By Olivia Davies Last week Xbox Nation got invited to the reveal of Deck13-Spotlight and Just2D Interactive’s brand new title. I was chosen as the one who would pop over (heavy irony on pop over, curse you delayed trains and flights) to the city of Magdeburg in Germany, to not only trial their library of upcoming games, but to also celebrate them with other creators, developers, and journalists.
So how was Olivia’s first PR event?
Guten Tag!
The event took place at Festung Mark which is an event space in Magdeburg. Germany. Deck13-Spotlight are themselves a German publisher company and one of the biggest in the country. It was lovely to get to travel somewhere a bit different rather than a major city, Magdeburg is a picturesque city on the smaller side that is full of gorgeous architecture and is labelled as Europe’s greenest cities!
The event space itself was just as beautiful as you can see in the pictures below and wasn’t very subtle in showing off their latest RPG baby. It was decorated with foliage and had these boards dotted around with concept art and enemy models for guests to look at.
You then had the main stage where we had an introduction from Deck13’s CEO Lars Janssen who welcomed everyone and highlighted their excitement at their first major PR event. We were then finally treated to the reveal of Just2D Interactive’s Drova II – Torn Lands! The sequel to their successful 2024 fantasy RPG Drova.
Head of Product at Deck13, Michael Hoss talked us through the trailer, saying that despite it looking like Drova, it will be full of changes for fans to enjoy. He said going into the sequel, they now know what worked and what didn’t which is confidence I like to see.
After the big reveal we then got a trailer and release date for JRPG Forge of the Fae and a trailer for the upcoming Elements Destiny, which is releasing in Fall of this year. All of the revealed titles and the extended library of Deck13’s upcoming releases were then available to play in designated gaming booths.
Games, Games, Games
There were plenty of games to try at the event but if you want my extended impressions of Just2D Interactive’s Drova II, Forge of the Fae, and Crystals of Irm, you can find them on our website! The main event, of course, was Drova II and we got around 3 hours to play it. I completed the demo in around 2 hours and 30 minutes, but that was with me missing out on quite a bit of optional content, I could easily have hit the 5-hour mark in my spare time.
Guests got the option to play with either keyboard or controller which was nice and they even had some steam decks to test out how some games ran. The only issue was that due to the event space’s poor Wifi, unless you had a memory stick you wouldn’t be able to obtain the footage you had captured. It was a shame to lose that progress but that was on me!
The set ups themselves were cozy, and the developers were extremely helpful with any issues we had or if we got stuck. The developer of Forge of the Fae had even travelled all the way from Japan to be at the event which was really nice. The event lasted between 12.30 to around 9pm do I didn’t have time to play every single title, but I enjoyed the ones I did get around to.
You can find the list of titles below and find some of their demos to have a play around with:
Drova II – Torn Lands – Just2D Interactive
Full Circle – 2nd Player Games
Forge of the Fae – Datadyne LLC
Elements Destiny – ShrooMoon UG
Celebration!
Whilst you could play demos, there was also other things take part in, like going out into the courtyard to take part in archery and knife throwing! Now, that’s not a bit of me, someone would probably lose an eye, but a lot of people seemed to have fun, and it added to the whole fantasy vibe. They also held live music performances of Drova II’s soundtrack by a folk band who were dressed up.
Later on in the day when it got dark, they then had a big open fire to huddle around and roast bread on! Now, did I think it was a marshmallow? Yes. But don’t tell anyone that. Finally, you could wander to the main hall where members of the team would be giving live demos of their IPs. There were plenty of activities to get involved in at the event!
Oh Goodie, A Goodie Bag!
After the dinner buffet and with the event coming to an end, the team had one final gift which was a goodie bag! Appropriate for Drova II you could pick between a Ram or Bear drawstring bag which had a bunch of goodies like this little pig figure, and a card with all our preview access keys on.
I had a blast getting to celebrate with all these lovely people and wish all the developer’s success in their upcoming titles. Some of them are on the horizon, but others you will need to wait a bit longer for.
Thank you to Just2D Interactive, Deck13, and PR Hound for organising the event!
But for now, if you want more a deep dive into the games I got to playtest at the event, including the big reveal from Just2D, then you can find my extensive impressions on them below!