Taskmaster VR, the virtual reality adaptation of the hit TV show, is set to release on June 13th for Meta Quest and SteamVR. Preorders on Meta Quest are open now.
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Liverpool, UK – May 20th – Taskmaster VR, the eagerly anticipated game from Scallywag Arcade, is releasing on Meta Quest and SteamVR on June 13th and is available to pre-order on selected platforms now. The game allows players to step into the contestants’ shoes by competing in extraordinary challenges or to fill the industrious boots of the Taskmaster’s Assistant by creating tasks of their own and challenging their friends in local play.
Making the transition from TV to VR, the game offers fans and gamers an opportunity to immerse themselves in one of the world’s most popular comedy shows. As a contestant, players will complete a series of amusing and bemusing challenges with the aspiration of becoming Taskmaster champion. These tasks are puzzling, physical and designed to allow for outside-the-box thinking with multiple solutions, creating near-endless replay possibilities.
In Creative Mode, you become the one creating the tasks. An extensive array of tools and toys makes task creation and experimentation easy, with hundreds of in-game items that can be picked up, piled up or used in just about any other way the player wants. The creatively minded can build custom tasks and surreal scenarios, or explore the Taskmaster House and its many nooks and crannies. Players can then challenge friends and family to complete their fiendish tasks in local play.
Taskmaster VR is designed for Meta Quest and SteamVR with creative consultation and voice acting from Alex Horne, the show’s mastermind and star, and Greg Davies, the towering host and titular Taskmaster. The virtual reality game is being developed by Scallywag Arcade, a Draw & Code studio, in partnership with Avalon, the award-winning production company behind the international hit, BAFTA and National Comedy Award-winning TV series.
Alex Horne, the show’s creator, and Taskmaster’s Assistant said: “In real life, I’m not allowed to be a Taskmaster contestant or look into the Taskmaster’s eyes without his permission, but thanks to Taskmaster VR I can fulfil very nearly all of my Taskmaster fantasies. I strongly urge anyone with similar ambitions to get the game immediately”.
Greg Davies, the Taskmaster, said: “It goes without saying that a computer-generated Alex is, much like his human counterpart, a constant irritant. I thought that the virtual version of me may turn out to be more zen but, if anything, he is less tolerant. If being judged by a man who is so angry he doesn’t exist is your thing, then this is the game for you.”
John Keefe, Co-Founder of Scallywag Arcade, said: “Opening up pre-orders for Taskmaster VR Taskmaster VR is the culmination of a lot of love and hard work from the Taskmaster team and our studio. We think the show translates brilliantly into VR; it’s the ideal medium for conveying the chaos and creativity of Taskmaster, we can’t wait for fans and players to step inside this world with us.”
Taskmaster VR comes to a headset near you on June 13th and is available to pre-order on Meta Quest and to wishlist on SteamVR now.
For more information and to pre-order head to https://scallywag.drawandcode.com/taskmaster/
For press enquiries, please contact the team at hello@scallywagarcade.com
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NOTES FOR EDITORS
Watch the latest trailer: https://youtu.be/5yvuC42VxFw
Press pack: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1G9wunJa-jdr78Yvq12fsnHZQnqf7jOhk?usp=drive_link
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About Scallywag Arcade
Scallywag Arcade is a new indie game studio that lives and breathes video games. The studio has emerged from VR and AR veterans Draw & Code and it is helmed by industry veterans who mastered their craft at majors and indies. Scallywag Arcade mix a life-long passion for creative play with our day-to-day experimental antics to create games with a unique vibe that our players will remember forever. www.scallywagarcade.com
About Draw & Code
Draw & Code are immersive and experiential content specialists. The UK-based studio has an international footprint, having been working with games technology such as VR (virtual reality) for over a decade, completing over 150 projects along the way. Previous clients include Google, Sony, Warner Bros, Mercedes-Benz, Liverpool FC, Red Bull, Chelsea FC and the BBC. www.drawandcode.com
About Taskmaster
Taskmaster is a BAFTA winning and International Emmy nominated comedy entertainment show originally created by Alex Horne. Greg Davies stars as the all-powerful “Taskmaster” who, with the help of his loyal assistant Horne, sets out to test the wiles, wit and wisdom of five comedians through a series of strange and surreal challenges in what is the most hard-fought and ridiculous comedy entertainment format on TV.
159 episodes have been produced in the UK so far, as part of a landmark six season deal with Channel 4 in 2020, which has recently been renewed for a further six series by the broadcaster following nine record-breaking series on UKTV’s Dave.
Over the past year, Taskmaster triumphed as one of Channel 4’s most popular programmes, coming in as the channel’s third most streamed title of the year with 2.3 billion viewing minutes recorded across all series watched in 2023. The launch episode of series 15 alone has had 85.4million streaming minutes viewed so far. Previously, the show enjoyed its best performance on record with its Channel 4 launch which reached 3.9 million consolidated views after the first episode, winning the majority share of young viewers 16 – 34’s and making it the best-performing new entertainment show of the year (Broadcast, 2020). Watched by a broad multi-generational audience, it was Channel 4’s youngest skewing series last year, and in terms of audience share of young viewers (16-34) it is in the top three in the coveted 9pm slot, with Gogglebox and Derry Girls. Taskmaster is also hugely popular on All 4, where it is available for free and, since 2021, the average views per episode [0-7Days, O+O] have grown for the title with each series. Since the programme’s initial launch in 2015 on UKTV’s Dave, Taskmaster’s audience has grown by 80% from series one to series nine.
