In February, Hasbro, the parent company of Wizards of the Coast, strongly hinted that a series of video games based on D&D would be released. However, I honestly did not expect the next game to be a cooperative survival game developed by the team that created "Disney's Dreamlight Valley," and I was right.

It's not just a survival game. The unnamed project, currently underway at Gameloft, promises "unique cooperative gameplay built around an innovative hybrid of survival, life simulation, and action RPG" set in the world of Forgotten Realms. Players can expect an adventure where real-time survival meets the rich lore of this legendary franchise." [At first glance, the mix of genres - survival (don't get killed by a black bear), life-sim (get a job killing black bears), and action RPG (kill black bears) - resembles a straight-up D&D game. But if that were the case, Gameloft would call the game simply an RPG, a D&D game, or something less "unique." Of course, that would put the new game squarely at odds with "Baldur's Gate 3," and no one needs that kind of headache.

But apart from the risk of being squashed by Larian is the fact that doing something different with the D&D license is a good idea in itself: a D&D survival game, especially one set in an exotic world like Dark Sun or Planescape would be great (though for mainstream audiences, it's probably a step too far. Just don't go into that cave."

"Don't go into that cave.

There is also potential in the life-sim angle. My colleague Harvey Randall says, "Imagine if you had Karlach as a romantic NPC. People would be overjoyed." I don't think he's wrong.

I hope Gameloft has learned its lesson from Disney Dreamlight Valley, a "dreamlike life-sim" tainted by expensive DLC and "terrible microtransactions". It will be a little while before we know how it all comes together: Gameloft is still hiring for the new game, and no release date has yet been announced.