/!\ WARNING! Some elements of this game are not for the faint of heart! Some plot twists and at least one game ending involve discrimination, ostracization and living with trauma. Trauma that was incurred to oneself, and trauma that was dealt by oneself.

---

Robots and superheroes had been my autistic special interest as a child. Knowing a lot about them, helped me make a lot of friends during childhood. So lucky me! However, as I got older, the interests of people my age diverged from mine, and I had trouble getting on the same wavelength as them.

At some point, the gap between me and my social surroundings became so large, that I felt isolated and lonely. So isolated, that it became detrimental to my mental health.

In the storyline, I also wanted to address the issue that human history is full of people that were marginalized, made fun of, ostracized, or even threatened, because of their divergent ideas and observations. And some of those people became understood and highly respected many years later - often posthumously. Think of Galileo Galilei or Socrates.

SUNDERBORN - ep. 1

- Where Is Home? -

Viking maiden thunderhammers robots and mecha, with interactive fiction in between. Plot twists in the story contain elements about neurodivergence and being misunderstood by the majority.

Three possible endings: one bad, one relatively not so bad, and one healing-connectedness ending. The choice you make in the last stage matters! Do you know how to get the best endings?

Keyboard & mouse	Gamepad
TFGH	left stick	movement
mouse	right stick	rotation
Shift	X	block
LMB or [ or comma or X	left bumper	light attack
RMB or ] or dot or Z	right bumper	heavy attack
D / J	A	lock gaze on target
mouse scroll / PgUp / PgDn /  E / U	triggers	cycle through targets
R / Y	B	roll
Spacebar first time	Y	first time: thunder charge weapon, second time: double HP amount, up to max HP
Tab / Enter	Start	Pause
M	Select / Back	toggle music

TIPS

Up to three-hit combos possible by using light attack and/or heavy attack.

You can charge your hammer with thunder, but only of the timer is full.

You can speed up the timer by hitting hard the enemies.

You have less HP than the robots, but you are a lot faster - use that to your advantage!

KNOWN ISSUES

- First time you thunder charge your weapon, or cast the healing spell, the game freezes for a few seconds.

Fun facts:

- I loved role-playing superheroes and robots as a child.

- Actually I had made a demo in a previous game jam, because I couldn't finish a whole game episode. I found the story to be fitting for the ND Pride 2025 game jam, so I took my chances to finish it!

Credits: 

- Episode 001 launched for this jam: https://itch.io/jam/ndpride-canada-game-jam-2025

- Mecha models done by me in https://www.blender.org/ 

- Animations integrated from https://www.mixamo.com/ 

- Music from the battle metal band THRONAR - used with their blessings. 

- Human model done in http://www.makehumancommunity.org/ 

- Melee combat AI programmed by me 

- Sound FX by: https://gamesupply.itch.io/ and https://dillonbecker.itch.io/ and https://heltonyan.itch.io/weatherelements 

- "Blue Planet Earth" by DLR_next is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/?ref=openverse.a

- Multiple background pictures by WorldWideWilco

- Fonts from Google Font and from https://www.fontspace.com/search?q=rune

My socials:

 - https://londolan.itch.io 

- https://www.tiktok.com/@londo-lanan 

- https://youtube.com/@londo-lanan-indiegamedev