Taskmaster was crowned Best Comedy Entertainment Show at the National Comedy Awards 2022 and 2023, Best Comedy Entertainment at the BAFTAs 2020 and won Best Entertainment Programme at the Broadcast Awards 2018, having previously received two more nominations for the Broadcast Awards and recently picking up its third BAFTA nomination for the 2023 ceremony. It has also been nominated for the Bruce Forsyth Entertainment Award at the NTA’s 2021 and 2022, Best Comedy Entertainment at Rose d’Or 2023, Studio Entertainment at Rose d’Or 2021, Best Entertainment Programme at the RTS Awards, Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, the Broadcast Digital Awards, Edinburgh TV Award, the TV Choice Awards, and Best Returning Format in the International Format Awards 2020.
The original Taskmaster programme has been sold to 94 countries and aired on The CW in the U.S. in 2020.
Over 61 seasons and 560 episodes have been commissioned outside the UK with local versions now in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Nordics, Croatia and Portugal where it ranked first for most watched entertainment programs on its channel RTP 1. Taskmaster Australia launched on Channel 10 where it became the channel’s top new show of the year and received a nomination for Most Outstanding Comedy at the Logies, produced by Avalon Television with Kevin&Co and featuring Tom Gleeson as the Taskmaster with Tom Cashman as the Taskmaster’s Assistant, and Taskmaster New Zealand has received funding for a fourth season from New Zealand On Air to play on TVNZ and TVNZ+ in 2023, while it won Best Entertainment Show at eh NZ TV Awards for this third series. The first season of Le Maitre du Jeu for Bell Media, which aired in Canada in September 2022, increased Noovo’s performance in the Thursday time slot by 50%, while the UK original won Canada’s film and TV Rockie Awards 2023 for best Comedy and Variety show.
The format has seen huge success in Europe, with the Swedish version reaching ratings of over a 50% market share in a primetime weekend slot on SVT and now in its seventh series. Norway’s original version of Taskmaster, Kongen Befaler, won the Norwegian TV Academy Award (Gullruten) for Best Entertainment Show in 2022, where an eighth season is in production for Discovery. Finland’s version of Taskmaster, Suurmestari, won Game Show of the Year at the Venla Gaala awards, with a fourth series ordered by MTV, and Stormester, Denmark’s Taskmaster, which is now in its seventh series, won Best Game Show at the 2022 Vindere Awards, with TV2 commissioning a ‘Champion of Champions’ series for 2023.
The Taskmaster YouTube channel has seen huge success internationally, reaching over 9.5 billion impressions since it first launched in October 2019, with just over 685 million views and over 1.4 million subscribers, of which over a third are from North America. The channel has had over 157 million hours’ worth of content viewed with 54% of those hours from North America (85 million hours watched). The show has grown significantly in popularity with American audiences and over the last year there have been a total of 107 million views.
The Taskmaster book ‘200 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People’ was published in 2018, while a second book ‘Bring Me The Head of the Taskmaster’ was published in September 2021 and combined they have sold 180,000 copies to date. Both books featured as Sunday Times Bestsellers at launch. The Swedish version of the book has sold 108,000 copies to date.
For the first time, Taskmaster is entering the world of virtual reality with the brand new upcoming virtual reality game, Taskmaster VR. Published by Scallywag Arcade, a Draw & Code studio, Taskmaster VR is set to launch in 2024 for Meta Quest 2 and 3.
The festive season saw the launch of brand-new Taskmaster Crackers which entirely sold out before they hit the shelves at pre-sale. Having currently sold over a quarter of a million crackers to fans across the world, production has gone into overdrive to meet phenomenal demand in time for Christmas. They are currently on sale and can be found on the Taskmaster Store as well as Amazon where they became an official No.1 best-seller and have been ordered by fans across 58 countries around the globe including in North America, Australia, Thailand, South Korea and Iceland among other countries.
A Taskmaster boardgame was released in Autumn 2019 and entirely sold out a week after it went on sale. It has sold over 250,000 copies to date along with an expansion pack. A second game, Taskmaster The Secret Series Game was released in 2022. Taskmaster The Card Game was released in September 2022 and has sold over 70,000 copies to date. All the games are available to buy from the official Taskmaster shop, www.TaskmasterStore.com.
Taskmaster Education takes elements of the show and uses them to inspire, engage and teach children and young people. Tasks can be adapted to meet a near infinite range of teacher objectives, whether curriculum-based or more focused on social and emotional development. Taskmaster Club launched in September 2023, offering schools across the country the opportunity to host after school clubs that bring Little Alex Horne and the silly joy of Taskmaster into their classrooms. Over 800 schools in the UK have registered to date on taskmastereducation.com.
Taskmaster is working with Homeless Link; the national membership charity for frontline homelessness services, creating a virtual Taskmaster at Home event with all the money raised going to homeless charities across the UK. Having raised over £125,000, more information on the virtual event can be found here.
The launch of series 13 also saw the unveiling of the brand new Taskmaster App; a show companion where viewers can watch the show on TV and score along at home, taking on the role of the mighty Taskmaster themselves. The app also features the Taskmaster Academy with quizzes from every series of the show, group and solo tasking games, and a Jukebox featuring all of the music from the show.
