Deep Silver: Dead Island 2 Launch Campaign

Project N goes to Hollywood!

Project N started working with publisher Deep Silver and developer Dambuster Studios in 2022, on the eve of the Dead Island 2 announcement at Gamescom. Since then our team continued to promote and support the launch of the game, engaging with the community on social channels and producing a huge array of assets – from movie-style posters to tips-and-tricks videos.

Following the game’s announcement in August 2022, our design team got to work on a social channel rebrand complete with eye-catching highlight assets. This included sharing key character announcement art, and compiling the incredible reaction to the news into a re-reveal infographic that captured the fan response in the aftermath of Gamescom. To support the announcement, we created a number of Dead Island 2 posters modeled on iconic movies, including 28 Days Later and Kill Bill.

In October we produced an easter egg trailer, cosplay guides for the playable characters, weapon intro videos, assets for the Golden Joystick awards, blog posts for the DI2 website, and more. The Project N team had also begun to animate artwork from the graphic novel tie-in which had been produced by renowned comic illustrator Roberto Ricci. We rounded off this content-heavy month with assets to promote a Halloween competition across DI2 social channels. Additionally, we branched out to other teams within Deep Silver, providing photography services, as well as creating assets and content for the web team to build into the Dead Island 2 website.

December brought with it one of the most exciting developments yet – finally, the community would get to see actual gameplay. We created teasers beforehand to draw attention to the gameplay showcase on release, as well as supporting the team with blogs and seasonal holiday content. We started releasing juicy zombie imagery and teaser videos, much to the delight of fans who were hungry for gruesome character designs

We had the privilege in February 2023 of announcing that Dead Island 2’s release date had been brought forward. A simple video was enough to build some serious hype, as we knuckled down into game release mode. Next, we launched our first VO asset of the campaign, the tongue-in-cheek ‘Selling Sunset’, which pitched Hell-A locations as prime real estate for Slayers.

Throughout all of this, we maintained a close relationship with Deep Silver, keeping meetings consistent and holding strategy days for month-to-month reviews of the content we produced. As the timeline for release shifted, we were able to cater to their changing needs, updating our content plan accordingly.

April saw the official launch of Dead Island 2, flanked on either side by Twitter takeovers from fan-favorite character Sam B and the newly introduced Konradt. We worked directly with technical artists and other developers at Dambuster Studios as we pulled together a faux teleshopping ‘Slayer Store Shopping’ asset complete with high-quality 3D weapon models pulled straight from the game files.

“All the work you guys have done has been fantastic. We‘ve never been so happy with our social channels”

Nicolò Testi

After a successful game release it’s important to keep the momentum going, so the creation of engaging post-launch content was vital. We created voice-over videos in an informative-yet-engaging TikTok style, with the aim of keeping the game on players’ minds over the spring. Our ‘Boss Breakdowns’ provided new Slayers with tips on how to beat powerful enemies, game guide video assets were created to help players understand the more complicated mechanics, and trailers were made to advertise features and new updates such as co-op play, new skins, and sale prices.

By the end of our working relationship with Deep Silver, over 90% of Project N’s staff had worked on the project. We’d shared more than 360 deliverables throughout the project, across almost a full year’s worth of high-quality work. The client was extremely pleased with our work, noting that “all the work done by Project N was fantastic,” and that they had ”never been so happy with social channels”.