Trine 3: Artifacts of Power just fully released onto Steam, and while it is supposed to come to consoles at a later date, the backlash the game has already received may threaten the entire Trine franchise.
While Trine 3 still has mostly positive reviews on Steam, there are quite a few negative reviews as well, so many that Frozenbyte Vice President Joel Kinnunen took to the Steam forums to discuss the game. On the forums, Kinnunen explained that the team wanted Trine 3 to be in full 3D, and the title ended up costing them 5.4 million USD to make, around three times the amount it cost to make Trine 2. That left Frozenbyte with little money to spare, which is why Trine 3 is a relatively short game.
Back in late 2012, we set out to do Trine 3 in full 3D – bigger, badder, better. We took a big risk with the 3D gameplay implementation – it was to be a massive improvement over the previous games in several areas. We have always been ambitious and this time our ambition may have gotten the better of us.
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power has ended up costing nearly triple that of Trine 2 – over 5.4 million USD. We have squeezed everything we could into the game, there’s nothing left on the table. 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 15 million USD, which we didn’t realize until too late, and which we didn’t have.
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. What we sold on Early Access was the “realistic” vision and what we promised is what we have delivered, in our opinion. The finished Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power game might not be as long as we hoped initially, 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. We’re aware that some players have completed the game in less than that, 4-5 hours for example, and we accept that. I’m sure you can speedrun it much faster too, but so you could in previous Trine games and in most other games too.
Kinnunen went on to explain that there are no current plans for future DLC, and explained that while the team will continue to make patches and fixes for the game, “the future of the series is now in question.”
The future of the series is now in question, as the feedback, user reviews and poor media attention has caught us by surprise.
Did you get a chance to play Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power yet? If you did, let us know your thoughts on the game in the comments section below.
