Critical Role is finally taking the next big leap by co-creating a video game.
A video game set in Critical Role’s world of Exandria is one step closer to reality. The long-running, Dungeons & Dragons-inspired actual play series is officially developing its first game–though fans will need to wait a few more years before they can get their hands on it.
As confirmed in an interview with Variety, the title is being developed in partnership with Los Angeles-based indie studio AdHoc Studio, marking a major expansion for the Critical Role brand. The collaboration also encompasses other creative projects, most notably the upcoming narrative game Dispatch, which is set to launch later in 2025.
A video game being in the works has been hinted at by Willingham and his team in 2024, having mentioned in interviews that they were in “active” pursuit of creating a video game. At the time, Willingham further elaborated that Critical Role was “starting to come to the end of a long road” that the company had travelled over the past few years, suggesting that the groundwork for such a project had been long in the making.
A voice audition sparked the unexpected partnership
The partnership between Critical Role and AdHoc Studio began unexpectedly, when Critical Role CEO and cast member Travis Willingham, who is also a veteran voice actor, received an audition for Dispatch. He was immediately taken with the project’s tone and animation.
“I absolutely flipped out,” Willingham recalled in the same Variety interview. “The animation was so amazing. So much so it looked like an animated show.” After viewing the footage, he contacted AdHoc co-founder Nick Herman to explore the idea of developing something similar for Critical Role.
A few months later, in autumn 2024, Willingham and fellow cast member Laura Bailey met with Herman and AdHoc CEO Michael Choung over dinner in Studio City. According to them, the creative chemistry was immediate, and plans for a long-term partnership began to take shape.
Dispatch arrives first, while the Exandria game is in early development
The Exandria-based game is still in early development, with no official title or release window announced. Willingham shared in the Variety that the team is currently “tossing around ideas” and working to align on the game’s scope, budget, and essential features.
What has been confirmed is that the game will be set in Exandria, the high-fantasy world created by Matthew Mercer and brought to life by the Critical Role cast, which includes Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Mercer, and Willingham himself.
In the meantime, Dispatch is scheduled for release later this year. Described as a “superhero workplace comedy,” the game tasks players with managing a dysfunctional team of misfit heroes, deciding who to send to city-wide emergencies while balancing office politics, interpersonal drama, and their own heroic ambitions.
Critical Role continues expanding beyond the table
The Exandria game is just one part of Critical Role’s expanding cross-media ambitions. What began as a streamed home campaign has evolved into a wide-ranging entertainment brand, spanning animated series, novels, comics, and merchandise, each of which helps to build out its immersive universe.
Critical Role first aired in March 2015 as a video series on Geek & Sundry, later becoming an independent production in 2019. The show follows the cast’s own Dungeons & Dragons campaigns and, now in its third campaign, has produced numerous spin-offs and special episodes across the years.
The Critical Role franchise has since expanded into several major projects, including the creation of its own tabletop RPG, Daggerheart, and the animated series The Legend of Vox Machina, which is produced in partnership with Amazon Prime Video. Another animated series based on its second campaign is also currently in production for Prime Video, titled Mighty Nein.
