Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy will take Amadeus the Wizard, Zoya the Thief, and Pontius the Knight on their most action-packed journey yet!
With their reputations tarnished, loved ones in danger, and their own magical powers at stake, the Heroes of Trine must reunite to push back a fearsome Clockwork army and bring peace and justice to the land!
Traverse breathtaking 2.5D landscapes in Trine’s deepest and visually richest chapter to date, with an all new cast of characters – some friends, some foes, but all unforgettable.
Whether by yourself or playing with up to three friends in online and local co-op, the upgraded puzzle difficulty system keeps things fresh, adapting the challenge to the number of players.
Keywords: User research, expert reviews
The pipeline and many of the UI screens from Trine 4 were pretty much transferred over as is. So I focused more of my efforts into the user research practices.
Traditionally user research in the studio focused on ad hoc playtests at the end of the production cycle, when the game looked and felt pretty much like the final game would. The support team would recruit playtesters and moderate the session. The session would include a short introduction, after which the player would play as long as they wanted or had time for, and the entire session would be closed with a short exit interview. The entire session was video recorded and live-streamed so that the designers of the game could go over the material and identify any improvement ideas for the game.
In Trine 4 I introduced a system where the moderators would log the issues they could identify, but the team never got around to roping the moderators in the design well enough for them to know what they were looking for, nor did the team identify any research questions.
In Trine 5 I introduced the concept of research questions to the team by making example templates for note taking during a session based around a couple of likely research questions.
With those, we planned future research and how to divide the note taking responsibilities between moderators and designers.
