You can sign up to get a daily email of our articles, see the Mailing List page.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

The Seagull, a play by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov is getting a full stylized 3D adaption from Team Dogpit when it releases later this year.

"On the shores of a lake in the Ukranian countryside, an aspiring actor and aspiring writer dream of fame and success. But being an artist is no easy life. They'll need to confront if it's something worth living for, killing for, or maybe even dying for."

YouTube Thumbnail
YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   Direct Link

Features:

  • Original adaptation of the classic play of the same name by Anton Chekhov.
  • Entirely 3D with both cinematic and 3rd person realtime presentations, featuring stylized comic book-like characters.
  • Eye-popping vaporwave-inspired color palette and visual effects.
  • Fully voiced in English by a stellar cast, audio captured in group sessions for as theater-like a presentation as possible.
  • Fully bilingual English/Russian interface and subtitles.

It's due to release on December 3, with Linux support confirmed with the original announcement. This looks absolutely fantastic, and a great way to bring a classic to life again so it can be immortalised another way.

You can follow The Seagull on Steam.

Want to try out another classic play in video-game form? Good news! The previous game from Team Dogpit is also an adaption of another play from Anton Chekhov. You can try out The Cherry Orchard on itch.io and Steam which somehow we completely missed when it released late in 2020. Trailer for that one below if you also didn't spot it before:

YouTube Thumbnail
YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   Direct Link
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
8 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
3 comments

Purple Library Guy Jun 4, 2021
Well, in concept I think it's kind of awesome, doing this kind of thing with classic theatre. In specific . . . I studied The Cherry Orchard in university, and I really didn't like it. Good writing, I guess, in the abstract . . . but it's like, I disliked every single character pretty much, and the ones that I felt vaguely sympathetic to past the dislike were so damn feckless and useless it was infuriating. There these morons are bitching and whining about how awful it is that they're going to lose their ancestral home, this cherry orchard, because they're running out of money, and talking wistfully about the old days back before their time when the cherries from the orchard got made into preserves and sold far and wide, but now the place is just useless if pretty. So, what, did people stop eating jam since the old days? Far as I could tell, the only reason they're not still using the place as a real orchard is that they're useless and decadent. None of them even once considers the possibility of getting together some cherry pickers and making them some preserves to sell--or, indeed, the possibility of doing any kind of gainful work at all. Some of the lower class people are more ambitious, in the sense that they're scheming to get rich quick, but none of them are interested in doing anything useful, they're more like wannabe scam artists.

I guess that's sort of the point, but everyone's so annoying that it's just a pain in the ass reading/watching it. The Cherry Orchard put me off Chekhov. Maybe The Seagull is better.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 June 2021 at 9:09 am UTC
Iggi Jun 4, 2021
Hm, I'm not really sure what to think about this. First I should mention that I love Chekhov's works (I've seen Ivanov, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard in theater and read several of his short stories), but at least the theater plays are very depressing and do not contain a lot of action (just like Purple Library Guy said: The protagonists usually love to lament about their fate without having any motivation to change it).

Video games on the other hand are living from their dynamic nature, and that seems to be the complete opposite of Chekhov's plays :-) While in theater it doesn't matter if there's only one single scene (because the live experience and the actors are predominant there), in a video game that's a bit odd... And I guess that's the reason why the trailer is looking quite boring to me.

I really hope that there is an audience for such games though :-)

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI guess that's sort of the point, but everyone's so annoying that it's just a pain in the ass reading/watching it. The Cherry Orchard put me off Chekhov. Maybe The Seagull is better.
You may want to try some of his short stories, those often contain a lot of humor. Try e.g. Kashtanka as a (longer) example if you want to have a good mix of both his humor and typical bitterness. I haven't read / seen The Seagull yet, but the summary doesn't make it sound like you would enjoy this play any better :-P On the other hand: If you've only read it I'd recommend to watch it live anyways, that's a completely different experience.


Last edited by Iggi on 4 June 2021 at 5:19 pm UTC
Nezchan Jun 5, 2021
Maybe it's Chekov's writing, maybe it's the performances of the actors, but what's shown in the trailer doesn't feel like characters talking to each other. Rather, they feel like they're saying things totally unrelated to each other, like machines spitting out preset comments at random. What results is this weird "floaty" feeling to the whole proceeding, which personally doesn't draw me in.

The visual style does seem a bit more compelling, but in isolation I don't think that can carry the whole thing.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.