As a big fan of Frozenbyte's slick platformer Trine, it was unfortunate to see its recent PC release somewhat confused by price-point discrepancies and puzzling platform information.

A typical Trine discussion included any, or all, of these questions: Why is the game $10 more on PC? Will online co-op be patched in soon? When is the PlayStation 3 port coming out? And what's this about an XBLA version?

We caught up with Frozenbyte public relations manager Joel Kinnunen in an attempt to clear up some of this confusion. In our email exchange, we also covered the origin of Trine, whether a sequel or expansion is on the way, and what the developer is working on next.

Shack: First of all, how are the sales looking? Have they met your expectations?

Joel Kinnunen: Yeah, I think. It's a bit hard to say because all of our "hard" sales knowledge comes from the Shadowgrounds games, and Trine has had much, much better pre-release hype. I think we made like three predictions, and the sales have been following the middle one pretty much. And with so many things going wrong with the project, I think we have to be fairly happy with the current sales.

Now it all depends on the legs of the game, so to speak. And of course the game has only been released on PC so far, so there's still a lot of unknown factors regarding sales. We can't wait to see what happens with the PSN release.

Shack: What was the initial concept for Trine, and how much did the game evolve along the way?

Joel Kinnunen: Trine had a rather interesting starting point, as it was actually a hobby project of one of our main programmers. It was an homage to old-school platforming games, and I think that's the game that was truly supposed to be "indie." But when our other projects weren't getting enough publisher interest, it was agreed that Trine could benefit a lot if the whole team started working on it, and so we made some radical design changes and reworked the whole art style, and really went all out on making a great game.

Shack: A lot of people have named The Lost Vikings and LittleBigPlanet as possible influences. Are those games you had in mind?

Joel Kinnunen: We're obviously familiar with both, but they weren't conscious influences. We just thought of all the fairytales of knights and wizards, and the atmosphere surrounding them, and tried to capture some of that in Trine. There's a lot of familiar elements in many games and in other media, but it's hard to pinpoint any specific source as the "biggest influence." The whole project has evolved so much that at some point it really became a rather unique blend of its own I think.

It also comes down to the way we work, we work in a very agile way (because we can't handle any other way) and because everyone's opinion and thoughts are heard, and respected... unless said opinions and thoughts are stupid, in which case they're ruthlessly shot down by our CEO. ;)

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Shack: Are you still planning to add online co-op for the PC version?

Joel Kinnunen: Online co-op is a possibility. But the thing to remember is that it was a possibility with the Shadowgrounds games too, and it never happened. We've always conditioned it to the sales of the game(s).

With Trine, it looks like the chances are higher than they were with the Shadowgrounds games. But the cold reality is that we have to think about all the possibilities, so that could mean that online is released as pay-for DLC with some extra levels and features, or included in a sequel and then released for the original as a free update, or in some other way.

Ultimately, at this point it's just too early to say. In any case, any possible online features will not be added to the game until next year, because it just takes a whole lot of time to rewrite the inner workings of the game engine.

Shack: Any update on the PlayStation 3 release?

Joel Kinnunen: I wish I knew! Seriously though, I think the European PSN Store is getting the game by the "end of July". This is what we've been told, although I don't think it's truly official yet. The North American PSN Store probably gets the game a bit later. That's a bit annoying but we can't do anything about it...

Shack: What's the deal with Trine XBLA? Is that definitely on the way? And if so, when?

Joel Kinnunen: Well, there's really no right answer to this one. Here's the two facts: 1) We would love to have Trine on XBLA, 2) We've partnered with Atlus and we try to make it happen. These things are sometimes surprisingly complex and there's a lot of things that could go wrong, so it's definitely not a sure thing.

At the end of the day, we are really happy that Trine is coming to PSN in addition to PC. XBLA would be nice but we're not banking on it because it's so uncertain.

Turn the page for Kinnunen's comments on price points and Frozenbyte's future projects.