The Dark Eye: Satinav's Chains

The Dark Eye: Satinav's Chains
Original title	The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav
Studio	Daedalic Entertainment
Publisher	Deep Silver
Senior Developer	Franziska Reinhard
composer	Dominik Morgenroth
Erstveröffent- lichung	June 22, 2012
platform	Mac OS , Windows
Game engine	Visionaire
genre	Point-and-click adventure
Game mode	Single player
control	Mouse & keyboard
medium	DVD-ROM , download
language	German English
copy protection	Steamworks (initial release)
Age rating	USK PEGI

The Black Eye: Satinavs Ketten is a point-and-click adventure from the German developer and publisher Daedalic Entertainment . It is the first adventure computer game in the fantasy world Aventurien of the role-playing game rules The Black Eye . It was released for Windows in June 2012 .

action

The action takes place in the kingdom of Andergast, named after its capital, in the game world Aventuria . The main character is Geron, who has the reputation of a messenger of bad luck in the superstitious Andergast, since when a seer was burned in his childhood, Geron prophesied in his last moments that he would bring "the end" of what the residents refer to themselves and the city. Geron grew up with his foster father Gwinnling and earned his living as a bird catcher. Furthermore, he is a magic dilettante, i.e. a latent magically gifted person without training. Therefore, his skills are limited to destroying fragile objects such as clay jugs or glass bottles. When he is brought before the king after his victory in the oak leaf quest, Geron gives the order to clear the mysterious crows plague in the castle. First indications indicate that the burned seer is behind the plague and so Geron is confronted with his prophecy again.

He asks Gwinnling, who is already investigating the city's crows plague, to help him. This gives him the order to catch a fairy in the forest, as fairy water attracts the crows.

In the forest Geron then finds the fairy Nuridarinellavanda, called Nuri, who has the ability to repair broken objects. After Geron has helped her to break away from her bond with the fairy gate, she accompanies him back to Andergast. There Geron finds the dying Gwinnling. In his final minutes he tells Geron about a fairy researcher and that the seer is back. He tells Geron to kill Nuri in order to thwart the seer's plans. Geron decides to look for the fairy researcher in the Orklands with Nuri instead.

As the two flee from Andergast, they meet a speaking raven, whom Geron, as a bird catcher, is very suspicious of. The three of them make the journey north.

First they meet the traveling juggler Isida, whose car has broken a wheel. After Geron has persuaded them to take him and Nuri with him and with Nuri's help repaired the car, the two want to sleep. At this moment the seer's creatures appear and kill Isida, whom Geron and Nuri did not want to betray. The two flee with the scales from the creatures which Nuri describes as sad elves. After a long journey they reach the Thasch Mountains and finally sell the horse and the cart to buy the equipment for the further journey through the blood women. The local trader also confirms that the fae researcher was there to travel further into the Blood Women.

As they cross the Blutzinnen, the most impassable of all mountains, they come across a camp of orcs, which they cannot avoid. The orcs perform a ritual there and wait for a sign from their deity. As a sign of the blood god, Geron lets red colored water run through a skull-shaped rock. The orcs go to war and Geron and Nuri's way to the red lake is free. At the lake a goblin tells them where to find the fairy researcher, which they have to find in the cave first.

The fairy researcher Jacomo Nauta is enthusiastic about Nuri, but she touches one of the fairy crystals, causing parts of the cave to collapse and separating Nuri from the others. She is also confused and given a card to go to a mill. Geron learns from Jacomo that he has to bring Nuri back to her homeland to save her and is referred to Goswin who has the key, a prism, for a fairy portal. But he also knows that Nuri never wants to return to her world.

When Geron arrives at the mill, Nuri is not there. Instead, the seer's creatures are there, capturing him. This also confirms Geron's mistrust of the raven as the seer's servant. Nuri helps him to free himself with her magic and lure the creature into a trap. Since Geron knows about Nuri's aversion to her homeland, he lies to her and claims he would bring her to the fairy kingdom of Fanglari, which he invented. She believes him and the two travel north to the smugglers' town of Enqui. Once there, however, they find out that Goswin is dead and have to remove the prism from the “honorable merchant” Harm. Geron can pretend to be a messenger to deliver a message to Harm and thereby distract him while Nuri steals the key to the chest. Geron can then steal the prism and the two of them let a ferryman take them further into the swamp. As they sit by the fire together in the evening and Nuri is optimistic about her future in Fanglari, she gives Geron her necklace with fairy water and her magic to repair objects.

