Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince is a homecoming, and it knows it. Frozenbyte’s fourth entry, published by Modus Games, arrived in October 2019 for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with a Google Stadia release following in March 2021. After Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power pushed the series into 3D platforming and dropped character progression, this one walks the whole thing back. The result is the most complete Trine since the first two, and the safest.
The setup is simple. Prince Selius has magic he cannot control, and his nightmares have started leaking into the waking world. Amadeus the wizard, Pontius the knight and Zoya the thief are sent by the Astral Academy’s headmaster to bring him back. They find him, they fail to convince him, and the mess gets worse from there.
Trailer, via XBOX.
Amadeus, Pontius and Zoya, Back in 2.5D
The three heroes share one body, story-wise, and you switch between them on the fly. Amadeus conjures boxes, spheres and planks, and can move some objects with telekinesis. Zoya attaches ropes to objects so she can swing from them, pin them down or string rope bridges, and she carries a bow. Pontius has a sword and a shield he uses to deflect certain projectiles at other targets, plus a jump-stomp.
That toolkit is the whole game, and it is a good one. The puzzles are physics-driven, which means the solutions are only as stable as the objects you stack. A box balanced on a plank balanced on a sphere is a plan until it is not. This is where Trine 4 is at its best, and where the four-player co-op — a first for the series — turns a tidy puzzle into an argument.
The player character in the game is, story-wise, three characters in one.
Four-player co-op is the headline addition, and it is also the addition most likely to break your evening. The source material lists single player, multiplayer, co-operative and split screen as modes. Cooperative puzzle-solving with three other people is a different game than solo play: faster to solve, louder to fail, and considerably funnier when someone drops a bridge.
The Return of Character Progression
Trine 3 cut character progression. Trine 4 puts it back. Core abilities, like Zoya’s fairy rope, unlock at fixed points in the story. Optional abilities are bought with tokens you collect as you go, and they give you new ways to solve puzzles or new ways to fight. If you want, you can replay earlier levels with your new toys and solve old puzzles differently.
That last part matters more than it sounds. A puzzle game that lets you return with new tools is admitting its own levels have more than one answer. Trine 4 leans into that, and the optional abilities are the reason. The token economy is not deep, but it gives the back half of the game a reason to exist beyond the next room.
A Prince Whose Nightmares Slip Into the World
Selius was introduced in Nine Parchments, and Trine 4 gives him a proper history. He had an aptitude for magic and misused his father’s spellbook, releasing the shadow of his soul and destroying his family’s castle. His parents sent him to the Astral Academy. The Academy’s wizards could not control his nightmare magic, and he escaped.
That is the tragedy the game runs on. When the trio finally reaches Selius, he refuses to come back and reveals the Academy simply locked him in the dungeons. His unstable shadow magic pulls nightmares into physical form — his own, the heroes’, and those of the wilderness inhabitants. He flees. The heroes spend the middle of the game helping creatures fight their own nightmares, and three nature spirits reward them with a potion of light.
The potion works. It also backfires, because the brighter the light, the deeper the shadow it casts, and Selius’s shadow gets stronger. The trio helps him fight it, and he seals it back into his soul with the power of light. Stabilized, he agrees to return to the Academy.
Boss Fights, Landscapes and a Familiar Soundtrack
Trine 4 promises more epic boss fights than any previous entry, and it delivers more of them. It also delivers the lush, vibrant landscapes the series is known for, and a new soundtrack from the composer of Trine 1 through 3. The nightmare premise gives the art team permission to go dark in places, and the contrast with the bright wilderness sections is the most interesting thing the game does visually.
The environments are the series’ comfort zone, and the game rarely leaves it. That is the trade. Trine 4 is a return to form, which is another way of saying it is a return to what already worked.
What Trine 4 Keeps and What It Drops
The table below sets the fourth game against the third, based on what the source material establishes.
| Feature | Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power | Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince |
|---|---|---|
| Movement | 3D platforming | Strictly 2-dimensional (2.5D) |
| Character progression | Missing | Present — fixed unlocks plus token-purchased optional abilities |
| Co-op | Not specified | Up to four players, a series first |
| Protagonists | Not specified | Amadeus, Pontius, Zoya |
| Setting | Not specified | Medieval fantasy, Astral Academy and the wilderness |
The pattern is clear. Trine 4 is a correction, not a reinvention. Everything it adds — four-player co-op, the token system, more boss fights — sits on top of a structure the first two games already proved. Nothing here is a new idea. The question is whether the execution justifies the retreat, and mostly it does.
Where the Puzzles Hold and Where They Slip
Physics puzzles are only as good as their physics, and Trine 4’s are solid without being surprising. The abilities are legible: conjure, rope, deflect, stomp. You will solve most rooms on the first or second attempt, and the ones that stump you will stump you because of a stacking problem, not a logic problem. That is a fair kind of difficulty, but it is not a memorable one.
Combat is the weaker half. Pontius’s shield deflection is the only genuinely interesting combat tool, and it is used sparingly. The boss fights are bigger than before, which is not the same as better. Scale is easy. A boss that makes you use all three heroes in sequence would be harder to build and harder to forget. Trine 4 rarely asks that of you.
The story is the strongest argument for the game. Selius is not a villain, and the Academy is not innocent. The reveal that the wizards locked a child in the dungeons reframes the whole quest, and the potion of light turning out to strengthen the shadow is a clean piece of thematic engineering. The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow it casts — that is a real idea, and the game earns it.
The Verdict on Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince
Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince is the Trine game people asked for after Trine 3, and it is good. It is not brave. Frozenbyte rebuilt the 2.5D puzzle-platformer, restored character progression, added four-player co-op and a soundtrack from the composer who defined the series’ sound, and then declined to take a single real risk beyond the nightmare premise. That premise is where the game’s best material lives, and the game does not push it as far as it could.
The co-op is the feature that will decide how you feel about this. Solo, Trine 4 is a well-made, slightly cautious puzzle game with a strong story and a soft combat system. With three friends, it is a comedy engine, and the puzzles become social problems rather than spatial ones. That is the version worth playing.
A successor, Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy, followed in 2023. Trine 4 sits as the bridge between a misstep and whatever comes next — a confident restatement of what the series is, made by people who clearly know. The nightmares were the one place it could have gone somewhere new, and it only went halfway.
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