WotC Brand New D&D Video Game from WotC's New Acquisition Tuque Games

Tuque Games has announced it's working on a brand new D&/D video game. "We're developing a brand-new game based in the widely celebrated, enduring, and immensely popular Dungeons & Dragons universe. This yet to be announced title is steepled in classic D&D lore. We aspire to push this game to new heights for the genre. It’s an honour and a privilege to begin a new chapter for Dungeons & Dragons video games."

Not only that, but the company has been purchased by WotC! The press release went out earlier today:

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RENTON, Wash., Oct. 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS), today announced that it has acquired Tuque Games, a digital game development studio based in Montreal. Tuque is led by veterans of the game industry with experience working for leading publishers. Tuque will continue the development of games for Wizards of the Coast's best-known brands, beginning with Dungeons & Dragons.

"At Wizards, we're continuing our commitment to creating new ways to bring our fan favorite brands to life," said Chris Cocks, President, Wizards of the Coast. "Our unique approach of connecting fans around the tabletop as well as through our expanding portfolio of digital games is redefining what it means to be a games company."

Founded in 2012 by Jeff Hattem, Tuque Games released their first title, Livelock, to critical acclaim in 2016. Now with over 55 full-time employees, Tuque will focus on the development of digital games based on the popular Dungeons & Dragons franchise.

"Tuque is thrilled to have the opportunity to be part of the Wizards of the Coast team," said Jeff Hattem, Founder, Tuque Games. "By working more closely together, we can accelerate our joint vision and bring to life new games, characters and worlds in Wizards of the Coast's roster of franchises."

"In Tuque, we believe we have found a unique partner that pairs the nimbleness of an indie studio with the veteran leadership and scale required to deliver complex AAA games for our largest franchises," said David Schwartz, VP of Digital Publishing, Wizards of the Coast. "We are excited to bring Jeff and the Tuque team to the Wizards of the Coast family, which we believe will allow us to continue to meet the needs of our fans while enabling us to scale our digital games development capabilities even faster."

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It seems there's a bit of a D&D video game renaissance going on. Baldur's Gate 3 is coming, as is Solasta: Crown of the Magister.

 

[Parmandur]

BTW my guess is that Tuque Studios is doing a D&D 5e Ravnica CRPG game. Just a guess.

If I had to guess, I'm going with an X-COM style game set in Sharn. Because that would be cool.

 

[DammitVictor]

For all we know it'll be some sort of mobile microtransaction game. Like that Raid Shadow Legend that's been paying youtubers left and right lately...

Or that Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms that WotC already licensed.

 

[Undrave]

Or that Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms that WotC already licensed.

Maybe a gacha game inspired by their previous attempt at a collectible minis game?

 

[gyor]

Maybe a gacha game inspired by their previous attempt at a collectible minis game?

You guys are depressing. I'm really hoping for a great CRPG.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A Kara Tur or Al Qadim centred CRPG is absolutely apossiblity and would be cool.

Simply not going to happen until WotC themselves bring back one of those two settings, make it they way they want it, and give it their seal of approval.

So yeah, not a possibility yet. If one of them appears, it could become a possibility. Al Qadim is the stronger of the two, because it was less reliant on a single culture (Japan), and did a lot more interesting fantasy stuff and a lot less simply copying mythology.

If you are of course a fan of console kind grafix which cannot get realistic enough, or have expect it to be more like WoW then of course you might not like it.

Oh boy lol

 

[Undrave]

You guys are depressing. I'm really hoping for a great CRPG.

Just tempering expectations is all

 

[Bohandas]

I just hope that whatever they make is turnbased. I'm sick of Baldur's Gate copies; that system didn't even work right in Baldur's Gate itself; unless you played all fighters or all casters you would lose more hp to friendly fire than to the enemy

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I just hope that whatever they make is turnbased. I'm sick of Baldur's Gate copies; that system didn't even work right in Baldur's Gate itself; unless you played all fighters or all casters you would lose more hp to friendly fire than to the enemy

I don't doubt that that was your experience of BG1/2, Bohandas, but I do feel like I should note that, I played BG1/2, especially 2, an awful lot, and I never found friendly fire to be particularly a problem, despite running a mixed party, so I think experiences varied.

 

[Coroc]

I just hope that whatever they make is turnbased. I'm sick of Baldur's Gate copies; that system didn't even work right in Baldur's Gate itself; unless you played all fighters or all casters you would lose more hp to friendly fire than to the enemy

Well you could put in all kind of stoppers, auto pause on this autopause on that etc. I really love BG series and I did replay all of it recently when steam brought out the remastered stuff.

But some things were really annoying:
The scripting never worked out like you would expect, especially for casters.
The best solution was to have your mages remember all kind of nasty debuffers like emotion or chaos, sleep for the earlier levels, then you could run the game commode. Going for evocation / conjuration spells did not work out well. I never did get any of the scripted guys to cast an acid arrow and I still wonder why. All that casters would do is spam magic missile on the evocation side.
With clerics the same, they spammed command if you gave it to them but hold person? Just does not happen. Also druids, never ever give your druid the entangle spell. It ties your party firmly to the ground, so that's a friendly "fire" for you.
What would have been nice in BG would be some kind of graphic aid helping you to place some area effect. They had it back in the darksun and wake of the ravager games which were clearly predecessors, engine wise, why didn't they continue this nice help function?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Making a different CRPG is not duplicating what Larian Studios is doing anymore then Solasta is duplicating what Larian Studios is different. Different engine, different look, different region/setting, different story, different solutions to challenges tjat arise.

The only thing that is a real difference is "different engine". Making a robust game engine that adequately reproduces the D&D 5e ruleset is a hugely difficult task, even if, like Larian, you already have an RPG engine that you can start from.

Once you have the engine, giving it a different look, region and story are relatively trivial tasks any less experienced developer could tackle.

So, once Larian creates a succeful 5e engine, it make sense for WotC to create a glut of CRPGs using several different developers. But, until then I find the idea that WotC would employ anyone to create a parallel engine utterly stupid.

Yes, I would prefer a full CRPG. But if you can't distinguish between reality and wishful thinking you are setting yourself up for disapointment.