By Jim Rossignol on April 18th, 2009 at 8:05 pm.
Frozenbyte’s beautiful-looking fantasy platformer-meets-Crayon Physics cleverness, Trine, is revealed in even more detail in their latest video. The footage shows the drawing-as-magic mechanic in more detail, as well as illustrating some of the co-op play that the game will offer. We’re quite excited about this one, and we’ll soon be talking to the team about their work in a splendid RPS interview.
Well blow me down and call me Nancy, this looks like the second coming of The Lost Vikings! Nicely varied character abilities, clever puzzles, beautiful graphics…
Yep, I’m all over this one. And Frozenbyte? Weren’t they the Shadowgrounds blokes? They’re pretty neat.
report
Looks great…looking forward to the interview. :)
report
Wow! Looks amazing. First Braid and now this? Hopefully it will play as good as it looks.
2009 is being great so far in terms of gaming.
report
Looks good, but my favorite part is he music
report
Looks very okism.. This one support modding? I see how a community can make great maps out of this one. Nice!
report
Hey – never heard of this one but I’m quite impressed with the trailer. Definitely going on my watchlist.
report
Looks alright. Terrible name though.
report
Oh man… this is the sh*t. I’m DEFINETLY getting this one!
Yeah, awesome music back there. Sold.
report
wow that looks increadably! is a rps readers team up in order?
report
This is the year for physic based platforming it seems this is looking awesome.
report
A word of warning to those who might not know:
The co-op play is local co-op only. There’s no online, you have to both be on the same machine.
It’s a shame really, this same thing that held back Shadowgrounds as well. Online could have made a great game awesome there.
report
I don’t know what kind of a budget this is on, but the physics, lighting and sound are beyond what you’d expect from this kind of game.
report
Local co-op only?
Ridiculous. Are video game designers obtuse on purpose or do they seriously not know what their audience expects?
report
Yeah, Shadowgrounds is a thoroughly enjoyable game (crazy Russian guy with flamethrower FTW), one of the few since Portal I just had to finish in one day. Lack of online co-op in both Shadowgrounds and Trine is disappointing though.
report
cheers for the heads up subedii, is that local as in lan or can it be done using the same keyboard or two gamepad things? otherwise looks breathtaking in both concept and artwork :) will definately be checking this one out
report
Wow. That looks like some quality physicsutainment.
report
Local as in same machine only, not even LAN capability.
[url]http://frozenbyte.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1629&sid=2550241f95a972a4f71fdd7269ed9486[/url]
On the PS3 it might not be as much of an issue I suppose, but it definitely holds back the PC version.
They say they’ll evaluate the possibility of getting proper online in later, but to be honest I’m a little sceptical about that. Guess we’ll see.
They already know that people want online co-op, people have been clamouring for it since Shadowgrounds and Survivor. I don’t know, maybe they just don’t have the staff or resources available at the moment for something like that and just want to get the game out first.
report
Gah, remove the [url][/url] tags. Been posting on forums for too long.
report
And reading the link from my own post a bit more (triple post FTW), gives this response from Frozenbyte:
report
Beautiful stuff. It looks really lovely.
I like this trend recently to make very original platformers or the like. A genre which I considered to be entirely dead in terms of fun and new experiences, suddenly revitalised after years of decline and horribleness.
report
thanks again, and sorry again; i was being lazy :o
actually im kinda looking forward to inviting some friends round and mashing away at the keyboard.. cant remember any games that have really done that concept at all :o
report
This really does look like a new Lost Vikings style game. About time someone made another entry in that subgenre.
report
I’m disappointed about the local co-op only, but will buy the game nonetheless. Looks really original. Very pretty; great music.
report
Holy facking crap, this is what I have dreamed of in regards to platforms when I was a kid. :|
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeautiful.
report
Lost Vikings didn’t have any sort of co-op whatsoever, IIRC, and was still awesome.
report
@pkt-zer0: You never played the Genesis/Mega Drive version then?
That had 2-player co-op, and that only made it *extra* awesome! :D
report
I’m going to play this game.
report
Genius. I look forward to not coming anywhere near that level of inventive play when this comes out
report
Everyone do yourselves a favour and watch it in full screen HD, it’s lovely.
I think I’ll buy this just so they have some money to implement an online multiplayer patch.
report
I agree that Shadowgrounds and sequel were well worth playing solo. But local-only coop is sufficiently impractical on the PC that one might almost not even bother.
report
I fell in love with this one when first trailer showed up. This game looks like a lot of fun and it’s so magically beautiful. Oh, and the music is fantastic!
Good call when choosing to make an awesome game instead of crunching over some supplementary feature.
report
As soon as I saw the bridge with the rainbow behind I thought “Diablo III”. Looks like it has some great potential, but the man who designs a co-op game without networking is… well, words fail.
report
It looks great, and as a console gamer, I hugely prefer local co-op over any other sort – nothing can beat sitting next to the person you’re playing the game with, and voice channels etc. are miles away from being able to compete with that.
