Mario Janiszewski the game designer of The Dark Eye: Demonicon  is interviewed by gamingnexus. I know I'm still interested in the game what about the reader?

Is Demonicon going to be class based?  Will we see the usual RPG tropes in the game or will it be a bit different?

We won't be class or party-based, rather, you, playing as Cairon, will be a one-man party. Carion, at his core, is more of a brawler, with lots of melee combos at his disposal, but you'll also unlock elements-based magical powers, which let you, for example, freeze enemies, launch flame bursts and the like. Along with that, we have a crafting system that you will use to make potions, ointments, balms, etc, which can heal you, hurt enemies (in the case of poisons) or even boost your weapons themselves. If you prefer a more "magical" path, you can focus on unlocking more attack-based magic with your earned XP, or you can focus on alchemy/crafting, or fighting. It's all up to you, but Cairon by default is pretty much a great mix of the archetypical cleric, mage, fighter and thief.


Could you walk us through the combat in the game?  How are you balancing the action with the RPG elements?

The RPG elements are there to boost your melee combos, and unlock magical combat abilities. As with most 3rd person games, combat is handled by simply moving around, and bashing things. To attack, you'll use the face buttons on the controller, while combinations of the triggers and sticks will allow you to dodge, roll and perform other cool actions.

What kind of tactics will players have to use in combat to get through the game?

The player starts with standard melee attacks, but needs to make use of his demonic and magic abilities later on in the game. There will be opponents resistant to physical damage or magical damage. Other enemies are weak against poison and if the player has raised his alchemy skills he might be able to poison his weapons to inflict additional damage.   
 
Will there be any side quests in the game?  Do you have a rough idea of how long a play through will take on average?

We have several side quests besides the main quest. It will take at least 25 hours to get through the main quest.

Gamereactor speaks with Philipp Keydel, the QA Manager at Noumena Studios, about The Dark Eye: Demonicon at an event in Berlin, with the result being a video with some in-game footage and talking heads.

Thirteen1 talked to the same person for their magazine and also have some info from a hands-on session of Demonicon and Dark. Click and drag to move through the pages.

Electronic Theatre previewed The Dark Eye: Demonicon and feel it is an exciting new RPG adventure.

The Dark Eye – Demonicon’s tale is a twisted story of betrayal and revenge. ‘Twisted’ being the operative word, as there’s a lot of suggestive content that could end up dividing audiences’ opinions of certain characters. Telling the tale of a brother and sister journeying together through a world of cruelty and depravity, both are constantly threatened by mortal danger and demonic temptation. Many videogames assert their ideals of player choice affecting the outcome of the experience, but in The Dark Eye – Demonicon it’s not a simple case of being good or bad; you have to decide where the lines are drawn.

A teaser trailer for Demonicon has been released by Kalypso, showing a much darker world than we've recently been used to for The Dark Eye:

Kalypso sent us a press release announcing a new official web site for Demonicon that offers 14 new screenshots at this point:

Journey into the Darkness at the Official "Demonicon" Web Site

Bracknell, UK, 18th, 2012 - Kalypso Media today unveiled the official web site for The Dark Eye - Demonicon, the upcoming third person action-RPG for consoles and Windows PC. The new site, available at http://worldofdemonicon.com, offers game info, new screens and trailers that showcase the dark world of The Dark Eye - Demonicon, and its insidious inhabitants.

Visit the official The Dark Eye - Demonicon web site here

The Dark Eye - Demonicon  is a thrilling action-RPG set in the extraordinarily popular universe of “The Dark Eye”, a richly crafted fantasy world beloved by fantasy gamers throughout the world.

The Dark Eye - Demonicon tells the tragic story of a brother and sister who become pawns of sinister forces in a world of cruelty and depravity. In this bleak yet magical world, their affection is both a blessing and a curse. Both are constantly threatened by mortal danger and demonic temptation, and must find a way through their tortured lives by facing serious moral decisions. Their common destiny will determine that of the entire continent, and will be decided by the choices they make. Hordes of fiends block their way to freedom and peace, and only through battle and magic they will truly become free of the darkness.

Thanks to Zohaib for a similar submission.

Worthplaying has eight new screens from The Dark Eye: Demonicon. Here's a snip from press release accompanying them:

Bracknell, UK, 14^th March, 2012 - In the world of Demonicon, there is only darkness and the grey line that divides man from demons. Today, Kalypso Media is pleased to release new screenshots which illustrate the darkness that permeates the world of Demonicon, the action-RPG set for release on PC and next generation consoles in Q1 2013. Download the new screenshot pack for a look into a world where heroes are few and far between, and the line between good and evil is razor thin.