That night the raven comes back and tells Nuri about Geron's lie, which leads her to ask Geron about Fanglari. Nevertheless, she continues to travel with him to the fairy gate, where a huge eye petrifies everything it sees. Although Geron can blind the eye, the raven reappears and reveals himself as the seer who transferred his spirit into a raven at the stake. Geron wants to travel to her world with Nuri, but Nuri pushes him into the portal and goes with the raven who convinced her he was the demigod Aves.

Geron ends up in the fairy world Neirutneva (Aventuria backwards), where the seer, known here as the bird man, seems to have great influence. He is led as an intruder before the queen and asks her to return to his world. To this end, the queen gives him three seemingly impossible tasks, after which he is allowed to step through the portal into the dream chambers. After the journey through the dream world of the portal, Geron reaches his home again, where months have now passed and the land is ruled in despair, fear and madness by the seer and his ravens.

After he is admitted to the magician's academy through a recommendation from the king, he meets Jacomo again, who tells him about the fairy harp from which the seer draws his power and which is played by Nuri. The seer wants to regain an artifact that enabled him to exchange souls in order to get a human body again. The two forge the plan to manipulate the ring and use it against the seer. After the activation spell of the ring has been changed to "Satinav", the name of the guardian of time, Geron goes on the way to the raven peak where Nuri and the harp are.

On the top of the raven, Geron overcomes the seer's creatures and finally arrives at Nuri, who, however, has already become part of the harp. The seer mocks Geron and demands his own. This says goodbye to Nuri whereupon she starts to cry. After he has moistened the ring of the seer with her tears, he hands it over to the seer who believes he is sure of his victory. Geron prophesies that the gods will punish him for his iniquities. The seer says the name Satinav whereby the artifact is activated and the seer exchanges the body with Nuri and is destroyed by the fairy harp.

Geron fulfilled the prophecy of the seer and actually brought him to an end.

Together with Nuri, now in the raven's body, he finally returns to Andergast.

Characters

character	speaker	Speaker (German version)	role
Geron	Henry Sargeant	Sascha Draeger	Main character, bird catcher in Andergast.
Nuri	Nova Kane	Stephanie Kirchberger	Fee, Geron's companion.
Gwinnling		Jürgen Holdorf	Geron's foster father
The Raven	Mark Lyndon	Robert Missler	Talking raven
Efferdan I.		Michael Bideller	King of Andergast
Jacomo Nauta	David Duke	Sönke Städtler	Fairy explorer

Game principle and technology

Satinavs Ketten follows common adventure game principles. The game is set up scenically and has hand-painted 2D background scenes in front of which the animated character acts. The player controls Geron indirectly with the help of a point-and-click control. In the course of the game, you have to solve various puzzles, including dialogue, object and combination puzzles that are customary in the genre. A special feature is Geron's magical ability to destroy fragile objects. In addition to this, Nuri can repair destroyed objects.

Production notes

In November 2010, Daedalic Entertainment officially announced the development of Satinav's chains . It was developed with the help of the Visionaire adventure development environment . The plot was developed in collaboration with the DSA author Mark Wachholz , among others . On June 22, 2012, Satinav's chains for Windows came on the market. A version for Mac OS followed in January 2013.

The decision by Daedalic and Deep Silver to also bind the versions supplied on data carriers (DVD-ROM) from retail stores to the online distribution platform Steam when they were first published, caused expressions of discontent and calls for boycotts in customer circles in advance. Daedalic managing director Carsten Fichtelmann therefore issued a statement in which he defended the decision. With the help of its partner Deep Silver, the company hoped to obtain permanent access to the Steam sales platform, which the company had always been denied despite previous efforts. He described this as economically necessary, since comparable online platforms would only generate 10–20% of sales and otherwise large parts of the games market would remain closed to the company. Daedalic later released other versions without an obligatory Steam connection.

continuation

In August 2013 a sequel, Das Schwarze Auge: Memoria , was released for Windows PCs and Mac OS. Memoria was technically based on Satinav's chains and only expanded the magic system of its predecessor. Temporary Memoria joins Satinav's chains , and the player takes on the role of Geron again.

reception

Rating mirror

publication	Rating
4players	79%
Adventure Corner	87%
Adventure meeting	85%
EuroGamer.de	8 of 10
GameStar	81%
Gamona	86%
PC Games	83%
Adventure Gamers	3.5 of 5
Adventure Classic Gaming	4 of 5
Destructoid	6.5 out of 10
GameSpy	2.5 of 5
Meta-ratings
GameRankings	73.10%
Metacritic	75 out of 100

Satinav's chains received mostly positive, albeit cautious, ratings ( GameRankings : 73.10% / Metacritic : 75 out of 100). The evaluations of the German specialist publications were mostly higher. While the plot was mostly praised, the synchronization and the sometimes faltering animations provoked criticism.

