First Dungeons & Dragons VR trailer teases a beginner-friendly tabletop game – but I’m just begging for a custom game mode

Demeo is getting a D&D reskin

29 Jan 2025, 17:00 · TechRadar

News By Hamish Hector published 29 January 2025

(Image credit: Resolution Games / Wizards of the Coast)

Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked's first trailer just dropped
It shows us the Demeo-meets-D&D experience we were expecting
There's no release date, but we were promised post-launch DLC support

Just over a year ago it was announced that Demeo developer Resolution Games would be creating a VR Dungeons & Dragons title, a collaboration akin to combining peanut butter and jelly – it just made perfect sense. Now we’ve got the first trailer for the upcoming project: Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked (try saying that five times fast), and we’ve got our first look at the gameplay.

Demeo is the essential tabletop experience in VR with elements that fans of IRL games will recognize instantly – including dice rolling, miniatures, and fantastical settings. It was already approaching D&D in VR, so an official partnership between the two games wasn’t surprising. And the end result is exactly what people expected.

As seen in the trailer (we’ve dropped it below for you) various players come together as their diverse set of characters – a Dragonborn warrior, Halfling mage, Elf bard, and Tiefling rogue – to take on a band of Kobolds in a tabletop setting made to look like woodlands.

It ends with a quick flash of recognizable Demeo gameplay – a player rolling a die to make an attack, while the other members of their party scan their hand of cards to decide what actions they’ll take on their turn.

Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked | Announce Trailer - YouTube

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So far, the only distinctly D&D change is that the usual 12-sided die used in Demeo has been swapped for the iconic 20-sided die (D20) which all D&D campaigns rely on. However, other D&D elements have been stripped away to make the game more like Demeo; Battlemarked will be a Dungeon Master-less experience (a person who runs the game for the players) with the game deciding how NPCs and monsters engage with the players, and the title will focus on “social strategy rather than social roleplay” according to the developers – so expect combat galore.

Beyond what the trailer had to show us, Resolution Games and Wizards of the Coast have promised us two story-based campaigns at Battlemarked’s launch, with additional campaigns planned as DLC for future updates.

We’re not sure which settings will make an appearance, but we expect a few iconic locations and campaigns from the Forgotten Realms – Icewind Dale, the Tomb of Annihilation, Waterdeep, and Ravenloft to name a few – will be adapted for this upcoming title.

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