Nick Lee is one of the artists who worked on Trino, but he perks up like a designer when he chats about mechanics. This comes in handy when you want to talk about a shooter that undermines its most fundamental genre convention. Check the full interview for what makes a a shooter a puzzle game, Trino’s history, and some hints about the team’s future plans.

Pixelsocks: How would you describe your game?

Front: Soo Jeong Bae, Back: Ivan Ortega,
Nick Lee, and Youngwook Yang

Nick: Our game, Trino, is a shooter where you don’t shoot. Instead you drop vertexes to make triangles that can trap enemies. Every time you trap an enemy, he leaves behind power ups you can use for experience, to upgrade your attack, or to beat your current level.

The game is action driven and there’s a high score you can use for bragging rights. You can play high risk and try to get a lot of points through multipliers, or you can play low risk and try to outlast other players.

Pixelsocks: A lot of people have described Trino as a puzzle game. Do you think that’s a fair characterization?

Nick: Yes, actually. You can turn any kind of game into a puzzle game. Look at games like N – The Way of the Ninja where you’re running around and up walls, but you have to think about what you’re doing first. Thinking is really the essence of puzzle games, rather than the gameplay action itself. That approach gave us a great opportunity to work on an arena-style puzzle that’s different every time you play. You have to balance your moment-to-moment tactics against what you’re going to do next.

Pixelsocks: One thing that distinguishes Trino from traditional shooters is the shape of the arenas you play in. Why did you decide to change the shape from stage to stage?

Nick: For the longest time, we just had the trap mechanic in an open Geometry Wars-style playing field. It felt like a cool mechanic, but that it didn’t make an overall game. We struggled to think of what the mechanic could tie into until someone had a eureka moment. They just went to a whiteboard, drew an arena, and said, “the whole game is about making longer and longer triangle chains. Why don’t we apply that to the full board?”

We were also looking for a mechanic to keep players from just speeding through the game or lingering at lower parts of the game to earn points. We wanted to get rid of ideal ways to play the game that were outside our game design goals.

Pixelsocks: But you also wanted it to be more of a sandbox than a linear puzzle game.

Nick: Absolutely. When you have a linear game experience, you can’t cover every way someone will play your game. A tightly-controlled linear experience is a really good way to break your game.

Pixelsocks: Trino‘s history is tricky to pin down. It looks like it was a PC game at one point, but the current incarnation looks like it’s only on XBLA. Can you tell me about the game’s history?

Nick: We came up with the game in grad school at Carnegie Melon’s Entertainment Technology Center. We had to pitch our game to the faculty members, and one of perks for XBLA was XNA for developing and submitting games. We told them that we’d create a version of the game that was playable on the Xbox, present it to both Microsoft and the faculty in the same semester, and then see what went on from there. It got a great response.

So to answer your question, Trino was meant for the Xbox originally, but we started prototyping on the PC. We wanted to use tools we knew how to use to test our gameplay mechanics. It gives you a tangiable idea of whether or not the idea is actually fun. Of course, you think every idea you have is fun. However, when the brass tacks are down, you actually find out, and you don’t want to invest yourself or your time into something that won’t be fun anyway.

Pixelsocks: Is the project done at this point, or are you considering releasing this game on other platforms?

Nick: Trino is done as it is, but we’d definitely like to expand to other distribution channels. I don’t think we’re restricted to releasing on Community Games. We still need to research what it would take to release on platforms like Steam, which I think is a great distribution platform, or even others like the Sony store.

Every channel has its own advantages. Steam has the widest reach you can possibly get. Xbox Live Community games is this burgeoning form of making games where people are really interested in new ideas and indie games. The Sony Store does a really good job of hand-picking the titles they release.

Pixelsocks: If you did release Trino on Steam, it seems like a keyboard wouldn’t lend itself well to the game’s controls.

Nick: That’s a huge challenge, because that’s the space between the gamer and the screen. Anything could happen in there. Really, how many people keep a game pad attached all the time? I use mine when I play Everyday Shooter on Steam, but it’s rare because it’s too much trouble.

That said, the PC prototype didn’t use a gamepad, and it wasn’t bad. The eight-way feeling isn’t all that different from the controller. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Pixelsocks: Did your team split up after school?

Nick: PAX is a reunion of sorts. We worked together intensively for the first sixteen weeks, and then some people went on to summer internships and others graduated and went on to jobs. Luckily, both the students and graduates were able to come together for the second semester of work on the game.

We’re all just back for the Expo, but there’s been a lot of talk about what we can do, even if we’re not in the same place. There are just so many possibilities. PAX is great for morale, because you want a mindset where your game is as good as the audience says it is. We hadn’t had much exposure, but being here has given us so much great feedback. Seeing so many people enjoying our game has lifted a lot of our spirits, and we’re getting juiced up to work on development on the side.

Pixelsocks: Have all the people coming through your booth taught you anything new about your game?

Nick: We did a lot of testing in the games community as we developed Trino. So the final product is based on peoples’ reactions to the game, and it’s nice to see that all the new players get the same reaction. I think we’re all just surprised by the number of people who are playing, and by how long. Yesterday, a guy was just lying down with the controller next to his face, and he was there for 45 minutes. That was really flattering.

Related posts:

1. PAX 10 2009 Conclusion The Penny Arcade Expo is right around the corner, and...
2. PAX 2009 Navigation Most people come home from the Penny Arcade Expo...
3. Interview with Jess Rahbek of Puzzle Bloom Taking ten students from different schools and asking them to...
4. Interview with Tejeev Kohli of Tag: The Power of Paint Tag made a big splash at the Independent Games Festival...
5. Interview with Andy Hull of What is Bothering Carl? I was just chatting with Andy Hull after this interview,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags:   Nick Lee · PAX 10 · Trino · XBLA · XboxNo Comments

Trackback to this article.