Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince is out today
Swing into action!
Trine, the tritagonistic puzzley platformer, had a bit of a rough time in its last outing, as a bold foray into the z dimension was costly enough to cut the game shorter than fans expected.
Happily that's not the end of the series, as Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince comes out this very day, returning the bouncy adventure trio to their 2.5D roots.
Cor. Trine was always a pretty series, but the variety of backgrounds and colour schemes look really impressive here. The general idea is the same - you control a wizard, knight, and thief who are magically conjoined for reasons, as they solve navigational puzzles by swinging about on ropes, conjuring platforms, and bashing nasties on their way to, this time, stop a prince's nightmare monsters from manifesting in reality. Cute enough stuff, very much in keeping with the lighthearted, very mildly parodic tone of of the earlier games.
The classic Trine criticism is that it was too easy to brute wizard through most puzzles by stacking up magical boxes and simply climbing over them, although that didn't deter RPS escapee Alec Meer from lavishing Trine 2 with praise in 2011. Developers Frozenbyte are surely aware of this, as there are more skills to unlock this time, and apparently a bit more emphasis on combat. Up to four players can take part cooperatively too, "with challenges tailored to the number of players" according to the blurb.
Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince is available today on Steam and GOG for £25/€30/$30.
There's an unusually long explanatory trailer, which I'm linking to mainly for the lovely narration.
