An investment round led by Chris Taylor (Xbox) marks the preproduction kickoff for development of Chronicler's upcoming AA action title.

Chronicler was founded by Derek Reese (Xbox, Red Hat). Chronicler’s game engine for cooperative storytelling adventures makes D&D-style experiences, with their deep and emotional moments, much more accessible. The engine powers a marketplace of campaigns with stories that evolve along with the players. They utilize proprietary tech built on Unreal Engine 5, including a runtime machine-learning AI Director, to create hyper-personalized gameplay for every player. The flagship campaign is brand new original IP for the all ages market, made in partnership with fan-favorite writers and artists.

"I spent my childhood years creating adventures for my little sisters which, through interactive narrative, gave them outlets to grow as people. All I wanted was to take that experience to every family's living room by starting my own game company." - Derek Reese

The Chronicler Engine brings D&D-style storytelling and business models to a massively wider audience with both licensed and original IP. They're building a third person sci-fi shooter that plays like Spider-Man, with guns, in space.  It’s a 1-4 player co-op third-person shooter with a story featuring a zero-grav recovery to an afrofuturist planet suffering a mysterious fate. Embrace and uncover secrets and collectibles. Customize your journey where every adventure, alone or co-op, is dynamically directed.

Launches Q2 2026 on Steam Early Access, and later on Epic Games Store, Game Pass,  and PlayStation 5 - Digital targeting cross-generational audiences.

About the Founding Team

Derek Reese - Design Director, CEO

Derek planned on building a world-class entertainment studio since he was 5 years old, and his 20+ year career in gaming is a testament to learning everything it would take to do so. From roots in the gaming community with LANFest to shipping multi-billion-dollar AAA experiences at Xbox, Derek found an audience and technology combination that meant now was the time to start building. He was driven by his unending passion and perseverance to recruit a top performing team of the diverse skill sets and perspectives necessary to launch a billion-dollar game studio.

Rasmus Rasmussen - Production Director

Rasmus has been building things and organizing people since his early years in Denmark. Rasmus joined his first startup at the end of the original dot com wave, and surviving that, ended up as an early hire at industry-pioneering iStockphoto. This became his introduction to media production for a global market. He worked with iStock until it was sold to Getty Images for $50M, at which point he set his eyes on gaming. Starting with the launch of the Xbox One console, Rasmus worked on several AAA titles under Microsoft, before eventually joining Valve Software among others.

Joe Wills - Creative Director

Joe has created and built universes to which his stories would play out for people to enjoy since he was a child. He then started his comic career working for teams that had contracts with Marvel, DC, and Devil's Due Comics. Being published by various comic studios and working with his heroes and comic industry heavy hitters like Brett Booth and David Finch, Joe has learned the "in's and out's" of great visual storytelling as well as compelling and dynamic visual art. His 30+ years of experience in art and storytelling has enabled him to do so professionally in the indie gaming industry when he was drawn to a team with the goal of launching a billion-dollar game studio.