“Until the middle of the game, the DSA adventure gives the impression that the“ The Black Eye ”license puts the eponymous chains on the developers: Extremely limited locations that leave hardly any room to breathe, let alone to puzzle, drag the player through a story that begins like a fairytale and childish and ends darkly and brutally, without giving it space to explore, the story time to unfold and the characters personality. [...] Fortunately, the game improves in every respect from the halfway point onwards, so that in retrospect, even the bumpy start is still a run-up to the big final spurt. "

- Matthias Grimm : Gamona

"It doesn't always have to be a role-playing game: Daedalic Entertainment presents a real adventure with" Satinavs Ketten ", although the game is set in the universe of" Das Schwarze Auge ". However, the synchronization leaves a lot to be desired. "

- The west

“The result is that everyone can be happy here. Adventure as well as DSA friends and thanks to the almost consistently very coherent puzzle design everyone else who appreciates a good fantasy story told in fantastic pictures. Assuming my initial skepticism and the concern that the mix could run the risk of not really appealing to anyone in the end, I'm glad I was 90 percent wrong. "

- Martin Woger : EuroGamer.de

According to the manufacturer's own information, Satinavs Ketten had the best sales start of an adventure game between 2002 and 2012 and thus put an end to the success of Deponia , which was also developed by Daedalic . Daedalic interpreted this as an indication of a continued interest in new adventure games, the importance of which for the gaming industry had declined since the failure of Grim Fandango .

Web links

• Official website
• Satinav's chains at MobyGames (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Steinlechner: Daedalic is working on the fantasy adventure Satinavs Ketten. In: Golem.de . November 22, 2010, accessed March 3, 2011 . 
2. ↑ http://www.gbase.de/pc/news/0/Satinavs-Ketten-F%C3%BCr-Mac-OSX-55934.html
3. ↑ Peter Steinlechner: "Nobody treats you so fair - as long as you are on Steam". In: Golem.de . Computec Media Group , February 17, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
4. ↑ The Black Eye: Memoria at MobyGames (English)
5. ↑ Jan Wöbbeking: Test: The Black Eye: Satinav's chains. In: 4Players . freenet AG , July 13, 2012, accessed on January 24, 2013 . 
6. ↑ Tobias Maack: The black eye: Satinav's chains. In: Adventure Corner. June 20, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
7. ↑ Simon Tschirner: Test: The Black Eye: Satinav's Chains. In: Adventure-Treff . June 26, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b} Martin Woger: The Black Eye: Satinavs Ketten - Test. In: EuroGamer.de . Eurogamer Network , June 20, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
9. ↑ Jochen Gebauer: No more fun. In: GameStar . IDG , June 18, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
10. ↑ ^{a b} Matthias Grimm: From fairytale to epic: point-and-click meets pen-and-paper. In: Gamona . Webguidez Entertainment, June 22, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
11. ↑ Marc Brehme: Dragonshard. In: PC Games . Computec Media Group , June 18, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
12. ↑ Joe Keeley: The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav review. In: Adventure Gamers. June 27, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
13. ↑ Matt Barton: The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav. In: Adventure Classic Gaming. July 18, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
14. ↑ Alasdair Duncan: Review: The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav. In: Destructoid . July 23, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
15. ↑ Mike Nelson: The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav Review. In: GameSpy . News Corp. on July 9, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
16. ↑ ^{a b} GameRankings : Average rating of the game , based on 22 ratings. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
17. ↑ ^{a b} Metacritic : Average rating of the game , based on 24 articles. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
18. ↑ Daedalic brings out a melancholy adventure game with "Satinav's Chains". In: DerWesten . News Corp. , June 27, 2012, accessed January 24, 2013 . 
19. ↑ http://www.gamona.de/games/das-schwarze-auge-satinavs-ketten,daedalic-mellt-verkaufsrekord:news,2127548.html