Feel first
Movement and gunfeel above everything — grounded, heavy, fast. Sprint, double-jump, slide, mantle. If it isn't great in your hands, it doesn't ship.
A first-person co-op looter shooter
The stars went quiet. We didn't.Tether the dark into arm’s reach. Break its hold. Take everything back — together.
In development · Unreal Engine 5
The Promise
A saga where the dawn is real
Some sagas ask the same question for a decade and never answer it. Sunder makes the opposite bet: there is an ending, good earns it, and every strike you run is a step toward sunrise. The cost is real — people fall, places fall — but despair is the enemy's weapon, never the narrator's voice.
Co-op by default
Two to six Wardens depending on the activity. Everything is designed to be better with friends — and playable with two.
Loot with meaning
Fewer, more distinct drops over stat-stick spam. Every relic carries the hand that held it.
The world tells the story
Hushed worlds show a golden age stopped mid-sentence — a table still set, a carousel gone quiet. You are the counterargument.
The Signature Loop
Draw. Brand. Sundering.
Between gunfights, Sunder is melee-forward. The Hollow likes its work quiet and at a distance — so Wardens learned to end arguments up close.
01
The Draw
A tether of Emberlight, cast from a bracer above the wrist. Haul the small horrors into arm's reach — or haul yourself up onto the giants.
02
The Brand
Your kindled edge — axe, blade, or maul — and a first-class loot slot. Heavy swings stagger. Once you commit, there are no take-backs.
03
The Sundering
Break the Hollow's hold on what it took. The shell parts to ash, and something small and warm gets out — rising.
Gunplay stays co-lead
Shotgun and hand cannon are the loop’s close-range dance partners. Auto rifle and launcher own the long lanes. Precision exists — it isn’t the tax.
Break the Grip
The Hollow doesn’t inhabit its shells — it holds them, the way a fist holds a stone. Find where the will clenches hardest, strike it, and the whole construct staggers.
Weight is a contract
Hitstop on impact. The camera flinches. A committed swing cannot be cancelled. “Yank,” never “float.”
Release, never gore
A Sundering is the whole war, one second long: ash-flakes and a rising spark. What the Hollow takes can be taken back.
Better Together
Built for the fireteam
Every system bends toward the same table: you and your friends, one warm room, one impossible job. Two to six Wardens by activity — and death has weight. There is no resurrection magic here. A revive is your squadmate dragging you back before the dark closes.
First Strike
“The Foundry Below”
The hushed mining moon where humanity raised its very first Ember has gone quiet again — and in its deep foundry, the Hollow is forging the hush-ring: a weapon that fires silence, built around that stolen first light. Drop in with Lampkeeper Edda Marn on comms, follow the still-burning route lamps of the scout who died getting the word out, break the foundry line — and face Vael, Third Silence, mid-ritual, un-singing the captured Ember note by note.
- Wardens1–3
- Length10–15 min, replayable
- On commsLampkeeper Edda Marn
- RewardThe first Emberbound
“Valiant in effort. Faithful in step. Warm to the last.”
The proving-creed, spoken at every drop
Proof of the whole counteroffensive, fifteen minutes at a time: what the Hollow takes can be taken back.
Loot With Meaning
Rarity is resonance
Every weapon is salvage of a fallen golden age or new-forged in the last city's light. An Ember remembers every hand that carried it — rarity measures how loudly the memory in the metal still sings.
Common
Clean metal. Quiet.
Carried
It remembers hands.
Storied
It remembers deeds.
Emberbound
It remembers a hero. Briefly, so do you.
Four gun archetypes and the Brand at first light — every drop rolls its stats and a perk that changes how you play. Fewer drops. Bigger decisions. Kill → drop → equip → feel the difference.
The first relics
One stand at the Lantern Stair. Two relics that remember it.
Quiet Refused
Sera Voss held the Lantern Stair for six hours with this in her hands, and the evacuation lived. It remembers how she refused the quiet — and it will not start now.
One Second Long
A Brand assembled from what the same stand took. Swing it, and a heartbeat later the blow lands again — the second stroke, kept for everyone who couldn't stay.
And eight more, still singing in the vault.
The World
The First Star broke itself so the dark couldn't wear it
Before the worlds there was Helion — a mind the size of a sun, singing systems into life. When the Hollow came to wear it, Helion refused the only way it could: it shattered. A million burning fragments — Embers — seeded the void. Humanity rose on those fragments, burned bright, and fell in a single generation when the Hollow followed the song. One city remains: Hearth, the last warm room in a cooling house. That's where you begin — and where the counterattack does.
