International ambitions are also marked in the adventure game genre: “We’re proud to say that we brought adventure games in Germany, Austria and Switzerland back to life. More than five years ago, we took up to re-establish adventure games – nowadays, the German game market rejoices in pretty strong competition, of which we come off as market leader for years. Now, it’s time to set ourselves new targets”, dtp’s COO Markus Windelen said. “We are taking up to bring back adventure games to their origin markets – especially North America. Adventure games have a big tradition there, nearly all releases by the market leaders of the past days, Lucas Arts and Sierra, still benefit from being cult. With clear designer legends and gaming concepts of today, we are giving back the adventure game genre its importance of then”, Windelen announces.
The attendance of legendary adventure gaming designers at the press conference clearly marked these words: Hal Barwood, Noah Falstein (both Ex Lucas Arts – for example designed the Indiana Jones adventure games) and Steve Ince (Ex Virgin Interactive – designer of the “Broken Sword” series) presented their current projects which are being published by dtp. One was missing: Jane Jensen unfortunately couldn’t come over to Germany because of illness. She expressed her greetings in a video message.
For the first time, the attending journalists got a first look into the upcoming adventure game projects. The game designers presented current milestone versions and proved that they understand perfectly how to connect new influences into adventure game development with favoured features of their game classics. The journalists enjoyed presentations of Barwood and Falstein’s Mata Hari (developer: 4Head, Hanover, Germany – Release Q1 2008), So Blonde (Steve Ince, Developer: Wizarbox, Release in Germany: November 2, 2007) and Jane Jensen’s Gray Matter (Release in 2008 as well).
“We are expanding internationally – but we are also aware that as a German publisher we didn’t make strong appearances yet internationally. This is going to change soon and is proved by the announcements made and projects presented today. Upcoming releases, e.g. the RPG Drakensang: The Dark Eye and the action RPG Legend: Hand of God, our internationally outstanding adventure game line up and the new RPG announcements of today prove that we are going to play quite a role in the international games business”, dtp’s COO Markus Windelen resumed the press conference.
Both games are being released on PC as well as on Xbox 360. Further details will be announced in the upcoming weeks.