After completing my hands-on demo with Sundered, I interviewed Rodrigue Duperron, the Marketing and Communications Specialist for Thunder Lotus Games, about Sundered, Thunder Lotus Games, and the influences behind Sundered. You can reach my interview with him from E3 2017 here.
If you want a more in-depth look at Sundered’s gameplay, you can check out oprainfall Staff Writter Ashley Ring’s PREVIEW: Sundered [Published January 16, 2017] and her PREVIEW: Sundered Beta 2 [Published June 7, 2017].
You can find out more about Thunder Lotus Games on their website, like them on Facebook, tweet them on Twitter, and watch them on YouTube.
When I tried out the demo for Sundered at E3 2017, the thing that stood out to me the most was how everything was hand-drawn and gorgeous. In fact, Sundered was one of the most beautiful games I have seen in awhile and in particular at this E3. It is a delightful treat to behold the ruined world that Eshe traverses being brought to life with stark colors in a very-classic, hand drawn animated style.
In other words: Sundered is BEAUTIFUL.
The combat in Sundered is pretty simple. Eshe can slash with her blade and shoot her gun, dodge, and jump/double jump. There was a decent variety of enemies, but the way that the game worked was that I was always on the move, and so the regular enemy combat never really slowed me down as I traversed from room to room. I definitely did die quite a bit, but I absolutely put that down to my own incompetence with wanting to simply kill everything without regard to my own character’s life than anything wrong with the game.
The levels in Sundered – between the various boss/story/treasure rooms- are procedurally generated, and are completely rerolled into a new configuration upon my character’s death. What that means is that even during the same Sundered playthrough, I was constantly experiencing new rooms nonstop.
Midway through the demo, I encountered a boss fight that I very quickly lost. At that point, I re-spawned in the ‘Hub’, which is where I level up and customize my character by spending the currency that I collected during the level. It is a skill tree method, and there are multiple paths required to unlock new abilities and health, etc, bonuses. The requirements weren’t onerous (at least in my demo) and I was definitely beefed up enough to really feel a difference when I went back and dominated the boss battle.
Overall, this is definitely a unique take on the Metroidvania genre, and something I had fun demoing at E3. My only concern about Sundered, at this point, is if this game will make it to the Nintendo Switch once the exclusivity period for the PlayStation 4 is up.
What do you think of Sundered? Will you be picking it up at release?
Let us know in the comments below!
