INTRO:
The Dark Eye is a pen-and-paper RPG IP of Deutsch origins, aiming to be a slightly darker version of Dungeons & Dragons but not as bitter as Games Workshop’s Warhammer. Typically, The Dark Eye, being a home-made product, became rather popular in Germany. In fact, it is so popular, that Daedelic decided that an adventure game should be made based on the pen-and-paper table-top game, ditching all the rules and RPG gameplay but not The Dark Eye’s lore and themes.
It is not entirely certain whether Ulisses Spiele, the owner of The Dark Eye IP at the time (and still currently so), had granted Daedelic a license or not, especially considering that Chains of Satinav is not even a RPG.
Regardless, The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav offers a story with splendid artistry and narrative depth.
Furthermore, it may come as a surprise to Daedelic’s fans that it is not Herr Müller-Michaelis that is the project leader. Instead, the director of the game is Franziska Reinhard, while the writing and puzzle designs are from Ole Kamm and others. Consequently, the game has qualities that are leagues apart from the cartoonish titles that Daedelic’s co-founder tends to make, perhaps for the better.
PREMISE:
Young man Geron is the apprentice of a bird-catcher in the medieval sovereign town of Andergast. However, far from being a mere plebiscite with an otherwise serene everyday-life, Geron is the victim of a tragedy that struck Andergast more than a decade ago.
This tragedy was caused by a blind old man with otherworldly powers. Known only as “the Seer”, the old man has been brought to justice and condemned to the stake, but before dying, he had proclaimed Geron to be a living bad omen. Furthermore, it does not help Geron that he has some magical talent, namely an ability to break fragile objects from afar with mere thoughts.
On one fateful day, long after that day of reckoning for the Seer, Geron is participating in a royally sponsored challenge amidst signs of calamity looming on the town. Little does he know that winning that challenge would not improve his lot in his life, but rather propel him into an adventure that he would never have seen coming.
REMARKS ON PREMISE:
After having played the game, one could suspect that Chains of Satinav is based on the aftermath of some table-top campaign. Poor Geron could have been responsible for tying up the loose ends that have been left behind by a motley crew of former table-top adventurers who have since been retired by their owners into less-exciting but otherwise safe lives in Andergast.
Perhaps this is Daedelic’s way of attempting to make the game feel familiar to fans of The Dark Eye table-top game, but ultimately, Chains of Satinav is a point-and-click adventure game through and through.
TUTORIAL:
For the sake of players who are not familiar with the (very simple) gameplay of point-and-click adventure games, there is a tutorial that accompanies the prologue of the game. The scenario of the prologue is cleverly written to show to the player the elements of point-and-click gameplay, as well as Geron’s ability to break dainty things like jugs from afar. It is satisfactorily comprehensive, but then, this is a point-and-click adventure game.
VISUAL & AURAL AIDS:
Before starting a game session, the player is prompted to pick one of two “difficulty” settings. An experienced game consumer would be a bit surprised at this, because difficulty settings are usually associated with anything but adventure games.
In the default setting, the player is given some hints on what to do, usually through remarks by some characters (including Geron himself). More importantly, the icon for the mouse cursor is highlighted with a nimbus of light whenever the player is about to perform an action that would lead to progress. For example, combining an item with another right item would trigger this visual indicator. Another handy aid is that objects that Geron has yet to examine or interact with have their text labels tinted blue.
Playing at the other difficulty setting removes these visual aids. Of course, this supposedly more difficult setting is only effective at what it is supposed to do if the player is playing the game for the first time.
For either setting, a pleasant chime with mysterious tones play when the player has made significant progress within a scenario, such as achieving one of the objectives that Geron must achieve. A shorter, alternative chime also plays when the player has completed the necessary steps to trigger progression to the next stage in a scenario.
In either setting, the player can hold down the space-bar (by default) to have objects of interest highlighted in the current screen. This is a tradition of Daedelic Entertainment of course. However, in Chains of Satinav, this is tied into its system of achievements; specifically, not perusing the convenience of highlights gives the player a chance at getting a particular achievement. Unfortunately, this means that the interested player would have to go pixel-hunting.
GERON:
Being the player character, it is perhaps fortunate that Geron is an easy character to control, more so than the protagonists in other Daedelic titles.
Firstly, Geron can actually run. He will automatically run when the player wants him to go to somewhere or something that is more than half the screen distance, which is convenient.
Like his peers in many other adventure games, Geron can stuff a ridiculous number of things into his pockets. These can include even huge things, such as antler head trophies. On the flip side, this can seem unbelievable and can even be seen to go against The Dark Eye setting.
In terms of personality, Geron did not have a nice childhood, which is to be expected of a person that has to grow up with having been proclaimed by the condemned to be “the doom of us all”. Having had few people that are kind to him aside from his mentor and guardian Gwinnling, Geron has a little angst but takes any chance to improve his standing in the eyes of the other people of Andergast.
Yet poor Geron, unfortunately, has to make things worse for himself as he tried to experiment with his powers, which remain strictly limited to just breaking fragile things, much to his frustration.
