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Xbox Games Showcase 2023 showed off our most ambitious line-up of games ever, and that meant showing off projects from some of the world’s biggest teams – and the smaller ones too. Among the showstopping projects from our own Xbox Game Studios, we also made space for some very special projects from [email protected] developers, including Thunder Lotus’ 33 Immortals and Microbird Games’ Dungeons of Hinterberg.
On the Xbox Podcast this week, our own Larry Hryb interviewed developers from both teams, and made sure to ask them what it was like to see their projects share the stage with the likes of Starfield, Fable, and more.
“It was amazing,” said Stephan Logier, Creative Director, Thunder Lotus. “It was a dream come true for the team, for me – it was so satisfying to be part of the community. I was in the room with everyone, with all the fans, and there was so much energy, and [such] amazing content. It was really something, one of the best moments of my life. We’ve worked so hard for the last few years to make this happen, so this moment was exceptional.”
Microbird co-founder, Philipp Seifried felt similarly: “It was absolutely amazing. We stayed quiet about the game for a year and a half. When we first started prototyping we did some initial screenshots and put them on Twitter, and had quite a good resonance, but then we stayed quiet for so long, and it’s been nagging at us that we can’t talk about the game. Having this shown for the first time at such an amazingly huge event – just being in that cinema in LA – it was one of the greatest moments we’ve had in years.”
Fellow Microbird co-founder, Regina Reisinger, added: “We were really excited, our hands were shaking a little bit in there, waiting for it.”
It’s safe to say that both reveals went down well. 33 Immortals wowed with its merge of action-roguelike mechanics and the huge-scale, 33-player co-op at its core (drawn from the spirit of MMO raids). Dungeons of Hinterberg meanwhile drew plaudits for its vibrant, comic book-inspired art style, and the promise of life-sim elements alongside its dungeon-crawling.
Both games also offered appointments for the press, something Logier enjoyed being able to do right after the Showcase:
“All afternoon we played a version of the game with the press, and we had a lot of fun. It was really interesting to start playing in co-op directly with everyone, and we died a lot [laughs]! Everyone was dying a lot and we saved each other, and so everyone started to use the unique power each weapon has – you need other players to take position, and so we were developing tactics to get rid of dangerous elites, monster elites that are really fast, so it was really fun. In a multiplayer game like 33 Immortals, the game really exists when players play together, the game dynamic happens in this moment… we were playing and talking and having fun together, and it was a really good moment.”
33 Immortals is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Cloud, and will be available day one for Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass members. In 2024, an early access version will be released through the Xbox Game Preview Program on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC, also available in Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.
Dungeons of Hinterberg will be released in 2024 for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Cloud, and will be available day one for Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass members.