Trine 3 - uh oh, they fucked it up

[Metro]

Ah, Total Biscuit...

Please stop.

 

[Sykar]

Please stop.

Would you prefer Angry Joe?

Spoiler

 

[Talby]

They should have stuck to 2.5D and added a new class for a "new and shiny" feature to sell Trine 3. Instead they went full Munch's Oddysee. What a shame.

 

[Astral Rag]

From the footage I'm seeing on YouTube Trine 3's camera is a lot worse. Crappy fixed camera positions in a 3D puzzle-platformer WTF were they thinking.

 

[dukeofwhales]

They should have stuck to 2.5D and added a new class for a "new and shiny" feature to sell Trine 3. Instead they went full Munch's Oddysee. What a shame.

Quine? Quadine?

I would have been happy with another 10 hours of the same stuff for $15, but had a feeling when I saw the announcement that they'd fuck it up. It's a shame.

 

[Metro]

Exactly. They had their niche and the strong selling point of great art and music. No idea why they pushed the envelope.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

15 million dollars to make a platform game ? Talking about the Schafer effect when you add 3d which isn't hip anymore even in the movie industry.

Trine was always presentation plus clever puzzles. I had with both of them great time. The third part can be finished in 3 hours and it's still buggy. Talking about building your reputation and ruining it with one move.

 

[Metro]

How the fuck does a Trine game take $15 million to make? Where did they even get that much? Doesn't show a publisher so I'm assuming it was self funded. I can't imagine the first games taking more than a third of that to make.

 

[Delbaeth]

Going from 2D to 3D.
It's all 1996. Again.

 

[potatojohn]

Just play The Lost Vikings instead

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

How the fuck does a Trine game take $15 million to make?

To be precise, they would have needed that much to make the third part as big as the earlier ones. They've had 5.4 millions and made short unfinished version as we can see from steam comments. Only 9.6 missing . But they already have the engine so it's probably more for all that audio-visual side of the project. They should have thing about the consequences of including a costs of a new gimmick. Frozenbyte will be squezzing money from various sales and bundles but they'll never see the return of that 5.4 to them I'm afraid.

 

[tormund]

They apparently expected to earn way more during the early access phase, and they planned to use that money to finish Trine 3. It's a shame that it turned out like this, hopefully Frozenbyte will manage to go on.

If nothing else, at least this game will end in some indie bundle even faster than Trine 2 did.

 

[pippin]

Trine, it seems, was an unsuspected hit for Frozenbyte. They were never the most proficient company, though... for instance: you can't save mid-stage in Shadowgrounds because of "engine limitations".

 

[mastroego]

Ouch.
It's true that some people can't handle success.
Pity.

 

[DemonKing]

Damn - they managed to screw it up. The main positive is that they made the warrior actually useful with a lot of new abilities that make him worth playing (unlike Trine 2 where I never used him). Of course, they then proceeded to screw over the Wizard who now can only summon one crate at a time and can't make ramps at all and the rogue can't fire anything except standard arrows now. All skill customization is gone.

Game would be short as all hell except they padded it out by adding "bonus" levels which you can only play with a predetermined single character and when you die you have to go back to the start + they added a minimum amount of gold needed to access most levels meaning you end up having to go back and replay levels in order to grind your gold up if you didn't find all the treasure first time through.

The story also ends abruptly and incompletely with no sense of satisfaction at all and the Big Bad still on the loose.

In short it's half a game storywise and lengthwise with gameplay that probably wouldn't hold up over a full length game in any case. The graphics look nice I guess.

I'm not even Codex-edgy but this is a big FAIL.

 

[Metro]

Honestly I'd rather them make another Shadowgrounds game. Would prefer an atmospheric shoot-em-up to more puzzle platformer shit.

 

[Infinitron]

Sad faces: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...s-the-future-of-the-series-is-now-in-question

Trine 3 developer Frozenbyte has released a video response to the game's negative feedback, in which the company's marketing manager Kai Tuovinen personally takes the blame for the fact that player expectations were not met.

The issue, Tuovinen says, is that Frozenbyte did not explain Trine 3's short length - a result of the series switch to 3D. Neither did the developer discuss its decision to leave the game's story on a cliffhanger ending - a result of the shorter experience.

"In hindsight, our biggest mistake was that we didn't let you know we would be splitting the game into different parts," Tuovinen explains, "or that this would be a shorter game than others in the series.

"As head of marketing here, I have to bite the bullet. It's my fault."

Frozenbyte has yet to decide how - or if - it will continue the franchise, or release any kind of conciliatory DLC.

"It's pretty much do or die for us at this point," Tuovinen concluded. "Back to the drawing board."

 

[Metro]

 

[pippin]

Even in the thumbnail you can realize they don't have any hopes left for this world.

 

[dukeofwhales]

I enjoyed the guy throwing the Trine poster in the bin in the background towards the end of the video. It sounds like they're taking the feedback more personally than they should - it's just obviously it sucks for the studio and disappointing for people who liked the game - but people don't "hate" them like they say.

Also lol at the youtube comments calling the character ability tree "RPG elements".

 

[Astral Rag]

Cry me a fucking river. Some free advice: you released a poor and overpriced platformer now learn from your mistakes and try to fix your game's problems, maybe release some free DLC if you can, write a concise and honest but -professional- statement if you must but don't make a spectacle of yourselves by releasing pubescent tearjerker videos on YouTube.

 

[Metro]

I wonder if they can even afford releasing free DLC.

 

[tormund]

They focused too much on game's short length. They don't avoid other issues in their video, but they behave as short length is by far the biggest issue with this game. I hate to agree with TB, but imo he is right about Trine 3: 20$ game being only 3-4 hours long would be much less of an issue if those were 3-4 hours of memorable, high quality gameplay. What Trine 3 offers is 3-4 hours of frustrating, often downright badly designed, needlessly simplified game that is obviously unfinished in several ways.

 

[racofer]

These guys aren't developers, they're a bunch of modders that happened to make a standalone game.

Their first attempt was a success, so they tried it again and Trine 2 happened to be a decent game, although I like the first game better than the second. But since the graphics are supposed to be one of Trine's selling points, what they achieved in Trine 2 makes up for most of its shortcomings, such as the ridiculously trial and error driven puzzles that weren't so often in the first game.

But since we are talking about a bunch of modders here, not game developers, they went over their heads and Trine 3 is the result. Instead of patching shit up, we get a Youtube video of them crying and talking about sequels that will "extend" the plot of this turd of a game.

 

[Infinitron]

Hey, Shadowgrounds was kick-ass.

Interestingly though, a kinda similar thing happened with Shadowgrounds: Survivors where they added PHYSICS gimmicks, multiple protagonists and RPG features but the levels themselves were kind of boring + too easy. But they don't seem to have gotten much flack for that. Of course, they were a lot less famous back then.