Interestingly, the player can make the decisions for other aspects of his personality through interactions with other characters. For example, players can have Geron showing proper deference to people of the upper class when talking to certain nobles, or just have him act as a defiant plebiscite.
Sadly though, any expectation that the decisions would change things down the plotline would be dashed. They are only there for the sake of the system of achievements.
Regardless of his angst, poor childhood and the player’s decisions, Geron is still a pleasantly mild person that is not easily given to outbursts. His refusal to give up or whine a lot about his troubles is also admirable, especially when he is compared with the protagonists of other Daedelic titles, which tend to sound insufferable when they moan about their misfortune.
NURI:
The other protagonist of the game is Nuri, whose unwieldy full name would be withheld here for practical reasons. Nuri’s character designs may seem stereotypical, i.e. that of a naïve nubile girl, but there are convincing reasons for such decisions on Daedelic’s part, which will not be mentioned here for fear of spoilers.
Nuri acts as Geron’s conscience throughout much of the game. She also provides some comic relief for when Geron has to interact with creatures that come from fairy-tales. Her innocently clueless awkwardness when encountering elements of human civilization is also a source of entertainment.
Most importantly, her eventual (and easily foreseeable) realization of how cruel the human world can be is an important element of the story, though to elaborate this would be to include a spoiler.
In terms of gameplay, Nuri offers a magical spell that is the exact opposite of Geron’s ability. Generally, for much of the game, the player must have Nuri close to Geron for this spell to be available for use. Indeed, many of the puzzles make clever use of their complementary powers.
OTHER CHARACTERS & THE WRITING:
As suggested earlier, the other characters may seem familiar to people that have experience in The Dark Eye IP. As an example, there are superstitious common folk that are distrustful of strangers and who are easy to provoke into forming mobs. Then, there are rulers who try to keep the peace between two warring nations that have long forgotten their reasons for fighting. There are other archetypes of characters with agendas that would not surprise people that are used to dark fantasy tales.
However, being a fan of adventure games, Daedelic Entertainment has not forgotten to include more humorous elements in the writing of Chains of Satinav.
These include references to other adventure games, such as Monkey Island, as well as to its own games (for example, there is a reference to pantaloons, which were useful objects in The Whispered World, an earlier Daedelic title). Nuri also makes a remark that would amuse players who are aware of the tropes of looping dialogues in games.
PUZZLE DESIGNS:
Most of the puzzles in Chains of Satinav have logical progression and convincing reasoning in their designs - when the lore of The Dark Eye does not inject fantastical notions into them of course. When it does, there is usually someone or something that will inform the player of what needs to be done when magic is a factor.
Some of the best puzzle designs in the game have the player making use of Geron’s and Nuri’s respective abilities, breaking and repairing items in different locations.
A few puzzles actually have more than one solution, perhaps in a pleasing break from the usual linearity of puzzle solutions within the adventure game genre. Finding alternative solutions happen to account for the system of achievements within the game (which is something that is rare in Daedelic’s games). Otherwise, they do not appear to alter the main plotline, though the more jaded veterans of adventure games may appreciate that Chains of Satinav does something different for once.
There are also puzzles that are notable for including illusory tricks, which actually translate in-game into tangible consequences. Figuring these out can take a while, but it may seem rewarding to those who have the knack to notice and observe such tricks.
To help the player keep track of what to do next, the player can bring up Geron’s journal, or more precisely, his memories of the adventure. This is the main way that players use to remind themselves of what needs doing next.
Not all of the puzzles are designed in a way that would please all players though. There are a few puzzles that require the player to backtrack to see what has been updated in earlier locales. This can seem tedious.
Moreover, the player may discover that certain actions can only be performed at specific spots. For example, there is one scenario where there are a couple of locales that overlook the same object. The puzzle that is associated with the object can be solved by performing a specific action on the object. Theoretically, it could be performed in either locale, but this action can only be enacted in strictly one of the two with no reasoning behind this other than scripting limitations.
DUBBING ISSUES:
Chains of Satinav has problems that concern the less-than-stellar translation efforts for the game, which was originally made in Deutsch.
In particular, there is one puzzle where Geron makes a remark about the reaction of a certain living thing against fire. His voice-over mentions that the thing is not afraid of fire, when it actually is.
The phrase “mischief” is often used interchangeably with “misfortune” and “evil”, even though the latter may seem more appropriate for a game with Chains of Satinav’s themes.
Occasionally, the voice-overs and subtitles mismatch. This is usually not an issue when it happens, but there is one particular moment halfway into the game where it causes problems in the puzzle-solving gameplay.
In this scenario, one of the lines in the English voice-overs and subtitles is missing, and in its place is the Deutsch version. This can be irksome to English-centric players, considering that this line is actually important for one of the puzzles. Fortunately, the player does have the convenience of certain visual indicators for this puzzle, but there is no fix for the issue of the spoken line and its subtitle.
TECHNICAL ISSUES:
Firstly, it has to be said that Chains of Satinav does not have many technical issues, unlike its cousins in Daedelic’s portfolio. It appears to be far better optimized for more computers than other Daedelic titles. The usual issues that plague the other Daedelic titles, such as the mouse cursor becoming randomly unresponsive, rarely if not never occur in Chains of Satinav.
