Frozenbyte: Trine project "a big mess"

Frozenbyte has told Eurogamer that Trine as a project is "a big mess", and that the disparity between prices and the platforms the game is released for are issues the studio will be better prepared to handle next time around.

Developer spokesperson Joel Kinnunen was reacting to fans who are frustrated that Trine will cost twice as much on PC (USD 40 / GBP 20) as on PS3, where the game will be around 20 dollars - Kinnunen didn't want to guess at a GBP or EUR price.

"We are happy with this price point, and we don't think anyone will be disappointed by the PC version or its value for money," he said.

"We would love to have the game sold at the same price point across all platforms and methods, but these things are sometimes unbelievably complex when there's so many partners involved. The same goes for the EUR/USD disparity, it's just out of our hands.

"We never had the same problems in this scale with our Shadowgrounds games so this whole situation caught us by surprise. We'll be better prepared in the future," admitted Kinnunen.

Trine is a side-scrolling platformer based around three heroes with unique skills that must be interchanged to overcome puzzles and scenarios.

"As for the PSN release date, I think your guess is as good as mine," he offered. "It's in the process of going through all the checks and such, so right now I'm not sure how long it's going to take or if we have to do some final fixes. If it gets through OK, then I'm sure the release date will be announced shortly."

There's been confusion over an Xbox Live Arcade version of Trine recently, too. US publisher Atlus confirmed it at E3, but this was later dubbed "speculation" by Frozenbyte. Is it or isn't it coming to XBLA?

"Well do you think we want to do things the easy way? Hah," quipped Kinnunen. "Seriously, we want Trine to be on XBLA but it, too, is out of our hands. We're working with Atlus to make it happen but it depends on so many things again."

"You know, at one point Trine was a PC-only game. That's how it started. We're really happy that it's coming to PSN and if we get it to XBLA, then we're even happier. The problem is that this is not really the optimal way to do a game (or a game launch).

"Trine as a project is a big mess," he rued, "as opposed to Trine as a game, which is pretty sweet. Ultimately it's the game part that really matters and helps us sleep at night, though."

Trine is released on PC next Friday, 10th July, in Europe. And it's very good, as our freshly minted Trine review points out.