‘Your Dungeon My Dragon’ Rewrites Branded Playbook for MSN, Xbox

Just a few seconds of watching this one and you can tell Code Monkeys’ creator Adam de la Peña is behind it. Your Dungeon My Dragon bowed this week as one of Microsoft’s most ambitious multi-platform animated series to date. The 8-bit styled animated comedy is a classic incompetent faceoff of good vs. evil guilds fighting in a neverending daily grind of mediocrity.

Microsoft is calling this a first-ever on Xbox and MSN, with an original episodic series woven together with two original games. For now the episodes are not embeddable, so you’ll have to click out to the microsite to watch. A YouTube channel is being set up for the series, but as of now has not launched. Update: it’s up, first episode is below.

Miscrosoft’s Branded Entertainment team or BEET as its known, is behind this project which is fully backed by sponsor Toyota for its young-leaning Yaris. Integration is pretty light into the series itself so far, but the mini-games like “Kill the Castle” have you launching objects off the roof of a Yaris in a breezy Angry Birds

It’s early, and we’ll have to wait before we get firm viewership numbers on its full run, but there’s something novel about this campaign, in that it doesn’t overtly feel like one. It’s a series first, with a lengthy creative leash for de la Peña and his Monkey Wrangler team—complete with raunch bleeps and a few saltier asides. That of course may be just good brand fit, with Yaris known for its wry humor. Did I mention de la Peña wrote Crank Yankers too?

For now, I’d watch Kill the Brobarian and his guardian buddies (Hork!) go a few more rounds with Devious and his underworld misfits. Then, we’ll sort out just how many others did too.