D&D fans who had their first look at the newly announced game Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked from Resolution Games may have experienced deja vu. The upcoming project, based on the Demeo Action Roleplaying System, looks and feels a lot like another product that was recently officially canceled by Wizards of the Coast: the VTT (virtual tabletop) Sigil. While there is no correlation between the two products, it’s still an interesting coincidence.
Sigil was supposed to revolutionize the way that Dungeons & Dragons, the world’s most successful tabletop role-playing game (for the moment), is experienced. Promising an immersive, fully 3D virtual tabletop experience, Sigil’s development was followed with great interest by the fandom, only to see those hopes crushed by its cancellation just one month after launch.
First announced in 2022, Sigil was developed with Unreal Engine 5, and it was supposed to bridge the gap between hardcore tabletop D&D players and the more casual video game fans who may have heard about the game through Stranger Things, Critical Role, or Baldur’s Gate 3, which had been in early access since October 2020. However, after years of development issues, Wizards officially canceled the project in March 2025, because, according to an email circulated to D&D staff by Dan Rawson, the senior vice president in charge of Dungeons & Dragons, “After several months of alpha testing, we’ve concluded that our aspirations for Sigil as a larger, standalone game with a distinct monetization path will not be realized.”
Three months later, the first look at Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked hints that at least some of the promises of Project Sigil will be realized, just in a completely different format. According to game director Gustav Stenmark, “We are trying to emulate the feeling of playing Dungeons & Dragons with your friends. But in this game, no one needs to be the DM, instead, the game will do all of that stuff for you.” In Battlemarked, 1-4 players will take control of their characters, represented by miniatures, and move them on a map, fighting monsters and completing quests, using the same rules as the tabletop version of D&D.
This is exactly what Sigil wanted to accomplish, with the difference that a Dungeon Master was present, and the game was supposed to be entirely customizable to fit any adventure or campaign the users wanted to play. While it’s unclear from the information released at the moment, Battlemarked will likely have its own specific campaign and limited customization options. Otherwise, it would be just another version of Sigil, but outsourced to an external developer. For reference, the in-house development team for Sigil was laid off in March of 2025.
It’s hard to predict how fans of Dungeons & Dragons will react to Battlemarked. Wizards is currently facing backlash on many fronts, as the latest edition of D&D, released this year, was received with raised eyebrows. In April, Christopher Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, respectively the creative director and the game director for Dungeons & Dragons, left the team, officially on their own terms and volition, to move on to other projects. Still, the three main people behind D&D’s Fifth Edition (Mike Mearls left Wizards in 2024 for Chaosium) are now out the door, with a brand-new edition around that is not meeting fans’ expectations, to say the least.
Truth be told, Project Sigil seemed doomed from the beginning. While the promise to play D&D in a 3D and fully customizable environment was enticing, it required a dedicated client software and a D&D Beyond (the official D&D digital toolset and game companion) account to function, which already put it at a disadvantage compared to other popular VTTs, such as Roll20. Also, Wizards’ purpose of bringing video game players to tabletop D&D was likely accomplished by the extraordinary success of Baldur’s Gate 3 already. It’s not a coincidence that Sigil’s trailer from D&D Direct 2024 began with the voiceover saying, “So many of us have played Baldur’s Gate 3. This is the opportunity for people to play their adventures in this new way to play D&D.”
Fans curious to see how Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked will play can check Demeo, Resolution Games’ tabletop-inspired co-op game. However, Gustav Stenmark specified that “Demeo is more of a rougelike game, whereas Battlemarked focuses more on the story and the campaign.”
Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked will eventually be available on PC, console, and XR devices.
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