When I’m playing the Trine [official site] games I feel like I’m shuffling around inside beautiful fantasy concept art. It’s a little known fact that Louis Armstrong’s recording of What A Wonderful World was performed after an all-night cooperative Trine binge and the inspiration is clear (the final verse, however, was a joke about The Sims’ squalling infants). I’ve often wondered how it would feel to step inside the beautiful artwork rather than dashing across it from left to right, and the freshly announced Trine 3 has the answer. Indulge your eyes by watching the trailer below.

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If someone could kindly make a Trine 2 level that’s a big huge grappling hook playground with daring leaps and grand fairytale vistas, I’d be much obliged. Developers Frozenbyte have released public beta versions of the level editors for both its magical puzzle-platformers, you see, but I’m oh so horribly busy this week. They let folks create new levels, edit existing ones, and put together their own multi-level campaigns. A string of grappling hook playgrounds, perhaps.

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Each generation adds its own twist to old fairytales, reflecting the tone and fashions of the era, teasing out undertones as statements. Trine was not an adaptation of an old tale, but played with genre conventions to deliver a modern message: lusty wizards and thieves with grappling hooks are totally wicked cool. But what comes out when that itself is updated? Prettiness. So much prettiness.

Developers Frozenbyte yesterday launched Trine Enchanted Edition, a remake of sorts in the Trine 2 engine, adding online co-op and buckets of shininess. It’d been in public testing for a month.

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I remember Trine as being awfully pretty but no, apparently it wasn’t pretty enough for developers Frozenbyte (and, having now returned to the game, it seems my memory’s not quite what it was). They’re porting Trine over to the Trine 2 engine, giving the puzzle-platformer a fairytale makeover and its sequel’s online co-op.

While Frozenbyte may disappearing off on their summer hols soon and don’t know quite when it’ll be finished, they’ve released a beta version so we can all argue with Skypepals over who gets to be the Wizard. (Tip: start this argument then sigh “Fine, I’ll be the Thief” because actually she is the best. Thank the pro-wizard lobbying of Idle Thumbs, I guess.)

… [visit site to read more]

Frozenbyte’s magicky puzzler Trine 2 materialised on the internet a couple of days ago, having apparently not received the message that the industry isn’t allowed to release any videogames after the last week of November. I for one am glad of this flagrant rule-breaking, and have spent a while in its world of colour and physics. Here’s what I made of it. Also: group hug!>

I feel good! I feel great>, in fact. Trine 2′s ability to bring about instant tranquility has been oft-documented on this blog, but for once I’m not talking about its pretty colours, dreamy music and general air of goodwill. I’m taking about its puzzles. (more…)

The third Humble Indie Bundle, this time featuring just Frozenbyte games – Trine, Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds Survivor, Jack Claw, and Splot – has proven to be something of a success. It has sold approximately 100,000 units and $500,000 within the first 48 hours. Frozenbyte say: “This is all thanks to the very supportive communities around the world and also all the media outlets. So on behalf of Frozenbyte, Humble Bundle, Child’s Play and EFF I would like to express our sincerest gratitude.”

Hooray! You can pay what you want just here.