1428: Shadows over Silesia for the blind

Audio trailer

They say that a single picture is worth a thousand words, and the same is true even for audio! Listen to the exclusive audio trailer created specifically for you, the first of its kind, which will reveal even more about the game.

Game description

Shadows over Silesia is a dark action adventure game with fantasy elements set in real medieval Europe. With true historical events in the background, you'll be facing intricate puzzles, challenging battles and cunning stealth. You will come across possessed devil worshipers, sexual demons and beasts from hell, as well as creatures well-known from European mythology.

Dark fantasy story

Europe is in the middle of religious upheaval and many preachers predict that the end of the world is near. The year is 1428 and the Hussites have just set out on their Silesian campaign. These heretics appear to be the biggest threat in the kingless country. But true evil of a completely different kind is lurking nearby and it does not intend to engage in religious disputes.

You will experience everything from the point of view of the two main characters. Hynek, a grumpy Hussite hetman who doesn't hesitate to swear or mess around with anything, and Lothar, a Hospitaller knight, a man of good education and manners who stands alongside his brethren in the front line of the Silesian defense. Each has their own motivations and views of the world around them, and different equipment and abilities. Their fates will soon become intertwined. Will they face one another, weapon in hand, or forge a fragile alliance to stand shoulder to shoulder against a far worse enemy?

Challenging puzzles

The original puzzles you will come across on your dangerous journey will most definitely be tough. Classic adventure games of the 1990s were a big inspiration. You will have to take advantage of your surroundings, look for objects, obtain information, and solve puzzles or encoded messages. Some problems can be solved in multiple ways, or they can be cleverly worked around.

Sneaking in the shadows

Sometimes you'll have to blend into the shadows and sneak past enemies to avoid being detected. Following their patrol routes and habits will help you find the best path.

Tough combat

The combat system is easy to understand but it takes practice to fully master it. Remember one thing: being outnumbered is a problem! If three or more opponents attack you at the same time, you will die! The key is to take advantage of their mistakes, wait for the right moment, and then attack. You will face not just knights, villagers and robbers, but also various supernatural beings who are not to be underestimated.

Mature content description

The game includes nudity, rude speech, extreme violence, sexual acts, sexual content, non-consensual sex, suicide and alcohol.

Important notice

This is not an audiogame! The game contains hardcore mechanics, and can be very difficult. It may be challenging to master it for players who have never encountered any PC or console videogames.

Accessibility features overview

1428: Shadows over Silesia will be fully accessible to you. This makes it the first game after The Last of Us series, and the first ever on PC, to bring full blind support to an adventure of this scale. We're not talking about just text narration or some kind of rudimentary navigation here. The game brings all-new revolutionary elements that will allow you to enjoy a full experience not only of the story, dialogue and environment exploration, but also of stealth scenes and combat, including large scale battles! Although the accessibility in The Last of Us is a tremendous success and won numerous awards, Shadows over Silesia takes everything to a whole new level never seen before.

The following is a summary of the accessibility features the game offers you:

• Full narration of all in-game text
  • Including pop-up hints, character properties, active quests, journal entries and inventory
  • Closed captions in cutscenes
  • Subtitle narration for non-dubbed languages
  • The ability to skip forward and backward in text
  • Support for NVDA and MS SAPI
• Special text descriptions of the environment
  • All important locations have their own text descriptions, so that even you can enjoy the game's dark atmosphere while receiving additional information you would otherwise miss
• Advanced navigational features
  • Navigation to important story points, characters and even custom points that can be added on demand in an unlimited quantity
  • Reporting of the remaining distance to the destination
  • Compass narration as well as a coordinate system
  • Assistance with turning towards objects or characters
• Sonar
  • A revolutionary feature that will finally allow you to freely explore and navigate the game world thanks to auditory indication of walls and impassable obstacles
  • The sonar also announces friendly and enemy characters and determines their locations
  • Indication of traps or destructible barriers
• A large number of audio cues
  • Indication of objects and interesting interactions. Many of these provide additional sounds to let you know what's around you the moment you first hear it
  • Indication of the beginning and end of cutscenes, low health, leaving an area, and many other situations
  • Warnings about enemies
  • Lots of audio cues in combat, so that you can be as situationally aware as possible, and can react quickly and confidently
• Optional adjustments of certain mechanics
  • Accessible combat, including large scale battles
  • Accessible stealth that maintains the atmosphere as well as difficulty
  • More time to successfully complete timed events
• And a great deal of other extra goodies
  • Fully remappable controls, even on a controller
  • The option to receive sonar feedback not just via audio but also as controller vibrations
  • The entire user interface, including all menus and dialogs, completely accessible with both keyboard and controller
  • The possibility to lock camera rotation so that it's always facing in the direction of the playable character; this makes movement and controls easier for totally blind players and also enables strafing (sidestepping)
  • The option to configure sound to play as though in first person view. You will thus be literally in the center of the events and will be able to hear every single murmur and whisper even better, although the game is visually displayed in third person view
  • The option to have accessibility audio cues displayed also visually
  • Separate sliders for the game's master volume as well as the individual volumes of music, character voices, user interface sounds and the accessibility audio cues themselves
  • A wide array of graphics settings
  • The possibility to increase or decrease the size of the user interface as needed

