Deck13 Interactive

Deck13 Interactive is a developer and publisher.

Deck13 Interactive Webpage, Facebook

German game developer and publisher, founded in 2001 as Triggerlab GmbH. The company is headquartered in Frankfurt. The company is known primarily for co-creating the action RPG Lords of Fallen with CI Games and creating the souls-like The Surge. In June 2020, Focus Home Interactive acquired the studio for €7.1 million.

History

Humble beginnings

Before forming Triggerlab GmbH, its founders had operated under the Artex Software studio since 1997. This brand is still used by Deck13 Interactive for small, budget games. It's worth noting that this studio created Ankh: The Tales of Mystery for Acorn 32-bit computers in 1998, which Deck13 revived in 2005 and transformed into the adventure series we know today.

Deck13 Interactive was officially founded in 2001 as Triggerlab GmbH. The studio's debut production was Stealth Combat, a tactical action game released in early 2002. Shortly thereafter, in April 2002, the company changed its name to its current one.

The next game was a 2005 re-release of Ankh, originally developed by Artex Software. Ankh: The Mummy's Curse, a humorous point-and-click adventure game, took players to ancient Egypt. The game's protagonist, Assil, needed our help to free himself from a terrible curse. The game was a success and won several awards, particularly in Germany. As a result, the studio decided to release a sequel, Ankh: Heart of Osiris. The game was released exactly one year after the first installment. Players once again played as Assil, but the story was no longer limited to him – players could also control Thara and the pharaoh himself. There was another installment in the Ankh series – Ankh: Battle of Gods, released in 2007.

The studio did not abandon the adventure genre. Just before the release of Battle of Gods, they made a game called Jack Keane. It used the same graphics engine as the Ankh series, but introduced action elements, and the events took place in India during colonization.

In the following years, the company also released teh followign adventure games: Black Sails (2010) and Haunted (2011), as well as Jack Keane 2: The Fire Within. However, the RPG Venetica from 2009, proved much more popular. We played as Scarlett, the daughter of Death, trying to stop a nefarious necromancer from destroying the world. Deck13's next RPG was in Blood Knight from 2013, a game leaning more towards hack'n'slash. This was the studio's first game featuring multiplayer in the form of a cooperation mode, allowing players to work together to slay hordes of monsters.

In 2014 and 2016, Deck13 created two installments of the economic simulator TransOcean, in which players could try their hand at being the CEO of a maritime transport company.

Lords of the Fallen and the new era

In the meantime, the studio was involved in creating Lord of the Fallen together with the Polish company CI Games, compared by critics to the games from the Souls series. However, the collaboration was abruptly ended by a dispute between Deck13 and CI Games. The Polish company claimed that the German developer had failed to properly fulfill its contract, which resulted in bugs in the game. The dispute ended with a settlement. Thanks to Lords of the Fallen, Deck 13 Interactive was awarded by German Deutschen Entwicklerpreis for Best Action Game, Best Game Design, and Best German Game. Deck13 was also recognized as Best German Studio at the same awards ceremony.

In 2015, at E3, the studio announced its own production inspired by the Souls series. The science-fiction The Surge was released in May 2017, receiving quite good reviews.

In 2014, the company formed a new division: Deck13 Games, which operates in the publishing industry. Its primary focus is helping independent developers publish their games. The first project was the arcade/puzzle game Shift Happens, developed by Klonk Games, released in February 2017. In subsequent years, it was followed by titles such as Wartile, Flat Heroes, CrossCode, The Shattering, and Resolutiion.

In the meantime, between 2017 and 2018, The Surge got two expansions: A Walk in the Park and The Good, the Bad, and the Augmented. Additionally, the studio (or more precisely, its Hamburg branch) delivered an economic strategy game called TransRoad: USA, which allowed players to manage a logistics company. However, it was only a side project, because soon afterwards Deck13 Interactive returned to developing its flagship brand - The Surge. The Surge 2 debuted in 2019, receiving a warm reception from players and reviewers alike. The title quickly followed in the footsteps of the original and received a DLC titled The Kraken in 2020.

Moving under Focus Home Interactive's wings

2020 brought significant changes for Deck13 Interactive. In June, Focus Home Interactive acquired the studio for €7.1 million. In February 2021, Deck13 Interactive expanded with a new branch located in Montreal, Canada.

The first game developed by the studio under its new owner was the action RPG Atlas Fallen. The game debuted on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S in August 2023, and received a massive marketing campaign prior to its release. However, Deck13 Interactive's work was not a success. On Steam, Atlas Fallen received only "mixed" reviews, while according to Metacritic, the average rating from industry media ranged from 64 to 71/100.