Trine Series May Not Continue According To Creator
According to the developer Frozenbyte, the Trine series might be finished following criticism of the latest entry in the franchise. Speaking in a long post on Steam, Joel Kinnunen stated how he wasn’t sure exactly what the studio would do in the future in regards to Trine. “The future of the series is now in question, as the feedback, user reviews and poor media attention has caught us by surprise,” said Frozenbyte vice president Joel Kinnunen.
Much of the criticism that as levelled at the game has centred on its short story and missing features that fans expected. This has led some to believe that Frozenbyte has not spent enough money on the game. However, the developer had a budget that was three times the size of predecessor Trine 2 for the latest title, with the team spending $5.4 million on creating it.
“The cliffhanger story and the relative shortness of the game are valid criticisms but ones which we didn’t realise would cause a disappointment in this scale. We initially had a much longer story written and more levels planned, but to create what we envisioned, it would have taken at least triple the money, probably up to $15m, which we didn’t realise until too late, and which we didn’t have.”
He also explained that despite the short nature he still felt though it was value for money and that the cliffhanger ending has not been purposely designed to force players to buy DLC to get closure, thus giving the developer more opportunities to make more money.
“The finished Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power game might not be as long as we hoped initially,” he explained. ”But something we are very proud of nonetheless, and generally around 6-7 hours is what we think new players will spend with the game on average.”
“As for the cliffhanger ending and DLC – there are no plans for a DLC. Continuation of the story is a different matter however, but we have released everything we had and everything we aimed to release since the beginning of the Early Access. So we did not intentionally make the game “short” as many have said in order to make money off of future DLC or whatever. We tried to make something too ambitious, and it ended up financially impossible.”
“We are proud of the game and what we have achieved overall,” Kinnunne stated. “We think it’s a fun game and we don’t think it’s too expensive either considering all the elements we have been able to put into the game. However, our view is perhaps skewed, and we are now realising that we have been looking at this perhaps from a different perspective and that many players do not accept that.”