Super Lucky’s Tale — hands-on with Microsoft’s new mascot

Microsoft hopes that it has a new mascot character with Lucky, the star of Super Lucky’s Tale. The game from Playful is a sequel to the virtual reality title Lucky’s Tale, and it debuts on November 7, on the same day that Microsoft launches the Xbox One X video game console. I played it hands-on at a Microsoft preview event, and I saw its potential in appealing to a wide range of gamers who love platformers.

Playful, the McKinney, Texas-based studio headed by Words With Friends co-creator Paul Bettner, created Lucky’s Tale as a flagship platformer for the Oculus Rift headset in the spring of 2016. But VR sales haven’t been as good as predicted, and VR studios like Bettner’s have to find a new source of revenue. That played into Microsoft’s own need to have a platform character like Mario to lead the charge into the Xbox One X generation.