Alrik sends word of some Demonicon coverage from the Dreieich-Convention, which is apparently the second largest TDE convention in Germany.

The article covers all three TDE games currently in development, though we're really only interested in Demonicon. You can check out a Google translation here. The game is apparently due late 2012 and it seems The Witcher was suggested as a comparison if you'd like to place the gameplay. 

Alec Meer has a very late preview of Demonicon from Gamescom, having finally gotten around to writing about it and, unfortunately, not remembering a whole lot of detail:

Oh, and I established that there’ll be one big city you can always revisit to see how your decisions are affecting the world and its people. Plus, you’ll have a house there, where you might find gifts from fans or, distressingly, a “a cat nailed to the door as a threat from the enemies you have made.” I really don’t want to find dead cats at my house,thanks.

Some hopefully new screens for Demonicon at Bluesnews.

Well, we don't get The Dark Eye: Demonicon news all that often. After revealing some time back there won't be any character creation, the main character of Cairon has been unveiled with a couple of concept images at Worthplaying:

In his short 25 years, Cairon has bared witness to more horrors than most people endure in a lifetime. A life on the run through the Shadow Lands made him a fighter without compromise. As well as the deadly fighting skills learned from his father and surviving the tough streets, Cairon has mastered a fast fighting style using his arm-armour and sword.

Trinigy sent us the following press release announcing the use of their Vision engine (Arcania, Settlers 7, Stronghold 3) for Demonicon:

Germany’s Largest RPG Franchise Uses The Vision Game Engine

Trinigy’s Vision Game Engine to support the development of Kalypso Media’s The Dark Eye: Demonicon and other titles

Eningen, Germany – Apr 5, 2011 – Trinigy, an industry leading 3D game engine provider with offices in Germany, Austin, TX and Seoul, Korea, announced today that the global publisher Kalypso Media has licensed the Vision Game Engine for multiple upcoming titles across a range of platforms, including The Dark Eye: Demonicon for PC and Xbox360®. The Dark Eye title, which is being developed by Noumena Studios, is the latest game in Germany’s most successful role-playing series to date.

Since its launch in 1984, The Dark Eye franchise has become the most successful role-playing video game on the German market, outpacing all other role-playing games in sales. It is also become a highly successful pen and paper game, and the basis for the popular Realms of Arkania video game series. Kalypso Media purchased the IP in 2010, and opened Noumena Studios to develop a title that delivers the rich aesthetics and gameplay features RPG fans want, without sacrificing the very popular and time-proven RPG rules fans love.

Up until 2010, The Dark Eye series and Kalypso Media’s other titles have used internal game engine technology. Kalypso Media has now turned to Trinigy to take advantage of the Vision Game Engine’s mature feature set, cross-platform performance and modular architecture.

“It just made sense for us,” said Stefan Marcinek, Global Managing Director at Kalypso Media when speaking of the Vision Game Engine. “Trinigy and the Vision Game Engine gave us a single development platform with a strong feature set capable of achieving our exacting graphic and gameplay goals, optimized performance across a range of platforms and extremely responsive support. Just as importantly, the Vision Engine doesn’t tie us to a specific workflow – it is so flexible, we can adapt it to our development process with our own internal tools, not matter what platform or genre we are developing for.”

“Having grown up playing The Dark Eye games and the pen and paper versions of this franchise, it is a true joy to be working with Kalypso Media on The Dark Eye: Demonicon, as well as its other upcoming titles,” said Felix Roeken, general manager of Trinigy. “We look forward to supporting their talented teams as they bring their extremely popular games to life, and can’t wait to start seeing the results of our partnership.”

For more information on the Vision Game Engine, visit www.trinigy.net. For more information on Kalypso, visit: http://www.kalypsomedia.com.

Swiss site GBase.ch sent word Kalypso has revealed The Dark Eye game Demonicon won't feature character creation but will instead have a set character like The Witcher or Gothic. The original is in German, unfortunately, so no quote.

