DC AND WARNER BROS. CONSUMER PRODUCTS TEAM UP WITH PORTAL GAMES FOR AN OFFICIAL LINE OF DETECTIVE BOARD GAMES FEATURING BATMAN
Cooperative deduction games using Portal Games’ award-winning Detective series will begin rolling out this year
KNURÓW, POLAND (January 22, 2022) – Portal Games, in partnership with Warner Bros. Consumer Products (WBCP), DC, and Genuine Entertainment, announced today that they have secured an agreement to produce officially licensed tabletop games set within the DC Universe featuring Batman characters.
All Batman games will feature new and inspired iterations of the story-driven, cooperative deduction game system from Portal Games’ award-winning Detective game series, delivering deeply thematic games that challenge 2-4 players to team up with the Caped Crusader and bring the theatrics and themes of Batman to life in a fully immersive tabletop experience. “While many games fight like Batman, our games will challenge you to think like Batman,” says Ignacy Trzewiczek, CEO and lead writer/designer of the game series. “Every fan has dreamed of what it’d be like to stalk the Gotham City streets and solve crimes alongside the world’s greatest detective, so working with WBCP and DC on our own line of Detective cases in this iconic universe has been a dream come true for everyone involved.”
The first game, Batman: Everybody Lies, will feature an original narrative in a crime-solving deduction game where players need to gather evidence and connect the facts to unravel the mystery. Fully anchored in rich comics lore, Batman: Everybody Lies challenges players to take on the roles of four key investigators – instinctive journalist Warren Spacey, tenacious reporter Vicki Vale, brutish detective Harvey Bullock, or the cunning Catwoman – who are drawn into a series of mysterious events unfolding in Gotham City for their own respective agendas, ultimately becoming unlikely allies entrusted to help thwart villains new and old as only the World’s Greatest Detective can!
Throughout the game, players must solve a series of challenging cases with a finite amount of time and resources. Players cooperatively make decisions on how to forward the investigation, as they decide to visit famous locations in Gotham City (like the Batcave, Arkham Asylum, Blackgate Penitentiary, and the Gotham City Gazette) and cross paths with well-known Batman characters (like Batman, The Penguin, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, Scarecrow, and more) as they chase leads, identify suspects, and gather enough information to help save Gotham City. Yet even when these unlikely allies combine forces, their goals are not always aligned. So to capture the complexity of the comics, Portal has added a new hidden agenda mechanic to the Detective system, which assigns secret goals and unique win conditions for each player based upon which DC character they portray.
During gameplay, players will utilize a variety of physical and digital game components to solve the puzzle and steer the game narrative in fun, surprising directions – a deck of cards with essential clues and plot twists, various physical handouts, and a dedicated website with access to in-world resources from the Gotham City Gazette archives – for a truly immersive experience. The game also features another new thematic treat – Scenes – that bring memorable gameplay moments to life via original comic book illustrations that feel torn straight from the pages and panels of the beloved comics.
Beginning with an introductory Prologue designed to get players acquainted with the game rules, Batman: Everybody Lies then continues with three big cases to solve, each taking roughly 2-3 hours to play. Each case can be played separately as stand-alone episodes, yet should players crack all four cases, they will unravel a master narrative with an epic climax. Every scenario ends with a final report with questions verifying how well the team has investigated the case. This game format proved a commercial and critical success for Portal Games’ award-winning Detective game series, spawning a growing library of original and licensed titles selling hundreds of thousands of units worldwide in over a dozen languages since 2018.
Future games may explore other corners of the DC Universe as well as pluck inspiration from DC film and TV content. “Batman is easily one of the greatest crime-solving sandboxes ever created,” says Genuine Entertainment CEO Joe LeFavi, who brokered the Portal/DC deal and serves as a producer and brand manager on Portal’s tabletop game series. “So as long as there is a need for the Dark Knight in Gotham City, we can only hope to give him and our players more cases to crack in the years to come.”
Batman: Everybody Lies will debut this Spring 2022 via an epic pre-order campaign launching on March 4, with the $50 game rolling out into retail this Summer.
To learn more about Batman: Everybody Lies, please sign up for the Portal Games newsletter at www.portalgames.pl to receive the latest news and previews. Interested retailers, distributors, and localization partners for Portal’s growing line of official Batman tabletop games are welcome to cast their Bat-Signals TODAY via: portal(at)portalgames.pl.
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ABOUT PORTAL GAMES
Founded in 1999 as a tabletop RPG publisher, Portal Games began to produce high-quality board games in 2007 and soon became one of the major tabletop game publishers in the world with award-winning titles like Detective, Empires of the North, Imperial Settlers, Robinson Crusoe, and Stronghold in their esteemed catalog. Over the past decade, our game design team lead by Ignacy Trzewiczek has won more than 100 industry awards and nominations, including Kenner Spiel des Jahres, Golden Geek, International Gamers Award, The Dice Tower Award, and multiple Game of the Year awards across the globe.
ABOUT WARNER BROS. CONSUMER PRODUCTS
Warner Bros. Consumer Products, part of WarnerMedia Global Brands and Experiences, extends the Studio’s powerful portfolio of entertainment brands and franchises into the lives of fans around the world. WBCP partners with best-in-class licensees globally on an award-winning range of toys, fashion, home décor, and publishing inspired by franchises and properties such as DC, Wizarding World, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, HBO, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. The division’s successful global themed entertainment business includes groundbreaking experiences such as The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi. With innovative global licensing and merchandising programs, retail initiatives, promotional partnerships and themed experiences, WBCP is one of the leading licensing and retail merchandising organizations in the world.
ABOUT DC
DC, a WarnerMedia Company, creates iconic characters, enduring stories, and immersive experiences that inspire and entertain audiences of every generation around the world and is one of the world’s largest publishers of comics and graphic novels. As a creative division, DC is charged with strategically integrating its stories and characters across film, television, consumer products, home entertainment, interactive games, DC UNIVERSE INFINITE digital subscription service and community engagement portal. For more information visit dccomics.com and dcuniverseinfinite.com. BATMAN and all related characters and elements TM & © DC.
ABOUT GENUINE ENTERTAINMENT
Genuine is a leading producer and brand manager of best-selling, award-winning stories, games, and geekery for beloved genre entertainment brands. An expert in authentic adaptations and premium licensing programs across all corners of pop culture, we specialize in growing franchises and fandoms in strategic markets and media alongside best-in-class partners. Cultivating a dream portfolio of top media companies and intellectual properties, our credits and collabs include the Alien RPG, the Altered Carbon RPG, The Art and Soul of Blade Runner 2049 art book, the Blade Runner RPG, the Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition video game, The Dragon Prince master tabletop gaming program, the Dune master tabletop gaming program, the Hello Neighbor party game, the Vampire: The Masquerade Rivals card game, and the World of Darkness comic book program. Making meaningful contributions that help brands connect with their biggest fans, we transcend licensing with labors of love that top charts and capture hearts for years to come. Come play at genuineent.com.