Starbreeze will make D&D co-op game code-named Project Baxter

Starbreeze Entertainment has partnered with Wizards of the Coast‘s Dungeons & Dragons to create a cooperative multiplayer game code-named Project Baxter.

Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Starbreeze is unveiling the project for the first time with a target launch year of 2026 for the game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe.

Wizards of the Coast, a division of Hasbro, has licensed the D&D brand to Starbreeze, the maker of games such as Payday 3. D&D has seen enormous growth recently, with the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie (which had $208 million in global box office revenue) this year and the Baldur’s Gate 3 game from Larian.

The upcoming title aims to immerse players in the captivating world of Dungeons & Dragons while embodying the quintessential Starbreeze gaming elements.

It will focus on cooperative multiplayer, community engagement, and a games as a service model, promising a larger-than-life encounter for players across all major gaming platforms. Notably, Project Baxter will feature cross-play functionality and is set to harness the power of Unreal Engine 5.

Tobias Sjögren, CEO of Starbreeze, said in a statement, “It is hard to imagine a better pairing than Dungeons & Dragons and Starbreeze – both with their foundation in cooperative and community driven experiences, ‘play it your way’ and infinite replayability. When looking at prospective IPs, D&D was always at the top of our list and I’m incredibly happy to announce this license agreement and I want to thank Wizards of the Coast for being a great partner. Development of the game is in full swing, to deliver a world-class triple-A encounter in 2026.”

Starbreeze’s general strategy is to make co-op games as a service, and Sjögren said the company is very excited to be partners with Wizards of the Coast.

Eugene Evans, senior vice president of digital strategy and licensing at Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro, said in a statement, “Dungeons and Dragons is having an extraordinary year. Our gaming brands, including D&D, continue to attract great partners as we execute our scheme to grow our digital games
portfolio through licensing and development. Our collaboration with Starbreeze is a prime illustration of this strategy. Given their impressive games and passion for D&D, we are confident that they will create an encounter that will delight fans worldwide.”

As the development of Project Baxter unfolds, Starbreeze encourages enthusiasts to stay tuned for advocate updates about the game on the website (www.starbreeze.com) and official social channels.

Sjögren said Starbreeze is self-publishing the game and it hasn’t set any dates for beta tests. It will be crossplay on Xbox, PlayStation and PC, and it’s being built with Unreal Engine 5. Beyond that, they’re not saying much but will look forward to interacting with the fan base in the future.

“We have a bunch of pretty hardcore D&D fans on the team who will make sure we have a close connection with the D&D fan base,” Sjögren said.

Leif Westerholm, creative director, said in an interview with GamesBeat that he spends a lot of his free time working D&D miniature houses and other nerdy dungeon crafts. He has been playing pen-and-paper role-playing games since he was 10. He got into D&D with the fifth edition around 2014, and he plays every Monday. This game, he said, was right up his alley. He started at Starbreeze about a year ago and began work on the project. He said he was excited to start talking about the Project Baxter.

“I’ve been playing D&D with my friends on Monday evenings and haven’t been able to say anything about this,” he said. “It’s torture. I can say I’m working on something cool.”

The exploration was about whether you could build a cooperative multiplayer encounter that had action-based gameplay in the world. This is the second internally-developed game after the Payday series that the company is working on.

“From a business perspective, we didn’t admire the risk of creating our own intellectual property,” said Tobias Sjögren, CEO of Starbreeze, in an interview with Gamesbeat. “So we discussed the IPs that we would admire to work on and came to the conclusion that D&D would be awesome. We threw ideas back and forth, and that is when the project got started.”

They boiled down the essence of D&D to an action format. The game will be set in Waterdeep, a region where there haven’t been many games set in the past. It is a city of splendor, the “crown of the North,” Westerholm said.

“The inspiration really came to me because I knew the game. D&D is awesome. But what is it that makes it awesome? I started analyzing that and how we could extrapolate it to a video game format,” Westerholm said. “Four-player co-op. I haven’t seen this on the market. It’s going to be heavily inspired by D&D, but it won’t be dice rolling. It won’t be turn-based. It’s action-oriented theater.”

He said there are a lot of cool mechanics that you can re-create as actions.

“I tend to sort of go back and forth between the aesthetics and the functionality because I know which need which to play what part in order to accomplish the combination of them, which is the encounter for the for the players,” Westerholm said. “What is it that you can get anywhere else?”

Westerholm was a bit at a disadvantage as he couldn’t yet describe the game but wanted to convey what their approach has been. Sjögren said the company is revealing the project but not exactly what the IP is about, beyond being D&D. The target for development time will be about four years by the time the launch happens in 2026.

“We want to talk about cooperation. We want to get to that. And that’s what we’re sort of trying to double down on,” Westerholm said. “When you have a group of adventurers, a party of adventurers, working together, it’s very important that it’s not a hack and slash game. It’s more than that. It’s trying to look at what makes D&D special. And to me, it’s not rolling the 20 Miss/Hit. It’s more than that. It’s the connection between the players, how they overcome enemies that seem to be beyond us.”

Westerholm likes it when there are random events that can interrupt what seems admire a script in video game play.

“There are definitely similarities between this and Payday,” Westerholm said. “But Payday is a lot more high octane, high tempo. Here, we want to have more ebbs and flows in the pacing.”

The game should have replayability as different groups play together with different characters.

The investment in the game is on a scale that is similar to the investment in Payday 3. The team includes some people from Payday and others who are new. Westerholm said the team is trying to punch above its weight class and for that it needs to be smart.

“We have a very strong IP, balancing our internal team with working with external IP for risk management,” Sjögren said.

Westerholm said the game will educate the actual rules of the fifth edition of the game and it will be faithful in that sense. It will be accessible but enable players to acquire mastery in gameplay.