Discover 2 Unique Ways to Celebrate Chinese New Year with Family and Friends

The first firecrackers of Chinese New Year always send a familiar thrill through me, but last year, our family discovered something that genuinely revolutionized our celebration. We gathered around the television, not just to watch, but to play. The game was Sunderfolk, and it became the centerpiece of our reunion dinner festivities. What makes this experience so unique for a holiday centered on togetherness is its hybrid nature. The game plays out on your computer monitor or TV, creating a shared focal point, but you look down at your phone to peruse your available options. This dual-screen setup meant my grandmother could watch the grand battle unfold on the big screen while my nephew and I managed our tactical moves on our devices. It bridged the generational gap in a way that felt both modern and deeply collaborative.

I remember our first mission vividly. The crux of the gameplay sees the heroes take on missions, most of which boil down to killing every foe on the board. That particular mission had an additional objective: defending a sacred shrine from being overrun. Each of the heroes has their own unique collection of abilities, displayed as cards on each person's phone or tablet. My sister had a healer with protective barriers, I controlled a warrior with area-of-effect attacks, and my cousin commanded a rogue who could slip behind enemy lines. On each turn, we could play one card, mapping our movements and selecting targets using our touchscreens. The initial chaos was hilarious. On the easiest difficulty, it's possible to get by doing whatever you want, and we certainly did, stumbling into victory more by luck than skill. But the real magic, the part that truly mirrored the cooperative spirit of Chinese New Year, emerged when we increased the challenge.

This is where the second, more profound way to celebrate with Sunderfolk revealed itself. On every other difficulty above the simplest, you're encouraged to talk through your available moves with your allies. Our living room, usually filled with the scattered conversations of a large family, transformed into a war room. We debated card combinations with the same intensity we usually reserved for debating the best fillings for jiaozi. The game mechanics actively foster this communication. Once someone starts taking their turn, it stops the other players from going, but you can easily exit out in the midst of mapping things out if everyone decides it's better for someone else to go first. This flexibility was a game-changer. I lost count of the number of times, maybe 20 or 30 in a single evening, we'd start a move, only to collectively gasp and reverse course. "Wait, if you go there, my healer can't reach you!" my sister would say, and we'd reset. The party can go in whatever order they want, and you're only locked in once you've started moving or attacking. This created a dynamic, fluid form of teamwork that felt less like a rigid board game and more like an organic, shared conversation.

The beauty of this system is that it forces a kind of strategic intimacy. You're not just playing a game side-by-side; you're inside each other's heads, planning a collective future turn by turn. This resonated deeply with the Chinese New Year theme of strengthening family bonds. We were literally coordinating our fates. As far as I can tell, there's no way to completely reverse someone's turn once they've gone, which added a delicious tension to every committed action. A misplaced step by my cousin led to a comical chain reaction that nearly wiped us out, a story we retold for weeks afterward. It became a modern family legend, our own little myth of a heroic failure during the Spring Festival.

So, while we still honored all the traditional customs—the red envelopes, the elaborate feast, the thorough cleaning of the house—Sunderfolk gave us a new, interactive ritual. It leveraged technology not to isolate us in separate corners, but to pull us together into a shared, tactical narrative. The combination of the large-screen spectacle and the personal, tactile control on our phones created a perfect blend of communal and individual engagement. For families and friends looking to inject a fresh, collaborative energy into their Chinese New Year gatherings, I can't recommend this approach enough. It turns a night of celebration into an unforgettable, co-authored adventure, proving that some of the best new traditions are just waiting to be downloaded.