Q&A With Lauri Hyvärinen, Trine Developer and CEO of FrozenByte

PPG: Would you like to introduce yourself and your company to our readers?

I’m Lauri Hyvärinen, designer of Trine and CEO of Frozenbyte. We’re a
20+ strong studio creating great games. I don’t know how else to put
that!

PPG: For those that this is their first time seeing Trine, how would you
classify it to those readers?

LH: I’m going to use the same phrase I’ve used elsewhere: Trine is a
fairytale platformer with three characters using their various
physics-based abilities to overcome challenges and hazards while
saving the fantasy kingdom.

PPG:You use a proprietary game engine for your games, why is that?

LH: There’s many reasons for that, really. One is that our programmers are
very talented and therefore demand a lot from the game engine. Another
reason is that we’ve been using our own engine since day one and
obviously we are very familiar with it. We’re currently rewriting some
parts of it to make it slightly more modern actually. There are also
the financial considerations to think of – the best engines on the
market are expensive, not just for their starting costs but also for
the royalties. There are some good choices on the market but we it
just hasn’t felt like the right choice for us.

PPG: How did the concept of Trine develop and what were the inspirations
for this type of game?

LH: Trine started out as a very small project led by the producer, but
after certain events we decided to make it a bigger project and
redesigned it. At that point there were a lot of different thoughts
and ideas that went into the game because we work with a very
iterative development method. Everybody on the team got their say, a
little piece they could call their own, so to speak. I think that
helped the game become as good as it did.

PPG: Why the fantasy setting?

LH: That goes back to the very roots of the game and we felt that it
allowed us good freedom and some nice creativity. We also thought that
we wanted to bring some vibrant colors and great atmosphere onto the
market – many games today tend to go for a darker and “realistic” look
nowadays and we didn’t want to do the same.
PPG: How did you decide on 3 characters in the final release?

LH: We just felt a trio of characters was the best choice. It fit well
into the fairytale feel of the game too, it allowed some nice story
and dialogue possibilities too. We also wanted to have some special
abitilies and it was a good choice to divide them between the
characters. Ultimately it was quite natural and it was one of the
first decisions we made for the game.

PPG: Was it hard designing compelling and interesting levels and implementing them?

LH: It’s hard to say. We have a very good team here so from my point of
view it all just came together very naturally. Our level creation
process starts with gameplay, then goes to the art team, and then back
to gameplay and testing and polish. Our team always has lots of great
ideas and there was a lot of freedom allowed for the levels, and
everyone really put their best efforts into the levels – and the game
as a whole. I think it shows in the final game.

PPG: Any additional information on plans for expansions on Trine?

LH: We’ll see. We have a rather high standard for releases nowadays so it
remains to be seen if any DLC will be made. I can say that we will
definitely return to the Trine universe in the future though!

PPG: Is Trine going to be exclusive to PSN as far as consoles?

LH: Our aim as a company is to let as many gamers as possible play our
games. But as it stands right now, Trine is PSN console exclusive.
We’ll see what the future brings but I can’t really say anything
definitive at this point. In general we’ve enjoyed working on the PS3
for the most part, it wasn’t as tough as some have said, and Sony has
been great. We’re really excited to have Trine released on PSN!

Pixel Perfect Gaming would like to thank Lauri Hyvärinen, designer of Trine and CEO of Frozenbyte, for taking the time to answer our questions.