Sundered

Lore & Background

The game opens with a woman, Eshe, wandering a desert in a sandstorm when, coming across mysterious ruins, she is pulled into the ground by a mysterious force. Falling into an ever-shifting underworld, Eshe encounters the Shining Trapezohedron, which grants her the power to defend herself. The two begin to travel the caves together. As they progress, the Trapezohedron explains that their civilization, an Eldritch theocracy known as the Eschaton, was at war with an invading force known as the Valkyries, who used advanced technology to fight their eldritch magic. The final confrontation between the leaders of these two groups during a summoning ritual caused the ritual to fail, resulting in the remaining Eschaton to become monsters, the remaining Valkyries to become corrupted and fused to their war machines, and the landscape to become warped and unstable.

Reader's Guide

Sundered received overall positive reviews with an aggregate score of 74/100 on Metacritic. Critics praised the hand-drawn levels as 'impressive' and the boss fights as 'epic', and noted the game's beautiful graphics and well-done atmosphere and story. However, the random enemy hordes were criticized for leading to 'random deaths' and being 'horrible' due to large groups that attack the player, with one critic calling it 'a form of fake difficulty' that harmed his impressions heavily. The randomly generated levels were noted as not being the same quality as the pre-designed ones. The game was also criticized for forcing the player to backtrack and for making the 'better' ending likely require forgoing the 'cool' powers. Eurogamer ranked the game 29th on their list of the 'Top 50 Games of 2017'.

Did You Know?

• The game uses procedural generation to rearrange passages connecting areas after every death.
• Eshe can use Elder Shards from bosses to sacrifice her humanity for more powerful abilities, such as turning into a gargoyle.
• The game has three endings depending on what the player chooses to do with the collected Elder Shards.

Gameplay & Progression Systems

Sundered casts the player as a lone wanderer navigating a side-scrolling underworld, a structure rooted firmly in the Metroidvania tradition. Progress is gated behind abilities discovered at scattered shrines, and each new power simultaneously opens shortcuts that reshape the player's route through the interconnected cave system. What sets the title apart from its genre peers is its embrace of randomness: enemy hordes spawn in unpredictable clusters, and every time the player dies, the passages linking one area to the next are shuffled through procedural generation, ensuring no two runs follow an identical path. The character's growth is driven by two distinct currency systems. Common Shards, harvested from fallen enemies, feed a permanent skill tree that steadily upgrades her combat and traversal toolkit. Elder Shards, rarer drops reserved for boss encounters, offer a far more dramatic choice: the player can sacrifice a piece of the protagonist's humanity to unlock extraordinary abilities, such as transforming into a gargoyle. This tension between incremental improvement and transformative, costly power defines much of the game's mechanical identity.

Narrative & the Three Endings

The story of Sundered is steeped in Lovecraftian horror, following a woman named Eshe who stumbles upon ancient ruins during a desert sandstorm and is dragged into a shifting underworld. There she meets the Shining Trapezohedron, a mysterious entity that grants her power and accompanies her through the caves. The Trapezohedron reveals that the realm was once home to the Eschaton, an Eldritch theocracy locked in war against the technologically advanced Valkyries. A catastrophic failure during a final summoning ritual left the surviving Eschaton transformed into monsters, the Valkyries fused to their war machines, and the landscape warped and unstable. Eshe must fight through both remnants, collecting Elder Shards—fragments of that failed ritual and vessels of eldritch energy. The narrative culminates in three distinct endings shaped by how many Elder Shards the player corrupts or destroys. In one, Eshe escapes but the Trapezohedron follows her back to the desert. In another, the Trapezohedron reveals itself as the god Nyarlethotep's true form and abandons her to a lifeless darkness. In the third, Eshe fuses with the Trapezohedron, becomes godlike, and floods the world with eldritch darkness under her direction.

Critical Reception

Sundered earned broadly positive critical reception, landing a 74 out of 100 aggregate on Metacritic. Reviewers consistently praised the game's visual presentation and atmosphere. IGN's Leif Johnson gave it 7.8 out of 10, describing the hand-drawn levels as impressive and the boss encounters as epic, though he felt the random enemy spawns produced more frustration than genuine challenge and that procedurally generated passages fell short of the handcrafted ones. USgamer's Mike Williams awarded four out of five stars, highlighting the game's beauty, sound design, and ambient score as standout elements. His main reservations concerned the backtracking required to collect everything and the narrative tension of the better ending, which he felt punished players for enjoying the more exciting corrupted abilities. Hardcore Gamer's Kyle LeClair was more critical, scoring it three out of five. While he called the graphics gorgeous and the story and atmosphere well executed, he found the regular enemy combat genuinely punishing, describing the large swarming groups as a form of fake difficulty that undermined his overall experience. Despite the mixed-to-positive critical picture, Eurogamer recognized the game's cultural footprint by placing it twenty-ninth on their Top 50 Games of 2017 list.

Development & Platform Rollout

Sundered was both developed and published by Thunder Lotus Games, a Canadian studio. The initial launch arrived on July 28, 2017, spanning four platforms simultaneously: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and PlayStation 4. This multi-platform debut positioned the title as a cross-ecosystem release from the outset. The game's lifecycle extended well beyond that initial window. In December 2018, Thunder Lotus shipped Sundered: Eldritch Edition, a definitive version of the game that brought the experience to Nintendo Switch and Xbox One, expanding the audience to console players who had been excluded from the original launch. A further port to Stadia followed on May 26, 2020, rounding out the title's availability across the major hardware and streaming ecosystems of the early 2020s. The progression from a four-platform PC-and-PlayStation launch to a definitive edition on additional consoles and then a cloud-gaming service illustrates a measured, multi-year rollout strategy. The Eldritch Edition label indicates the build offered to Switch, Xbox, and Stadia players was a curated, enhanced version rather than a straight port, and the roughly two-year gap between the original release and the definitive edition suggests the studio took time to refine the experience before expanding its reach.

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