I love a good board game night, but as the designated Master of Games (at least that’s what I make everyone call me), it can sometimes feel like more trouble than it's worth. Big box games like Gloomhaven or Arkham Horror can take as much time to set up and break down as they do to play. You have to manage hundreds of little pieces and tokens (and keep the dog from eating them) while trying to teach everyone else the rules in a way each of them will understand. Even when the game is good, just keeping people off their phones for an hour can be a challenge.

Enter Sunderfolk: a board game without the board. I’m sure you’ve played plenty of video game adaptations of board games (like the aforementioned Gloomhaven), but Sunderfolk has a fresh take that blurs the line between tabletop and video game, creating a convenient and hassle-free way to enjoy board game night with your friends and family, no matter what level of gaming experience they have.

At PAX East last weekend, I sat down with Secret Door studio head Chris Sigaty to talk about the launch earlier this month, how it’s resonating with players, and what the future holds for this unique take on tabletop.

Sunderfolk exists at the intersection of Dungeons & Dragons and Jackbox - or “TVD&D” as Sigaty calls it - which turns out to be a far more harmonious blend than it sounds. Rather than gathering around the table in a dimly-lit basement and spreading out all of your character sheets, maps, and miniatures, Sunderfolk is meant to be played on a TV screen while relaxing on the comfiest couches in your living room, using your phone to control your character, roll dice, and keep track of your spells and abilities. It’s designed to deliver all of the social qualities of board game night without any of the friction, while serving as an entry point for the board game-averse in our lives.

According to Sigaty, that smooth onramp to tabletop is where Sunderfolk has found the most success. “The reception has been fantastic,” he says. “The board game thing has been so impactful.” Sigaty, who is a hardcore board gamer himself, has seen the way people are discovering a love of board games through Sunderfolk even in his own life. “Nearly every weekend we’re playing board games with our buddies, and there are all these people on the periphery of our lives who we’d love to pull in and play games together, but it’s a struggle.” Sunderfolk is a great way for board game fans to introduce non-gamers to the hobby. “The most gratifying part is hearing stories like that,” he says. “And there’s been a lot of them.”

Using your phone as the controller has a few benefits. For one thing, it’s a device everyone already has and knows how to use, which makes it easy to jump into Sunderfolk even if you don’t have any video game experience.

Secondly, players won’t feel the urge to pick up their phone and doom scroll when it's not their turn, since they need to use their phone to play. “When I look at the reviews on Steam, the kid angle is the big one I love,” Sigaty says. One review from a parent praises the game for getting their kid to use their phone for something positive for the first time.

Of course, associating Sunderfolk with the mobile platform does invite some unfortunate comparisons. While you play Sunderfolk on PC, Switch, Xbox or PlayStation, the fact that you use your phone as the controller has been cause for some suspicion among players.

“That’s the challenge that we’ve had,” Sigaty explains. “The immediate assumption is microtransaction and data tracking.” But Secret Door isn’t doing anything of the sort. As Sigaty explains, the phone screen is where each player can view their character sheet, reference the rules, and interact with NPCs. “It’s all of these things that a physical controller can not do,” he says. Sunderfolk is built around the capabilities of mobile devices, not the trappings of the mobile market. Unfortunately, “cynicism and skepticism” around mobile has proven to be an obstacle for Sunderfolk in these early days.

Overcoming biases against mobile is a big focus for Sigaty and his team now that the game is released. “We’re getting there, we’re getting people to go over the hump and get it,” he says. One of the things in development is a free trial version of the game so that people can see what it's all about before they buy it. “[We want] everyone to jump in and play it instead of worrying about what it is,” he says. “Hopefully, then they’ll decide that it's worth buying.”

Once you see how Sunderfolk works, it's easy to understand why a phone is the perfect interface for it. One of the coolest little features in the game is the way it handles monster names. Occasionally a specific player will be given the opportunity to name a monster in the game. With a phone, you can enter a name quickly and privately, then relish in your party’s astonishment when it later pops up on screen like a miniature game of Quiplash. Another advantage is the way it uses QR codes to join the game. All your players have to do is point the camera at the screen and they’ll instantly join, ready to start an adventure. Sunderfolk is all about eliminating the barriers to entry to give people more time to enjoy playing games together.

Sunderfolk released on Wednesday, April 23, sandwiched in between Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and the surprise release of Oblivion Remastered. “That was the Beyoncé,” Sigaty says. “We were caught off guard by the Beyoncé.” He says the team is happy to see Expedition 33’s success, but admits that it dominated the conversation in gaming spaces during Sunderfolks' release. When asked if he felt that that had an impact on Sunderfolk, Sigatity says “Oh ya, 100 percent.”

“There’s something like 13,000 video games that launch a year, so it’s sort of impossible to have a weekend that’s completely free,” he says. “[Expedition 33’s success] is very well deserved, it’s still being talked about as one of the greatest games of the decade, and of course, there’s a lot of passion around Oblivion, which is a game I loved and played many years ago. We just didn’t realize that was coming, and didn’t know much about Clair Obscur.”

Sigaty says he never imagined Sunderfolk was the kind of game that would have one giant launch weekend. Because it’s so different from everything else out there, he knows it’s the kind of game that takes some convincing to get into. “We gotta get people to try it and start talking about it,” he says. Sunderfolk is the kind of game that lives on strong word of mouth and grows over time, and while the gaming world is slowly discovering what it’s all about, Secret Door is planning the next phase of support for the game. “Right now we’re focused on spreading awareness of Sunderfolk and getting to a place where we think we can bring out the next thing and add additional content that keeps building the community.”

“The question people keep asking is whether or not we’re going to keep supporting Sunderfolk, and the answer is yes, we absolutely are.”