Demonicon, the Das Schwarze Auge PG originally in development by Carsten Strehse' The Games Company and now with a new Kalypso studio, officially has The Dark Eye license re-attached to the project.  It was originally announced as a TDE game but after the collapse of The Games Company, the situation was unclear.  Alrik sent us the news a day or two back in German from PC Games.de but Blue's now has an English press release:

Kalypso Media and Chromatrix Sign ‘The Dark Eye’ License Agreement for Brand for Upcoming Action Role Playing Game

Kalypso Media and Chromatrix Sign ‘The Dark Eye’ License Agreement for Brand for Upcoming Action Role Playing Game

DEMONICON Becomes The Dark Eye – DEMONICON for Windows PC and Next Generation Consoles

Bracknell, UK – 9th February 2011 - Kalypso Media and Chromatrix GmbH have signed a license agreement granting the video games publisher the use of The Dark Eye brand for their upcoming action role playing game DEMONICON. The game, scheduled for release in 2012, will be developed using the official rules of Europe’s biggest roleplaying world and will now be titled The Dark Eye – DEMONICON.

“By integrating the official The Dark Eye rules, DEMONICON becomes the must have title in the hearts and minds for the fans of The Dark Eye world and creates a new and exciting brand for fans of action role playing games to experience” Says Simon Hellwig, Global Managing Director, Kalypso Media Group.

Dr. Stefan Blanck, Managing Director Chromatrix GmbH added: “We’re very happy to be working with an experienced global publisher and developer such as Kalypso Media. Through the official The Dark Eye license and its fantastic game world The Dark Eye - DEMONICON will become without any doubt one of the video game highlights of 2012.”

The Dark Eye – DEMONICON is currently under development by Noumena Studios, a Kalypso owned development studio in Berlin for Windows PC and next generation consoles and is scheduled for a release in 2012.

A couple of days ago we reported that the development of Silver Style Entertainment's / TGC's RPG The Dark Eye: Demonicon has been secured despite TGC's insolvency because a top secret investor took over. Now the cat is out of the bag: Kalypso Media buys the Demonicon IP and some other stuff out of TGC's insolvency estate. More details can be found on GamesMarkt, for example (registration may be required).

Kalypso pursues quite an aggressive expansion strategy. Over the last few years they've bought the Jagged Alliance IP, pretty much the whole Ascaron back catalog (Patrician, Port Royal, Darkstar One) with the exception of Sacred, a small IP from Spellbound (Airline Tycoon) and now Demonicon, a browser game and the marketing rights for a couple of solid to good adventures (Simon the Sorcerer 5, Goin' Downtown, Everlight) from TGC. They've founded 3 internal studios and opened an office in the US.

The fact that Silver Style wasn't bought out while all remaining employees left probably spells the end for the studio. This means the German market lost no less than 3 of their oldest and most experienced studios within a bit more than a year. Sacred developer Ascaron (founded 1991) closed in July 2009. Then a few months ago Drakensang studio Radon Labs (founded 1995) went belly up. And now Silver Style (1993) will probably be liquidated with the TGC shell.

For once the story has a happy ending though:

Kalypso will found the Noumena Studios GmbH in Berlin to complete Demonicon. The remaining 17 Silver Style employees will find a new home there, and the staff ramped up to 35 until the end of the year.

And there is more. 4Players posted a few days ago that many other Silver Style developers opened a new studio, surprisingly named Silver Style Studios GmbH. The new company will concentrate on browser games. They plan to grow to 45 people this year.

A few months ago Bigpoint Berlin took over 30+ Radon Labs employees. They're also growing.

So the job market doesn't look too bad for game developers in Berlin now.

Thanks, Alrik.

Alrik points to a post on the Demonicon forums from PR Manager Kabuto, who says an investor has been found and development has been secured.  The Google translation isn't very good and the investor is unnamed but it sounds like good news for fans of this TDE game.

GamesMarkt reports that The Dark Eye: Demonicon is still in development. The temporary liquidator is optimistic to find an investor who is willing to take over TGC - The Games Company and allow them to stay in business. The negotiations are still at an early stage though.

It seems Das Schwarze Auge developers are falling left, right and centre.  Alrik sends in this German article that claims Demonicon developer The Games Company is insolvent.  You may recall TGC was formed when Carsten Strehse merged Silver Style (The Fall) with another company.  We don't know what this means for Demonicon at this point.

It's been a while since we heard about Demonicon, but this jaded, four-paragraph piece won't tell you much.  Games Radar has reprinted a brief look from Xbox World 360 UK:

There’s nothing new about the Oblivion-esque scenery and attempt to match its gameplay (although each quest you undertake will apparently have three distinct solutions and outcomes), and the makeup of your team will be instantly familiar to anyone who does overtime at their local Games Workshop – but the selling point here is that the hunky warrior, sly dwarf and brave archer lass who will be watching your back will all be controlled by up to eight flesh and blood gamers, and every dungeon you explore will be specifically tailored to teamwork, Left 4 Dead-style.