However, there are a few recurring problems, despite the developers’ splendid playtesting. One of them is that interactive hotspots can become randomly disabled when Geron enters a locale. The player must have Geron moving about a bit after this in order to have the icons restored.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
Concept artwork for Geron suggests that the game was originally intended to have cartoonish visuals, not unlike many of Müller-Michaelis’ works. However, the finalized visual designs of Chains of Satinav are far from cartoonish. Rather, they can seem very stylish and stunningly beautiful to most players. Players may even forget that the game is designed with Visionaire, the same software that was used to make many other Daedelic titles.
Tobias Trebeljahr is mainly responsible for the background artwork of Chains of Satinav. Most of the locales in the game are splendidly detailed and laden with water-colour brush-strokes. That they were done with plenty of heart and soul is a statement that would be difficult to refute.
The character designs are provided by teams led by Simone Kesterton and Stefanie Kick. Their artstyle is certainly different from that of the artists who worked on Müller-Michaelis’s games.
Perhaps to this reviewer, each of the characters that are seen in Chains of Satinav has one-of-a-kind hairdos, ranging from the subtly unkempt to the fabulous. The two main characters are particular examples; Geron has short but thick hair that he seemingly tries to keep tidy as possible without access to better medieval hair-care, whereas Nuri has unruly hair that are adorned with many decorations that give her a wild look that is yet not too harsh on the eyes.
With that said, every person in the game has apparently unique faces too, which make them more believable (and despite the settings of the game). Again, Geron and Nuri are particularly noteworthy.
Moreover, the sprites for the characters have visual qualities that make them fit near-seamlessly with their surroundings. This differs with many previous Daedelic titles, which often have stark and sometimes even awkward visual contrast between characters and their surroundings.
However, Chains of Satinav does have limitations in its visual designs. These can be seen in the animations of characters and other objects in motion.
Although the animations for Geron’s and Nuri’s bodily motions are smoothly animated and transitioned, the other animations in the game are stilted and staggered. The splendid artwork also makes the stilted animations stand out even more.
The most apparent of these are the animations of characters’ lips. Although these do prevent any attempt at assessing lip-synching efforts, the lip animations also happen to be all over the place.
Though rarely, the lips of the wrong character move when another character is delivering lines. One of the most notable examples happens to occur in a dialogue between Nuri and Geron when they are looking for a certain person. This can result in some unintended hilarity.
Another notable design of Geron as a character is that his monologue is mostly done in his mind, not through his lips. This is in contrast with the protagonists of other Daedelic titles, who are often practically talking to themselves out loud. However, this design policy does not seem to be consistently enforced; occasionally, he makes a monologue without moving his lips, but a nearby character actually hears his words and makes remarks.
Most of the animations are done in-game, but sometimes it resorts to what appear to be pre-rendered cutscenes. There is no discernible reason for this, though perhaps it may have to do with Visionaire’s limitations.
SOUND DESIGNS:
The music is the first of the game’s sound designs to be heard. The music has been contracted out to “Knights of Soundtrack”, a none-too-subtly-named audio production company that is currently working closely with Daedelic on its more serious titles.
Dominic Morgenroth and Daniel Pharos are the composers of the music. As befitting the mature and slightly sad themes of the story, they have composed music that is melancholic and haunting, and perhaps a bit depressing too.
The Knights are also responsible for the sound effects that are heard in the game. They perhaps falter a bit in this regard.
Although most of the non-musical sound effects that are heard in the game are appropriate for their associated occurrences, the Knights do resort to clichéd albeit amusing aural tropes for certain sound effects. Chief of these is the “Wilhelm Scream”, which is used no less than twice in the game. Perhaps this was intended with humour, but it may seem ill-fitting with the game’s themes to some players.
The voice-overs are perhaps the best of the game’s sound designs. As of this time of writing, there are only Deutsch and English voice-overs. Both are delivered splendidly.
Geron may have some angst, but fortunately his voice-actors do not portray this too often. Geron’s English voice-actor in particular has a dreamy baritone that seems especially fitting with the young man. Both of Nuri’s voice-actresses portray her innocent naïveté very well, and after a certain pivotal point in the story, the heart-wrenching change in her character too.
Other characters have far shorter screen-times, but there are a couple that are notable. A certain character that appears early on appears again later as a much-changed person. His voice-actor happens to deliver this drastic change very well.
If there is any character that is not voiced pleasantly, it is one of the animals that can talk like humans do. To elaborate more on this character would be a spoiler, but it should suffice to say here that most players would find its cawing to be rather grating and forced.
CONCLUSION:
Chains of Satinav has a beautifully bittersweet story to offer, in addition to puzzles that are mostly believable and not too obfuscated to figure out, despite its fantasical settings.
Perhaps its association with The Dark Eye was not needed at all for Chains of Satinav to be as brilliant as it is. Daedelic Entertainment may have intended to use this association to market the game with, but it could have just been confident that the game could have done as well without it.