Gamescom Opening Night Live 2026 delivered the headline casting for Dlala Studios: Bob Mortimer, one of Britain's best-known comedians and a recent winner of Amazon UK's Last One Laughing, voices a character called Magic Dave in Murals, the studio's first self-published, self-owned IP.

The 43-person Dlala, founded in 2012 by Aj Grand-Scrutton and Craig Thomas in a Witham, Essex garage, is funding the project jointly with a Canadian family office, with Dlala bankrolling roughly half the budget from its own reserves.

How did the Mortimer pitch start?

The casting began as an in-joke. Grand-Scrutton and lead writer Kelsy Abbott wrote a character described as a "rip-off" of the comedian, then decided to approach the real thing. Grand-Scrutton called Mark Landers at Side, who returned within hours with Mortimer's agent contact.

"Bob wants to see a script" was the reply. What followed was an all-night writing session producing a two-to-three-page script, then what Grand-Scrutton calls "the longest 48 hours" of his life, waiting on approval.

"Then they came back, and they were like: 'He loves it. He'd love to be a part of this'," he tells GamesIndustry.biz.

What was the recording session like?

Grand-Scrutton flew to London to direct the session in person, a standard Dlala practice. "I'm not going to say we directed him, because he didn't need it: Everything that came out of his mouth was perfect," he says. "Honestly, the Bob Mortimer you see on television, he's even a hundred times nicer and funnier than that in person."

Why is Dlala going it alone?

After shipping Battletoads for Microsoft in 2020 and Disney Illusion Island in 2023, the studio opted against another licensed project. Instead, the team banked on an owned title. Grand-Scrutton frames the move as a deliberate bet the studio can absorb.

"We have bet the house on this original, but we've secured the team outside of it, so there's no risk to the team if this game doesn't do well, except for we'd all be devastated," he says. The studio models the project with zero projected royalties on its spreadsheets. "You will never ever find royalties in our finance spreadsheets in terms of projections."

The pattern is familiar. Dlala was roughly 12 people when it spent six months assisting Rare on Sea of Thieves in 2018, and Grand-Scrutton had pitched Battletoads annually to then-Rare head Craig Duncan since Dlala's founding in 2012. The contract closed in 2018. Disney returned after Battletoads shipped, leading to Illusion Island; a first Disney project had been cancelled in 2016, triggering staff cuts.

What kind of game is Murals?

Design director Grant Allen calls Murals "a combat game where it's easy to pick up, easy to play, but has depth to it." The title borrows itemisation from roguelikes but applies it linearly, with a persistent catalogue of augmentations called Eeries that stack like a chemistry set to add attributes to weapons.

Magic Dave, Mortimer's character, runs the Vending Machine of Delights, an in-fiction shop. Allen and the team position the title as a continuation of Dlala's signature mix of hand-drawn art, combat, and humour.

What does self-publishing unlock?

Dlala hired Marcus Purvis as head of publishing, a former contact from Microsoft's Lift London incubator program. Self-publishing, Grand-Scrutton argues, gives the studio speed and the latitude to spend on ideas without justifying ROI. A nine-week comic book tie-in is his example.

"There's no return on investment," he says of the comic. "Publishers have to be driven by how successful the game's going to be. For us, we've got focus."

What to watch next

Dlala is moving from a decade of work-for-hire to a fully owned release with no publisher backstop and a celebrity voice performance at the top of the marquee. Eyes will be on how Murals' Chinese publishing partners and Purvis' in-house team handle the first launch window for a Dlala-owned title, and whether the comic-book pre-marketing bet pays off once the game reaches players.