Dungeons & Dragons’ first VR app is a fantasy version of chess (update)

Dungeons & Dragons is heading into virtual reality, and its first battle ground is going to be a chess board.

Wizards of the Coast and Experiment 7 announced Dungeon Chess today, which debuts sometime in 2017 (the press kit had said March 28, but the studio has since changed this) for the Oculus Rift for PCs and the Samsung Gear VR mobile headset. It takes classic monsters of the 42-year-old tabletop role-playing game and puts them on a chessboard, with animated combat when the pieces meet. The VR studio also said that this is the first project of this partnership, hinting at further VR games down the road. And this could help the burgeoning VR software market, which market researcher SuperData scaled back to a possible $14 billion in sales by 2020. Brands will help this forecast, and few are as big as D&D when it comes to fantasy gaming.