By Alec Meer on December 6th, 2011 at 12:48 pm.
Cos Frozenbyte’s proper-lovely tri-person puzzle-platformer finally has a concrete release date, after a few months of to-ing and fro-ing in beta. And it’s tomorrow! Oh dear, has this become one of those announcement of an announcement posts? People get cross about those, you know.
No, I think it’s OK – as it’s pretty unusual form to announce the release date of your game two days before it happens.
So, PC and Mac tomorrow, via Steam, GamersGate, Direct2Drive and similar, though as it uses Steamworks and Steamcloud presumably you’ll end up activating it on Steam wherever you buy it from.
There’ll be two versions: standard is $14.99/12.99 euros/11.99 pounds, while the Collector’s Edition is available for $24.99/19.99 euros/17.99 pounds and has an artbook, dev commentary and soundtrack. Parts of Europe are getting a physical collector’s edition, which puts artwork onto pulped tree matter.
Oh, and a “DRM-free” version is promised for some point next year.
Hopefully team RPS will be putting their senses at this very soon for an assembled play’n'judge.
06/12/2011 at 12:52 Vexing Vision says:
Wait. Tomorrow?
My sources lied! It was supposed to come out on Friday!
Noooooo! My productivity! My Skyrimprogress! Noooooo!
06/12/2011 at 13:51 skalpadda says:
That was my thought as well. Very happy to finally get to play it though :)
06/12/2011 at 23:51 Syra says:
Noooooo i’m on a week long course!
Nooooo I’ve just started 2 games to go along with my 2nd skyrim char (which I’m kind of bored of almost now?)
NOOOO my gf hasnt finished the frst trine yet, useless bint, how am I going to coop with her :<
06/12/2011 at 12:53 Ondrej says:
Steam storefront page here for those who haven’t yet preordered it.
06/12/2011 at 12:55 LemonyTang says:
YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Trine is my favourite game ever so this is going to OWN
06/12/2011 at 12:56 Network Crayon says:
I feel like you guys (Frozenbyte as well) are trying to sabotage my career…
Thank You!
06/12/2011 at 13:03 airtekh says:
Yay!
I know what I’m playing tomorrow.
06/12/2011 at 13:06 Mangle says:
I tried the demo for the first game and it just didn’t grab me. Though I was playing with a keyboard, which I hate for 2D scrollers.
There’s no denying this game looks amazingly pretty, though :O
I’ll have to give the original another try with my Xbox pad.
06/12/2011 at 13:09 rustybroomhandle says:
I remember it very much being keyboard & mouse. Don’t think keyboard alone would have gotten you far.
06/12/2011 at 18:56 protospork says:
Trine played beautifully with the 360 pad, it really felt like that was the primary focus. Accurate button icons in the tutorial prompts and everything. Was it originally an XBLA game? I don’t remember.
06/12/2011 at 19:44 Barnaby says:
A controller might be fine to use with the thief or the knight, but you’d be silly to use a gamepad for the wizard. Making planks and boxes was way way easier, so much so that it would warrant using m/kb over gamepad imo. Most games that people claim are better with gamepads are just fine with mouse/keyboard, just takes a bit more getting used to in most cases.
06/12/2011 at 20:29 protospork says:
Oh, I’m by no means claiming Trine is better with the gamepad. I never even tried M+K: I saw the gamepad option and made a beeline for it, as it’s become my input of choice for nearly anything outside the first-person.
And I agree with you about the Wizard, Barnaby. He was my least-used character, partly because the other two characters played so well but mainly because it’s difficult to use a stick to draw anything with corners (thankfully planks are more useful as a last-ditch combat measure than the other shapes). If Trine 2 has more areas you need the wizard for, I may find myself switching to the mouse.
07/12/2011 at 20:42 psyk says:
boxes can be drawn as a circle, so much easier than drawing a square.
06/12/2011 at 13:07 rustybroomhandle says:
Sadly I will have to wait till early 2012 for the Linux release. Still excited to hear what people have to say about it though.
06/12/2011 at 13:13 oliwarner says:
With you there. But I have to admit I’m tempted to buy the Windows copy to play it under Wine (the first one worked quite well).
06/12/2011 at 15:25 rustybroomhandle says:
Well I could just play it in Windows, but I am determined to support Desura as much as I can.
06/12/2011 at 13:11 westyfield says:
I haven’t even finished Trine 1 yet!
06/12/2011 at 13:13 Tusque D'Ivoire says:
DRM-free version? I call Humble Bundle!
speaking of which. Theres already an new, third Indie Bundle going on at http://www.indiegala.com/
It’s more charity-y than the Indie Royale, but even less multi-platform than that, all you get are (individual) steam keys vi a-mail. great games though.
06/12/2011 at 14:08 InternetBatman says:
I bought it because of Saira. I love bundles, usually there’s one game I know I want and one or two more I end up liking.