Of course, PC gamers are used to playing everything online and never being able to play with your platform-less mates, but I strongly suspect these guys are leading on PS3 – for which it’s a brilliant move.
Game looks sweet, too; like a bigger-budget co-op Braid, or maybe Bionic Commando: Rearmed.
report
RPS you are rubbish marketeers! How can you describe this as ‘fantasy platformer-meets-crayon physics cleverness’ when you go could go all ‘Okami-meets-Baird with some hack n slash on the side’!?
report
This might be the first game trailer I’ve watched for ages where I’ve actually though “wow”. I haven’t played a good platformer in ages and this looks like it’s exactly that, the music’s great, the visuals are great and the ideas actually look good to.
Sold, when can I have a copy please?
report
@ Pie21: Frozenbyte have already explained that. They know that this is a feature that everyone wants, but right now it’s a question of resources.
They’re still a small company and these are still indie games they’re making. At the moment they’re saying they simply don’t have the means to create the online infrastructure necessary to get it to work properly, not without likely sacrificing the rest of the game.
The dev in the post above points out the irony of this stating that whilst it sucks to have to do this, they’re still depending on this game to sell in order to be able to have a chance of getting multiplayer in in future.
Looking back at Shadowgrounds and Survivor, the lack of online hurt them, but they were still really awesome and fun games. So I’m looking forward to what they’re bringing out here.
report
That looks sublime! Color me extremely excited for this game.
report
Such highs and lows. Watching the High Def video really made me want to play co-op with my mates, then to find out it will not be playable online was a real sucker punch. So much so that I probably won’t end up getting it. Shame.
report
The music is delightful!
The first trailer for Trine had me whistling the background score for a month- I hope there’s more to come.
report
Man, I don’t care about the lack of online co-op – this game looks absolutely mesmerising to explore and progress through. Music, setting, animations… they all appeal to me. Three great characters (can’t decide which one was my favourite), and the levels themselves looked… wow.
Colour me absolutely infatuated.
report
Just reminding you people that this is primarily a PS3 game, where the nasty complexities of wrangling physics-friendly netcode into a game aren’t nearly as much of an issue.
I’d also like to point out that thanks to these wonderful technologies called ‘USB’ and ‘Bluetooth’, you can plug extra controllers into a PC. Just get a couple of beanbags and (assuming your monitor isn’t a tiny dinky little thing) have fun there.
Gamepads are cheap, and it really is nice to just sit down with friends and play something together.
report
Making a TV/couch friendly PC would make an EXCELLENT article in the future.
Does RPS have any techie inclined peeps, or shall a reader step forth with their special word science?
report
Most good HDTVs have a VGA input, and work straight-up as monitors. My cheap (sub-£200) goes up to 1360 x 768 (or whatever the 16:9 equivalent is), which is perfectly acceptable. If I wanted, I could just move the PC over to the TV, plug in a couple of wired (I don’t have one of the wireless adaptors yet) 360 pads and voila – instant PC sofa gaming.
report
I love when people complain about a lack of online play as if it’s something that you just blow a whistle and it magically appears. If your game was never built with networking code in mind, it’s not something trivial to just toss in (and have work well). And when you’re game involves physics and precision platforming timing, it’s all the more trouble.
Also we have a nice computer hooked up to a 1080p TV with any number of input devices easily accessible, so not too worried about that anyways =D.
report
I have an HDTV, and if I get this for the PS3, it will of course be excellent to have local coop (that is, in fact, also the way I prefer to have coop play on console). But my PC is utterly impractical to hook up to the TV (though said TV does support it) and while I now have a lovely 19″ widescreen LCD monitor for my PC, that still doesn’t make it practical to play same-system coop on. It’s due to the spatial arrangement of my apartment, and there’s nothing I can do about that.
report
This looks amazing! I can’t wait to give this a play. I’ve always enjoyed the using of different characters with different skill sets puzzle games (Lemmings, 3 Lost Vikings, etc) and this looks great. I hope playing it by yourself is fulfilling and not annoying, however.
I have my main game box (downstairs) hooked up to my 32″ HDTV (upstairs) using just a long HDMI – DVI Cable, a 1/8″ long audio cable and a USB extension (leading to a hub upstairs). Works beautifully and it allows me to play anything the wife wants to watch or anything I’d rather stare at a bigger screen while holding the 360 controller. Works like a champ.
report
I want this game.
report
I can only echo my post when RPS first wrote about this:
“Well that looks splendid.”
report
Splendidly splendid. Jolly good what what. I would rather enjoy partaking in this electronic entertainment venture.
report
Nice scenery, but why does all the gameplay involve crates?
report