Trine 2
Preview
Return of the Gorgeous
by Mariana Morales
previewed on PC
B-E-A-Utiful!
Trine is a game developed by the Finnish company Frozenbyte which was released on Windows/Mac, and later on the Playstation Network. It is a side-scrolling action game which was praised for its beautiful backgrounds and gameplay, in which you can switch between three characters at any time. The sequel is being developed and is looking to offer even more than what the previous installment did. The developers have taken the feedback from the first game and applied it to Trine 2. They have been working on this since the first game came out so they have been busy since. If you thought the first game could not get any more beautiful, Trine 2 will blow you away.
Prepare Yourself for Giant Mushrooms
It is unclear at this point what the storyline will entail, but it is set several years after the previous game. The kingdom is at the verge of destruction and the heroes are back for a brand new adventure. Some new areas include a castle that is completely made of ice, a house in a giant tree, a city in the clouds that is built on flying islands in the sky, and a Mushroom cave.
Trine was known for its puzzles and challenges. There will be a great variety of puzzles and more solutions for each character. For each area, there will not be a single way of doing things, but multiple ones and with the new co-op feature even more choices are entailed. The developers are excited to see the different ways gamers approach certain puzzles within the game, which gives great replay value. Prepare yourself for more enemies, more boss battles and apparently skeletons will be more challenging.
There will be new gameplay elements as well such as giant bouncy mushrooms, slippery surfaces, and magnets. All the levels are completely new and more alive than in the previous game. The developers have experimented enough to make the entire vegetation move in the wind as well as shadow and light coming through the trees.
Teamwork
In the previous game, multiple players were able to join any time they wanted and control different characters. One of the biggest features that will be available to players in Trine 2 is online/offline co-op. It will allow up to three other players to tag along with you on your journey in drop in/drop out style playing as Pontius the Knight, Amadeus the Wizard, or Zoya the Thief. Since in Trine some of puzzles were directed only for the Wizard, they have changed it up. Each character will have different objectives so that one player does not do all the work while the other characters watch.
Those characters will have new and improved abilities as well. For example, the wizard can control and manipulate objects, and can also throw his hammer. You can grab an object and throw it at an enemy. The thief also has a time-slowing ability which was supposed to be in the first game but they decided to introduce it here. There are also other new abilities which have not been revealed yet.
A feature brought to Trine 2 is a new save system in which; if you quit the game, you can come back later and start where you left off. The previous installment was criticized for the fact that you obtained skills near the end of the game, and did not have enough time to use them. They also want to introduce a NewGame+ feature where; when you have completed the game, you can start a new game with the abilities acquired and skills you have learned.
The soundtrack in the game is being developed by composer Ari Pulkkinen who also did the soundtrack for the first Trine so expect some beautiful background music. As well as bringing back the previous composer, the original English cast is also coming back to voice the characters in Trine 2.
Platforms
The developers plan to release Trine 2 on three platforms, however, they have not been announced yet. They have mentioned that they want a large audience so releasing Trine 2 on Xbox Live may even be a possibility.
