Games based on Dungeons & Dragons aren’t anything new, but it’s no secret that Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 did a lot to popularize video games in which you roll dice. In the wake of Baldur’s Gate 3, Wizard of the Coast invested $1 billion into its gaming ecosystem, partnering with several different developers to create their own takes on D&D, such as Tactical Adventures’ very D&D Fifth Edition-coded Solasta II and an unnamed, single-player D&D game from Star Wars Jedi director Stig Asmussen’s new studio. Unless WotC does a mass cancellation (like the five D&D games canned just prior to the release of Baldur’s Gate 3), we can expect quite a few D&D games over the next several years.
The next one is slated for this year: Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked, a mouthful of a title for a fun four-player co-op game. If Baldur’s Gate 3 is for folks who want something on par with the mechanical crunch of D&D Fifth Edition, then Battlemarked feels like the ideal choice for those who want something more approachable–a game to play with kids too young for something like Baldur’s Gate 3, or other adults too busy to devote hours to a hobby as time-consuming as D&D.
GameSpot got an exclusive first look at Battlemarked, playing through two early levels alongside game director Gustav Stenmark and PR director Jamie Camargo. While I played as a Tiefling Rogue, Camargo played as an Elf Ranger, and Stenmark controlled two characters: a Dragonborn Paladin and Gnome Wizard. The first level we played through was a simple encounter between the party of heroic adventurers and a band of attacking goblins, while the second was the first floor of a multi-leveled dungeon crawl.