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Out now · Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X|S

SUNDER

A BRUTAL ACTION-ROGUELIKE

Die, learn, descend. The dungeon remembers.

A fast, vicious roguelike where every death rewrites the descent. The dungeon studies the way you fight — then builds itself to break the habit. Land the perfect parry. Chain a 240-hit combo. Lose it all. Go again sharper.

Steam
PS5
Xbox Series X|S
Launch standing
9 / 10
IGN review score
96%
Steam · Overwhelmingly Positive
38
hand-built boss encounters
240+
weapon combinations
v1.0.4 · build 2026.05.14 · 14 languages
Watch

See it move.

captured on PS5 · no commentary
1440p · uncut combat
Editorial gaming close-up of an ultrawide curved monitor displaying a fantasy-shooter game scene at dusk with screen reflection in a dark room
Launch Trailer · 2:14
HD
The game

A dungeon that fights back.

The Vault beneath Cinderhold has no bottom that anyone has come back to describe. It is not a place so much as an appetite — twelve shifting strata of bone-iron corridors, collapsed shrines, and arenas slick with the runs that ended there. You go down because the thing at the bottom took something, and going down is the only direction the Vault permits.

Sunder is built on one cruel, generous idea: the dungeon learns you. Lean on a single weapon and its rooms start spawning the enemies that punish it. Dodge instead of parry and the floor fills with foes you can only out-time. Death is not a reset — it is a lesson the Vault files away, and the next descent is a counter-argument to the run that just killed you.

Every weapon you find stays found. Every boss you fell to becomes a door you can now walk through. You will lose a hundred runs. Each one makes the hundred-and-first faster, meaner, and entirely yours.

240+ weapon combinations

Pair any of 28 core arms with rune-mods that rewrite how they swing. Build a frost-greatsword that detonates on the third hit, or a throwing-knife loop that never lets a boss breathe.

A dungeon that adapts

The Vault profiles your last six runs and reshapes spawns, hazards, and room layouts to attack the habit you lean on hardest. No two descents read the same.

38 boss encounters

Each stratum is sealed by hand-authored bosses with multi-phase movesets — the Ash Choir, the Warden of Locks, the bottom-floor thing nobody names. Beat one and it becomes a shortcut, forever.

Permadeath, permanent progress

Runs end clean — no take-backs. But unlocked weapons, opened shortcuts, and codex lore all carry over. You never lose ground; you only ever sharpen.

Bosses felled — first 19 runs
A typical descent log. The curve is the whole pitch: every wipe is a step down.
38 / 38 cleared
RUN 01RUN 10RUN 19
Screenshots

Twelve strata of the Vault.

in-engine · 60fps gameplay
no bullshots, no touch-ups
STRATUM 02 — THE ASH GALLERIES
BOSS — THE WARDEN OF LOCKS
RUNE-FORGE — WEAPON CRAFTING
STRATUM 07 — THE DROWNED SHRINE · 240-HIT CHAIN
THE ASH CHOIR — PHASE THREE
CINDERHOLD — THE HUB
What's in the box

Built for the run after the run after this one.

01 / COMBAT

Frame-tight melee

Cancel windows, directional parries, and an air-dash that resets on a clean hit. Every weapon has its own rhythm to internalise.

02 / SYSTEMS

Rune-mod synergies

Stack four rune slots into broken, beautiful builds. A curated build-encyclopedia in-game tracks every combination you discover.

03 / SCORING

Daily Descent

One seed, one shot, global leaderboard. A fresh Vault layout every day at 00:00 UTC — and a ghost replay of the world's best run.

04 / WORLD

A codex worth reading

317 lore entries unlock as you descend — environmental storytelling that never once stops you to deliver a cutscene.

05 / ACCESS

Generous assists

Granular sliders for enemy speed, damage taken, parry windows, and aim assist — tune the challenge without ever turning it off.

06 / SOUND

An adaptive score

A 41-track industrial-doom soundtrack that layers in with your combo counter and drops out the instant you whiff. Composed by Reya Vance.

3,104 players in the Vault right now

The descent is better with company.

Trade builds, compare Daily Descent ghosts, and argue about the bottom floor with a community that has been theory-crafting Sunder since the first beta.

Launch week
0

copies sold in the first seven days — a 9-person studio's debut commercial title.

Discord
0

members in the community server

Steam
0

user reviews · 96% positive

The reception

It gets its hooks in fast.

9/10
"The year's most satisfying combat — Sunder turns dying into the best part of the game."
IGN
92/100
"It gets its hooks in fast and does not let go. The adaptive dungeon is the real deal."
PC Gamer
Recommended
"A debut with the confidence of a tenth game. Ironside have made something genuinely cruel and genuinely kind."
Eurogamer
5/5
"The rare roguelike where the run that kills you teaches you exactly how to win the next one."
Destructoid
Essential
"Hades fans, Dead Cells lifers — clear your week. The Daily Descent alone has eaten ours."
Rock Paper Shotgun
4.5/5
"Brutal in the way you want it to be — fair, fast, and ferociously well-tuned. A debut to watch."
GameSpot
Festival recognition
Selection
Day of the Devs
2026
Nominee
The Game Awards
Best Debut Indie
Official Selection
IGF Grand Prize
Finalist
IGN PC GAMER Eurogamer Destructoid RPS GameSpot Polygon KOTAKU
The studio

Nine people. One basement. Montréal.

Ironside Interactive is nine people in a converted Mile End loft who spent six years making game-jam prototypes that nobody asked for. Sunder is the one they couldn't stop making — a 48-hour jam build from 2020 that quietly refused to die.

It is their first commercial release. Everything in it — the adaptive Vault, the 41-track score, all 38 bosses — was built by a team small enough to fit around one long table, who playtested every boss against each other until somebody cried, and then shipped it anyway.

From game jams to launch · est. 2019
Mara Feld
Creative Director
Theo Brandt
Lead Combat Design
Reya Vance
Composer · Audio
Anika Roy
Engine & Tools
Luc Tremblay
Environment Art
+4
The rest
Animation, QA, production
Prior work — the jam years
Hollowpoint

Ludum Dare 46 — ranked 4th overall.

Saltbreaker

GMTK Jam 2021 — top 1% in design.

Ninefold

7DRL 2022 — the Sunder prototype.

Specs

Will it run.

PC build 2026.05.14 · ~6.4 GB
also on PS5 & Xbox Series X|S

Minimum

1080p · 30 fps
OS
Windows 10 64-bit (build 19045)
Processor
Intel Core i5-6600 / AMD Ryzen 3 1300X
Memory
8 GB RAM
Graphics
NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB / AMD RX 570
DirectX
Version 11
Storage
6.4 GB available · HDD acceptable

Recommended

1440p · 120 fps
OS
Windows 11 64-bit (build 22631)
Processor
Intel Core i7-10700K / AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Memory
16 GB RAM
Graphics
NVIDIA RTX 3060 8 GB / AMD RX 6700 XT
DirectX
Version 12
Storage
6.4 GB available · SSD required

Console — runs at a locked 60 fps in Performance mode on PS5 and Xbox Series X, 30 fps on Series S. Steam Deck verified · ~3h40m battery at the 40W profile. DualSense haptics and adaptive triggers fully supported.

Out now · 96% positive on Steam

The Vault is open.
Go down.

$24.99 on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. No season pass, no microtransactions — the whole descent, one price.

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