Trine 3 Has A Release Date For PS4

Frozenbyte Studios' Trine 3: Artifacts of Power has had difficulty with the gaming community over content being cut short. However, they seem to be trying to rectify the poor reception by continuing to support the game, including a release on the PS4 on December 22nd this week.

On the PlayStation blog Frozenbyte's Kai Tuovinen explains what the game is about and how it's finally getting its due release on the PlayStation 4.

The big change between Trine 2 and Trine 3 is that Frozenbyte implemented 3D gameplay for the first time in the series. The first two games were in 3D and running on the Unreal Engine, but they played out like 2D side-scrollers. Players were previously on a 2D plane, solving puzzles and battling enemies in a completely unique gameplay experience all its own.

The first two Trine games really made waves with the three-player cooperative play; each character type had their own unique abilities used to overcome the obstacles and puzzles presented throughout the game. The knight, thief and wizard each afforded gamers a distinct style of play. The wizard could conjure up magical elements to help during combat or to get past a puzzle segment, while the thief could swing around stages with her grappling hook or shoot down enemies with her bow and arrow. Finally, the knight could block incoming attacks, use melee attacks against enemies and use his shield to float around.

Each of the three characters' abilities have been heightened and improved to fit the new 3D platforming design mechanics that have been developed for Trine 3. This change in gameplay design, however, took a real toll on the developers. The game changing its entire design philosophy meant that Frozenbyte burned through resources a lot quicker than they thought and they had to cut back on their intended vision for Trine 3. This resulted in a variety of gamers expressing their disappointment with how short the new game is, and how it feels like it cuts off right in the middle.

I imagine that Frozenbyte will likely try to scale back for Trine 4 and stick with something a bit more logistically sound on their end.

Exclusive to the PS4 is trophy support – Trine 3 sports 28 different trophies that can be unlocked for the platinum. The co-op feature is still intact on the PS4 version but only for local co-op; sadly the online cooperative mode is not made available for Sony's home console. I imagine they may get some serious complaints about that one, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it gets patched in later.

The game also supports full 1080p native resolution at 60 frames per second, a lot of that is thanks to the very well optimized Unreal Engine 4.

Like the previous Trine titles, the third game does support stereoscopic 3D, so if you have a 3D-ready TV with active shutter glasses maybe you can give the game a spin with the 3D feature. However, the resolution in 3D goes from 1080p down to 720p.

Trine 3: Artifacts of Power will be available on the PS4 for $21.99.