XboxMessiah has a preview of Silver Style's Dark Eye game, Demonicon.  From the text, this looks like a hands-off articles culled from previous material:

The guys at Silver Style Entertainment, the in-house development studio of The Games Company, are placing an extra special emphasis on the games’  story as well as the development of a dynamic and cinematic combat system. Demonicon narrates an enthralling tale of murder, intrigue and dark power. On your quest you will battle dangerous monsters and meet unforgettable characters – madmen, saints, and the desperate. Often times you will have to choose who will be your friend and who will be your enemy – but you must choose wisely. The Black Lands do not forgive mistakes.

VoodooExtreme has five screens from The Dark Eye: Demonicon, presumably from GamesCom.

The new release date for Demonicon is H1/2011. Demonicon is a single character RPG - TGC insists it's not an action-RPG! - based on the 4th edition of the Dark Eye ruleset. It's developed by TGC's internal studio Silver Style for PC and XBox360.

Carsten Strehse from Silver Style/TGC has been interviewed at GameBanshee about their upcoming The Dark Eye game, Demonicon:

From what we've read, your plan is to present the player with difficult, plot-critical choices during the game. Can you give us an example or two and take us through what effects each choice will have on the rest of the game?

First of all, every quest will have at least three different solutions, and combat is not always the best or the easiest approach. Moral decisions will also play a great role in the game. For example: Will our hero form an alliance of convenience with a mad ruler? Such an alliance would yield valuable information, but in the long run, it could also hurt our hero’s reputation and alienate potential allies. Alternatively, he could seek help from a resistance movement, and the insane ruler would then relentlessly try to hunt him down. At the same time, though, the resistance could stir up a rebellion which would be of invaluable help to our hero in later quests. So there is no single correct way, but many different possibilities to develop a special relationship with the game world by making your own choices.

IGN has the third dev diary on Silver Style's TDE game, Demonicon, describing the position of project manager:

Welcome to the third part of the developer diary series for The Dark Eye: Demonicon. After the first two have dealt with finding a graphical style and story development, I want to go further into the area of what project management involves when developing a game like this one. We project managers don't design, paint or model objects in 3D. We don't make music, and certainly don't code, so we don't make a visible contribution. "Hey guys, what exactly are you doing there?" Whether that's a valid question or not, you will find our team's answer if you read on.  

RPGVault posts their second developer diary for Silver Style's upcoming title The Dark Eye:Demonicon, this one  on developing the story elements:

To prevent characters from becoming an array of stereotypes only, we wrote a proper biography for each one, with increasing detail according to their respective importance. NPCs have to be designed as if they were actual people, with their own desires, fears, strengths and weaknesses. Just like their real-life counterparts, they have their own goals and moral standards, and each one's personality is the result of the individual's background and experiences. From this, you can then deduce an outer appearance, so our concept artist was able to begin work on giving them their visual representations...

During the whole development process, all individual aspects of the story were fine-tuned to the particular conditions of Aventuria. The mentality of the characters, the individual suspense-creating elements, and the possible motives of the player character not only have to be consistent in themselves, but they have to fit into the world.

The article also includes two new screenshots and a piece of concept art.

Silver Style's Stefan Hoffman pens a diary at RPG Vault on their upcoming The Dark Eye game, Demonicon.  This piece discusses the art style for the game but here's a general overview, since there is still some confusion over whether this is an action/RPG or not:

It is going to be an epic role-playing game with special emphasis on action-oriented combat. You can also expect to see multiplayer support and a highly detailed character generation process (the quick option to select one of many pre-generated archetypes will be available too). The extensive main storyline with many side quests will take your character through the darkest and most dangerous regions of Aventuria. These tasks will provide for a lot of variety... far from the old "kill this and fetch that" formula. In addition, many of them will have multiple solutions.

Two more screens at Worthplaying for The Dark Eye: Demonicon from The Games Company.

Worthplaying has four screens from Silver Style's The Dark Eye: Demonicon - the first screens we've reported on.

Avantenor writes that a website has been launched for The Dark Eye: Demonicon, a new entry into the Das Schwarze Auge CRPG milieu.  He explains that the DSA license isn't exclusive (like D&D, for example) and Demonicon has no relationship with Drakensang other than the license.  In fact, this one is being developed by Silver Style (The Fall), now part of The Games Company.

The site describes it as an action/RPG (no direct quotes because of the Flash), although we're told Silver Style compare it to NWN2 with a more dynamic combat system.  Head over for a story synopsis, concept art, short feature list and (German) forums.