GCG: Inside The Making Of XBLCG's Trino

Author: by Staff

Sister site GameCareerGuide has published a new game postmortem, featuring Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center students discussing the making of the arcade-influenced XNA Community Games action title Trino. As the game's creators explain in the introduction to the postmortem, which details what went right and wrong during the sophisticated student project's creation: "Trino began as a graduate student-pitched project in Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center. The goal was to create a simple and addictive game in 14 weeks ready to be certified by Microsoft for Xbox Live's XNA Community Games. At the end of our first semester we had a six level vertical slice of game play. Over the course of the summer we made small improvements, like optimization and adding a boss, to prepare it for Dream Build Play 2008 and Independent Games Festival (IGF). Trino made it into the top 20 finalists of Dream Build Play 2008 and began to receive media coverage from GameSpot, IGN, Gamasutra, and Official Xbox Magazine (OXM). Seeing a lot of potential with Trino, the team reunited [at Electronic Arts' Redwood Shores office, since the publisher was donating space to the students] in early 2009 and spent another 14 weeks to develop Trino's prototype into a full game for release on Xbox Live Community Games Marketplace, where you can try or buy it now. In Trino, players control a little blue alien whose main power is trapping enemies with triangles while evading over 20 different enemy types across more than 40 levels in three chapters. As players progress through the game they'll have chances to evolve and gain new powers. Trino's unique triangle trapping mechanic and level system has earned it a place in the puzzle game and shooter genres." The full postmortem on the subject is now available on GameCareerGuide.com, including much more detail on the intriguing game's construction.