06/12/2011 at 17:55 iHavePants says:
Both Humble Bundle and GoG’s new-new game store seem likely candidates.
06/12/2011 at 19:51 GraphiteZeppelin says:
Wow WAY TO GO.
I was blissfully unaware of a THIRD bundle that will siphon money away for games I don’t have the time to play. I am in college man cut me some slack. It’s not like I can just not buy them.
07/12/2011 at 01:13 Reality says:
Thanks for the heads up! I already have Saira from a steam bundle, but I’ve wanted to pick up the last Hacker: Evolution game for a while – they just priced it rather high at $25 on steam for an indie game.
06/12/2011 at 13:15 InternetBatman says:
Trine was a solid little platformer with gorgeous graphics. This’ll probably be the same.
06/12/2011 at 14:59 Gnoupi says:
From what I tried, it’s the same, but better. Puzzles are more sophisticated and harder to just “skip with the thief”, levels are longer, and enemies more interesting.
06/12/2011 at 17:36 Urthman says:
I enjoyed Trine 1 all the way to the end (after the patch nerfing the last level) and it was a really solid, delightful game.
At the same time there were lots of pretty obvious, easy ways to make it better (more variety in enemies, better puzzles, giving the knight some more combat and movement options), so I’ll be really surprised if this game isn’t fantastic.
I think Trine is the only game ever with a wizard that can’t just shoot enemies with fireballs and/or lightning bolts. It deserves some kind of special Wizard Award for that.
06/12/2011 at 13:17 Sheng-ji says:
Oh my goodness, I’ve only just picked up Trine 1 (After Total Biscuits preview) Guess what I’ll be doing over the next couple of days!
06/12/2011 at 13:35 bear912 says:
Such beautiful pixels!
06/12/2011 at 13:35 Kismet says:
*waits for DRM-free release*
06/12/2011 at 13:46 johnpeat says:
Trine 1 did nothing for me at all – the physics were nice but generally not nearly enough ‘part of the game’ and the shape-shifting wasn’t used properly either…
I’m wondering if this might be better or if they’ve just concentrated on making it pretty again.
I’m not spending full price to find out tho – not when it will be in a sale or bundle within 2 months ;)
06/12/2011 at 14:28 TheGameSquid says:
Yeah, Trine was a pretty, but ultimately bland game. Don’t quite understand why everyone’s so excited about the sequel…
06/12/2011 at 14:57 Gnoupi says:
Because some people didn’t think it was bland, and had a blast with it.
The second one is better from what I tried, better physics, more variety in levels, and it has online coop (the first one was only “same computer”)
07/12/2011 at 14:30 MondSemmel says:
Well, I had the same first impression of Trine – pretty graphics but not much behind it. But I was proven completely wrong. Yes, the game looks gorgeous, but more importantly, the gameplay itself and the puzzles were pretty clever, too. (Plus locating all the treasure and experience made for another layer of puzzles altogether.) And the mechanic of switching characters worked perfectly for me.
I feel bad getting it for cheap during a Humble Bundle, actually :).
06/12/2011 at 13:53 DBG says:
Um. Alec… they actually had it announced to be “in December” for a long time. It’s not that they just jumped on us out of nowhere with this.
And I was actually waiting for it (my hopes where on 1st, though, but whatevs) to come this soon.
06/12/2011 at 13:55 bleeters says:
“In December” is such a wonderfully vague release date, though.
06/12/2011 at 13:54 bleeters says:
…Tomorrow? As in tomorrow tomorrow?
Well. I. Uh. I think I caught flu all of a sudden.
06/12/2011 at 14:58 Gnoupi says:
Yeah, I’m feeling all weird suddenly too. Flu, obviously.
06/12/2011 at 17:20 sneetch says:
*Cough*
Agh!
My lungs! Hope I didn’t cough on anyone there, I’d hate to think you caught my terrible 48 hour virus.
*Cough*
06/12/2011 at 14:30 Matt says:
Yes! This news just made my day.
06/12/2011 at 14:47 alms says:
Steam’s page doesn’t mention any DRM, so I guess what “DRM-Free” actually means is “runs stand-alone” ?
06/12/2011 at 14:52 bleeters says:
Steam would be the DRM, yes.
06/12/2011 at 15:15 Koojav says:
How dare you call Steam a DRM? Have you got no shame at all?
06/12/2011 at 16:01 bleeters says:
Being less of an annoyance than other forms doesn’t magically make it not DRM.
06/12/2011 at 16:50 johnpeat says:
That’s true – if being able to play your games on only 1 PC at a time is a massive put-off then by all means wait for DRM-free.
I find it hard to play games on 2 PCs at once tho – hence it’s never bothered me much :)
06/12/2011 at 17:30 westyfield says:
Offline Mode doesn’t run as smoothly on every computer as it apparently does on yours. Steam is DRM, it’s just fairly nice compared to other examples.
07/12/2011 at 00:30 Big Murray says:
It’s still not Lost Vikings.