System requirements

Minimum

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• Operating system: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or Windows 11
• Processor: Intel i3-3220
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics card: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 660 or AMD GPU Radeon HD 7870
• Hard drive: 8 GB of free space
• Sound card: Integrated
• If you want to use the text narration feature, you will need the NVDA screen reader or an MS SAPI compatible voice.

Recommended

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• Operating system: Windows 10
• Processor: Intel i5-2400 or AMD FX-8320
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics card: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD GPU Radeon RX 580
• Hard drive: 8 GB of free space
• Sound card: Creative SOUND BLASTER Zx
• The NVDA screen reader for the text narration feature

Tips for text narration

• If you use the NVDA screen reader, we recommend enabling the so called sleep mode after starting the game with the keystroke NVDA+shift+S in the desktop keyboard layout, or NVDA+shift+Z in the laptop keyboard layout. Otherwise, NVDA may not be able to say certain information while you are holding down a key, especially if you use the arrow keys for movement, regardless of NVDA's configuration. This issue does not occur with a controller.
• Without the NVDA screen reader running, text narration is not activated automatically. If you are only using a SAPI compatible voice, you need to manually activate text narration in one of the following ways (necessary only once):
  • The first time you start the game, a spoken prompt will also play to activate the text narration feature. To do so, simply press the E key before the main menu loads. If you are unable to press it in time, restart the game and try again.
  • If you are able to use Steam with a screen reader, you can also set a custom startup parameter for the game. This is an alternate, backup method, meant only for situations like if you accidentally turned off text narration that was previously enabled, for instance.
    • Open Steam using the desktop or Start menu shortcut.
    • If Steam doesn't launch into the Library section, select it, or switch to the Library directly from the context menu of the Steam icon in the system tray.
    • Using the screen review or mouse movement features of your screen reader, right-click the image labeled "1428: Shadows over Silesia".
    • In the same way, find the Properties item and left-click it.
    • The next screen will read like a normal web page. Enter the following text in the edit box for the launch options (it is the only one in the window)
      -tts
    • There is no visible OK, Save, Done, etc. button in the window; just close it.

Materials for download

• Default accessible controls scheme (to download, open the context menu on the link and select "Save as..."
• A detailed introduction to the accessibility features (.zip archive, 5 MP3 files, total size 219 MB)

Ways to customize the game

Anyone can try to translate all the text in the game into their native language if they want to and if that language doesn't already have text localization. Likewise, you can replace any of the accessibility audio cues with your own if any of the default ones don't suit you. In this case, the audio cue overview in the game will also link to the new sound.

Assuming you haven't changed the default location where newly acquired games from Steam are installed, you can find the relevant game folder here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\1428\1428_Data\StreamingAssets

There are two more subfolders here, AccessibilitySignals and Translations.

After each change to a translation or the audio cues, the game must be quit and restarted.

Creating a new translation

In the Translations folder, you can create a new text file for the language you want to translate. Look at the format and file names of existing languages, and do the same for the new file so that the game understands it. You can also test the resulting translation as you go. Any language file in the correct format that is located in the Translations folder is immediately recognized by the game, so you can switch to it at any time by selecting Language from the Settings menu and the Game submenu. If you want to share your translation with other players, contact us using one of the methods listed in the footer of this page.

Modifying the accessibility audio cues

In the AccessibilitySignals folder, there is a file called "signals", with no extension. It is a plain text file that you can open in any text editor. This lists the names of all the audio files for the accessibility cues the game uses, each on a separate line. If you put an MP3 into the AccessibilitySignals folder with the appropriate name for any of these cues as listed in the signals file, the game will start using this new sound.