This month saw Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power exit Early Access, and its promotion to full-game status brought with it a slew of negative reactions. There are almost 200 negative Steam Reviews for the game, with the majority criticising the game’s short length of around 4 hours.
The backlash has seen developer Frozenbyte issue an apology on Steam, explaining how over-ambition and budget restraints kept the game short, and stating that the future of the Trine series is now in question.
“Back in late 2012, we set out to do Trine 3 in full 3D,” said Joel Kinnunen, Frozenbyte’s vice president. “We took a big risk with the 3D gameplay implementation… We have always been ambitious and this time our ambition may have gotten the better of us.”
“Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power has ended up costing nearly triple that of Trine 2 – over 5.4 million USD,” he said. “We initially had a much longer story written and more levels planned, but to create what we envisioned, it would have taken at least triple the money, probably up to 15 million USD, which we didn’t realize until too late, and which we didn’t have.”
Kinnunen emphasises the short length – which he states as being “generally around 6-7 hours” – was not done in order to make money off further DLC. In fact, DLC is not planned. The cliffhanger story ending “is a different matter”, but will not be concluded with DLC.
“The future of the series is now in question, as the feedback, user reviews and poor media attention has caught us by surprise,” he added.