Hi everyone!
We are Kipi Interactive, the developers behind the upcoming game SunderBound, and this is our first dev log! Today, we’d like to briefly introduce ourselves, our game dev philosophy, and discuss why we believe we are best suited to create a game like SunderBound.
10 years ago, in Sofia, Bulgaria, Kipi Interactive was born. We are currently a small team of 12 passionate full-time developers, supported by several freelancers. From our humble beginning in 2014, we’ve had a vision for what design pillars we want to build our games on:
Readability over Graphical Fidelity: tight controls, snappy animations, and reactive combat is what we’re after. Realism will be sacrificed if it means delivering a responsive experience. Function over form.
System-driven over Linear experience: a variety of systems working together like a well-oiled machine, driving the players to adapt to new challenges, bringing replayability up.
Multiplayer over Singleplayer: real players bring new and unpredictable interactions that NPCs just cannot deliver. Whether it’s cooperative or versus - together is better.
The road to SunderBound was paved by multiple games we’ve co-developed over the last decade. The biggest one is Cryowar - a PvP isometric arena brawler that we developed from start to finish for a client. We gained a ton of experience in the action top-down space, as well as real-time multiplayer know-how. We’ve also been partially involved in the development of Gate Zero, a story-rich action-adventure, where we accumulated a variety of skills we are now bringing to SunderBound. Additionally, some of our senior team members have 20+ years of experience in the game development industry, having worked on AAA action franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Crysis, Arena of Fate, and others.
“There is growing demand for co-op games, but there is also a growing number of games trying to capture that audience. Where Sunderbound differs is in the focus on 2-player co-op through mechanics, narrative, and progression. I believe our team has the passion, experience, and commitment to build such a game.”
- Viktor Ketipov, CEO of KIpi Interactive
From the get-go, we wanted to craft a co-op experience, as we are all big fans of the original Helldivers, Darktide, and Army of Two. We also have devs on our team who have experience in developing co-op games and deeply believe that gaming should be a social experience. We found ourselves invested in the 2-player aspect in particular, which we think is a space with a lot of potential to explore. The success of such games in recent years convinced us that there are many gamers out there who are looking for exactly that.
For us, a strictly 2-player experience means that there is a much higher emphasis on mutual reliability and trust - compared to other co-op titles that are designed in a way that can also be played solo. Playing on the couch with a friend or a family member is a feeling that our team deeply cherishes (especially since some of us are parents), so we wanted to make couch co-op an integral part of SunderBound.
Therefore, our game requires a partner, and if you don’t have one, an AI companion will be assigned to watch your back. Many mechanics will require the input of the other player or some kind of coordination (timing of abilities, positioning, etc.), and we are very interested in pursuing that design space within SunderBound.
We hope these insights were interesting for you! It was definitely interesting for us to go back through our decision-making process and see how far we’ve come since early development.
We plan to make these dev logs a monthly occurrence until launch, but this might change if more content or demand pops up. You’re more than welcome to discuss these topics in the comments or over on our Discord server. If there is a topic regarding SunderBound that you’d like us to cover, you can let us know there, too - we’d love to hear feedback!
In the meantime, wishlist SunderBound on Steam if you haven’t yet, and stay tuned for news on upcoming playtests!
Best,
- Kipi Interactive