The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is Daedalic’s first game in new Middle-earth licensing deal

Daedalic Entertainment has built a reputation for story-rich adventure games since Carsten Fichtelmann and Jan “Poki” Müller-Michaelis founded it in 2007. But last week at the Game Developers Conference 2019 in San Francisco, the German publisher made the biggest news — and maybe its greatest risk — of its 12-year existence: a game about Gollum, the most conflicted character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings epic.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a narrative adventure game that Daedalic is targeting for a 2021 release for PC and “all relevant consoles platforms at the time” (so expect PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch here along with even Google Stadia). It’s the first game of a new partnership between the German publisher and Middle-earth Enterprises, the company that handles licensing work for Tolkien’s books. Daedalic is using Epic’s Unreal Engine to make the game. The deal represents a shift for Daedalic from focusing more on its own intellectual properties and lesser-known works like author Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth to working on one of the biggest franchises in entertainment.