The foundries below
Where the Hollow builds its quiet — and Wardens go to unbuild it.
The Long Noon, interrupted
A golden age stopped mid-sentence. Its relics still sing.
Where the dark walked
Hushed worlds. Gray, patient, and not as empty as they look.
Hearth, the last true city
Built in the caldera-shadow of the largest Ember ever found. Markets still trade, children still play, lamps still get lit — because Wardens keep it that way. The last warm room in a cooling house, and the first room of the counterattack.
The order of battle
Realized — in-engine models
Husk
What's left when a person is hushed — a shell that walks, reaching for warm things.
Rasp
Four legs, low to the floor. It closes the gap before the room stops echoing.
Cantor
Choristers that sing entropy across the dark. Close the distance.
Pallbearer
Gravebuilt armor around a knot of Hollow will. It pulls you to it.
Cask, Unsung
A named field commander of the Sixth Moon. It remembers being feared.
Vael, Third Silence
A ranked lieutenant of the Hollow. Killing one is act-level history.
The Stillness — the will at the center. The saga’s final answer, and the one thing down here we haven’t modelled yet.
The Called and the Chosen
Many are called. Few are Emberbound.
Near an Ember, many kindle — a warmth in the blood, a note half-heard. But an Ember binds to only a few: the hands it decides are worth remembering forever. You begin called, not chosen. The trials are the proving. And the Hollow runs the same arithmetic in the dark.
The Mantle
The warrior’s answer: a brief, hulking frame of forged Emberlight. The chest becomes a furnace. The Warden’s face stays visible — it’s still you in there.
The Pall
The Unkindled’s: the same mass, built from absence. Where your chest carries an Ember, theirs holds smoke. The war’s hardest fights are the people who could have been you.
Same man. Two answers.
From the Forge
Visual development
Everything below is pre-production concept work — targets we're building toward, shared in the open as the game grows around them.
The Lineage
Standing on the shoulders of giants
Sunder is built in the mold of the games we've poured thousands of hours into — with a promise none of them make: an ending, earned, where good wins.
The hands
Destiny 2’s depth
Ability cadence woven through world-class gunplay. Loot with gravity. The fireteam ritual — three friends, one strike, “one more run.” That loop is the genre’s high-water mark, and it’s the bar we build against.
The heartbeat
DOOM Eternal’s aggression
Forward is the only safe direction. A combat economy that rewards courage at arm’s length and punishes hiding. Sunder’s melee loop brings that heartbeat to a co-op world — pull the fight close, and feed your squad by winning it.
Genre-clone is a compliment. Content-clone is a sin. Every name, world, and system in Sunder is our own.
The Studio
A tiny team with an enormous dream
Sunder is an independent project built by a very small team with AAA ambitions and zero interest in shipping something that doesn't feel incredible. We're building it in Unreal Engine 5, one proven slice at a time — a strike first, then the system, then the saga.
Feel is the law
Every milestone gets played before the next begins. If it isn't fun, it stops the line.
Greybox honesty
Gray boxes that play great, then the paint. Never the other way around.
Built in the open
Concept art, dev logs, and playable slices as they happen — no smoke, no mirrors.
Put your ember in
Follow the journey
We’re early — pre-alpha early — but the forge is hot: the first rifle already fires crisp in two-player tests, against enemies that flank, telegraph, and stagger. The first strike is being carved out milestone by milestone, and we’ll show it as it grows: dev logs, art drops, and eventually, a playable slice. If Sunder sounds like your kind of fight, say hello.
Get dev updatesSteam page — with the first slice
Questions, answered
What is Sunder?
A first-person co-op looter shooter in development for PC: best-in-class movement and gunfeel, a weighty melee signature loop (the Draw, the Brand, the Sundering), rarity-rolled loot that changes how you play, and repeatable co-op activities set in an original sci-fi saga where good — at real cost — wins.
How many players?
Two to six depending on the activity, and everything is playable with two. The first strike supports one to three Wardens.
What platforms?
PC first, on Steam. Everything else comes later — if the game earns it.
When can I play it?
When the first slice is genuinely fun — a replayable 10–15 minute strike is the current milestone ladder. Follow along and you'll know the moment we do.
What's the first thing I'll play?
"The Foundry Below": a replayable 10–15 minute strike for one to three Wardens. You drop onto the hushed mining moon where humanity raised its first Ember, follow a fallen scout's still-burning route lamps into the deep, and take that Ember back — with the game's first Emberbound relic waiting at the end.
Is there PvP?
Not in the current scope. Sunder is co-op PvE first: you, your friends, and the Hollow.