the company introduced new practices that provide people with more choice over how their data is used. But the company has still received a fine for its previous model.

Silicon Valley and the EU have long had a fractious relationship. Almost 10 years ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook dismissed a massive EU tax bill as «political crap.» But with geopolitical tensions between Europe and the US at a high right now, the fines are more divisive than ever. It’s often tricky to see how the high-level regulatory decisions affect the tech industry, but you only need to look at Apple dropping the lighting port on the iPhone in favor of USB-C charging to understand the power of the EU to sway the behavior of tech companies.

The aim of the Digital Markets Act is twofold. It gives up-and-coming tech companies an opportunity to prove themselves in an industry dominated by the world’s wealthiest companies. It’s also designed to ensure tech users across Europe (and sometimes further afield) have access to the best services and deals, plus the ability to decide for themselves how to spend their money and how their data is used. The European Commission does have the power to fine companies up to 10% of their annual global revenue under this regulation, but these fines fall below this threshold in an effort to be proportionate with the specific violations of the law.

«Enabling free business and consumer choice is at the core of the rules laid down in the Digital Markets Act,» Henna Virkkunen, executive vice president for technological sovereignty at the European Commission, said in a statement Tuesday. «This includes ensuring that citizens have full control over when and how their data is used online, and businesses can freely communicate with their own customers. The decisions adopted today find that both Apple and Meta have taken away this free choice from their users and are required to change their behaviour.»

But to the Silicon Valley tech giants, the EU’s approach can often seem unnecessarily punitive, in some cases forcing them to make changes that they argue are actually worse for users. In a statement issued on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Apple accused the European Commission of moving the goalposts, and said the company planned to appeal the decision.

«Today’s announcements are yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free,» the company’s spokesperson said. «We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for.»

Meanwhile, Meta’s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan said the European Commission was «attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.» He added, «This isn’t just about a fine. The Commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service. And by unfairly restricting personalized advertising the European Commission is also hurting European businesses and economies.»

It’s likely that Meta, feeling aggrieved over being penalized even after making multiple changes to its business model, will also appeal the fine. The company remains adamant there’s nothing in the Digital Markets Act to justify the changes the European Commission is asking it to make.