The Dark Eye Chains of Satinav
 

Seems a new Dark Eye game will be released soon. Instead of being an rpg it's an adventure game. Maybe Alrik knows more about it. I remember he loves adventure games.
Link-http://www.daedalic.de/en/game/DSA_Satinavs_Ketten

I already wrote about it, but failed to update my thread : http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13740

It really is an adventure game, and it takes place in one of the so-called "starter regions" of Aventuria : Nostria. Or was it Andergast ? Because both "countries" are in an constant, almost never-ending quarrelwith one another. ;) That's why some players call both combined "Nostergast". ;)

Both "countries" are located next to one another, they have both their history, ad both are endangered by the Orklande lying nearby, plus the Thorwalians, which area ("country") lies next to them, too (in fact they have invaded them more than once).

Andergast - and to a lesser extend Nostria s well - have a very high "population" of Fairies of several kinds. The 2fairy-lands" are usually accessed through do-called 2fairy-gates", which can look like almost anything, but often tend to look like a ollection of stones, often in circles. Like it was seen in Drakensang 2.

The cliché of unknowingly entering the "fairy-realms" is described as "you wander along a long path through the wilnderness. You don't notice the trees looking more and more gnarled, funny and having sometimes funny colours, too. You feel like being watched. Animals come by and look at you, then they run away. Slowly and slowly you go deeper and deeper into the fairy realms without noticing".
In this case, the so-called "fairy gate" might have been a special point on that path - but it is invisible to the people. Only the fairies know about them. And the few people who actually know them.
In Andergast, a very mighty Fairy reigns, o which even the people bow towards. She is mild-mannered, but can - like most fairies - be very dangerous if angered. Fairies often have huge magical powers, and the - what's the word ? "the dainty ones" ? - in German they are colled the "Holden Fairies", they have the greatest powers. I think I remember a tiny remark in a book saying that their powers are - in principle - equal to those of the Aventurian dragons, but they would never willingly use them so.

In Andergast it is even so that the kings and queens mut ask the reigning fairy there whether they are accepted by her or not. And her seign counts !

Constant travellers and guests within the fairy realms and coutrs are the aventurian Unicorns, of which there exist only male ones - an the "ghost horses" which the Elves can kind of "summon" are only female, nobody knows why, that's one of the Aventurian mysteries. Other friends to the fairies are the Kobolds, small, almost dwarf-like (but much smaller) looking magical creatures who rob children from their parents, grow them up and teach them their spcial magic abilities, and then kind of throw them out again. These children are the "Schelm" or the "Jester" kinds of people. They have access to Kobold magic which no-one else has, and they only use them for jokes.

One particular example of a Schelm gone into the wrong direction is the "Blackjester" named Torxes, who lost his girlfriebnd in the famous Battle Of The Orges, and then lost his belief in the Twelvegods (especially Travia) because they "had let her die". In turn, his heart was not only broken, but he also went into a pact with a powerful demon.
He is perhaps the figure with the greatest tragedy within Aventuria. And he lives in the Black Lands, annoying even the powerful Heptarchs, but they just cannot get hold of him, because he is very powerful in his own way now - due to his pact.
In one adventure module, however, his girl-friend's spirit finally was able to enter the "paradise" of one of the Twelvegods. I don't remember anymore hether this was an official adventure or not.

I think that's it for now.

Edit : Satinav is kind of a "guardian of time", by the way. No-one know who or what he is (or was), but people think of him as a captain on a smll ship sailing "through time" and protecting it. It is said that he is chained to his (?) own ship, too.
And he is accompanied by two female figures who are also watching over Time.
They are like some kinds of weavers (they are in fact very similar to he Norns of nordic mythology), and their are constantly weaving threads and opening some knots (there indeed can be "knots in time" created by powerful curses or by the gods themselves, no-one knows. In one adventure module I once played with a group on a convention the ame day was repeated over and over again until a very, very bad outrage was solved).

I like adventure games and I guess this one is again from Germany - they make great genre products.
And I'm definetly buying it as soon as I see it somewhere available.

This game is more important than other adventures.

The developer Daedalic, who is a publisher too (-> they've signed the next two Larian games for DACH), has serious problems getting their games on Steam. Valve doesn't let them in, despite excellent reviews.
So they gave the game to Deep Silver, who have more influence after their Dead Island super-hit. Deep Silver put it on Steam. Daedalic wants to use TDE:Chains of Satinav to prove to Valve that Euro adventures can move enough units to justify the effort to put them on Steam.
To make sure everything works out smoothly the development time was extended by 3 months or so.

Daedalic is the world's leading adventure developer ATM. They're sitting on a couple of great games, but they can't get them to international customers. But unfortunately they NEED international sales to stay afloat. Official word is that the company is in danger if they can't get their own games on Steam.

They can always try to do what another small adventures developer did - Kheops Studio (http://www.kheops-studio.com/games). Kheops made it's own web shop. The shop is currently not available though, but their (excellent if I may add) adventures can be obtained at adventuregamers.com shop or bigfishgames.com shop. There is no logic Steam should hold a monopol and dictate someone's destiniy.

They have there own online shop, I think, and they sell through every channel willing to accept their games.
The problem is:
To make an English version they have to be sure to sell a certain number of units to recoup the additional investment for the voice recordings. This is pretty hard if Steam has 80% market share while all other services split the other 20%. Maybe they can somehow survive with 20k retail sales in Germany and the 20% mixed online sales, but to move things forward they need Steam.
Nowadays PC gaming = Steam.
The current solution with Deep Silver is also not ideal. Daedalic has to split the revenue with DS although they are a publisher too.

This game looks interesting and I like the art style.

Is there going to be an English version when it is released later this June or is it only in German for the time being?

June 22nd is the release date. The release should be in English it doesn't say otherwise.

I really have no idea whether it is translated.

Of course it's in English. It's a worldwide release.

There's a hilarious sex scene easter egg in this game.

*Spoiler*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFiw9…layer_embedded

The first German review is out. Quite positive, 8/10.

+ excellent puzzles in the later game
+ superb interface, absolutely state of the art for adventure games
+ 12-15 hours long
+ good graphics, with a few issues
+ rock stable
+ decent story, interesting characters (but still weaker than Daedalic's older adventures)

- graphics performance is disappointing; they're losing speed somewhere
- running animation sucks, walking is okay
- facial expressions are very good … but they're not lyp-synched

+/- early on the locations are too small and things are too linear; this gets better and better until later on "this is adeventure quest design for gourmets"

I found it funny but prudes of the world might criticize the game. Hot coffee all over again.:D

Whatever… I'm still buying it! :)

Does it still require Steam ?

Broken Sword 2 had an Easter Egg, too. ;)

Yes. With all the pros and cons, Steam is stil required.

Personally I think it's a pricing question. For 10€ I don't mind if a game requires Steam.

What ? Satinav's Chains doesn't cost only 10 Euros, no ? Because that would be a rip-off, imho.
Or have I misunderstood you ?
Edit : I just saw that the game still costs something around 30 Euros at retail.

$40 for a point & click adventure game? I don't anticipate it doing very well over here. Especially with TDE not being well known in the US.

Well, that's a normal price here !

Is this a sign of how much the repurtation of adventure games has eroded in the U.S. ?

Is this a sign that David DeMartini is acttually right ?

I can say only that I'd pay any price for a good adventure game as I simply like the genre. On the other hand I'd never give more than a pocketchange for a nostory mobs respawning clickfest game - those things sell for 50 or more and I don't understand who buys 'em at all. I mean… I do understand. But it's just something that I don't want to buy. And as such, seems I'm a minority. :)