“The success of our first game, Slaps And Beans, allowed us to introduce ourselves to the development industry with a good business card. Thanks to that first project we were able to obtain funding for our new game, The Darkest Tales“: So he told us Gerardo Verna, CEO of Trinity Team.
Trinity Teams made their mark internationally in 2017 with the video game in pixel art Bud Spencer & Terence Hill: Slaps and Beans, light-hearted title dedicated to two heroes of our pop culture. The operative nucleus of the Bolognese firm is made up of 4 partners: Marco Agricola, Manuel Labbate, Fabrizio Zagaglia and Verna, who mainly deal with game design, programming and artistic direction. Instead, they rely on various external collaborators to support graphics and sound design.
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Right now the team employs 16 people, which they are working on an original platformer titled The Darkest Tales – Into the Nightmare. The title stars Teddy, a stuffed teddy bear, and Lucetta, her fairy friend, committed to making it through worlds inspired by different traditional fairy tales unscathed to save Alicia, Teddy’s grown mistress. Verna explained to us that “after Slaps and Beans we 4 partners decided to propose each one an idea for what would become our second game. The common will was to detach, at least temporarily, from the Bud and Terence brand to consolidate the company and be able to present to the industry not only like those of Bud Spencer’s game. Among the various ideas proposed, the most structured and feasible, at least in that particular moment, was Agricola’s proposal, that is the story of this teddy bear who explores the nightmares of his mistress and faces characters from classic fairy tales revisited in a horror key. “.
Narratively, the game recalls great classics, but precisely declined in a horror key: “In the level inspired by Pinocchio, the latter is represented as a sort of Frankenstein’s monster and its creator, Geppetto, as the famous doctor ”; instead, “as far as the game itself is concerned, the inspiration comes mainly from the well-known metroidvania or for the aesthetic aspect e Hollow Knight for the combat system “.
Two levels of the game are available for free on Steam, Verna told us again: “The choice to distribute a demo, the first two of the 9 planned levels, was born from our publisher 101xp and I must say that it turned out to be an excellent move. There demo of The Darkest Tales – Into The Nightmare made it possible to collect the first feedback from the players and to increase the wishlist in anticipation of the actual debut of the game, scheduled for simultaneous on computer and console in the first quarter of 2022 ”.
Trinity Team is one of those small studios that have consolidated and created themselves a strong identity which well represents the significant growth that Italian developers have had in recent years in terms of both quantity and quality of diversified products offered on the market. In Verna’s words: “Some excellent Italian stocks in recent years have aroused the interest of foreign lenders and this has contributed to making the companies more solid. Of course, there is still a deep gap to be bridged from abroad, but it seems that our industry is on the right track. An indicator of this is the fact that institutions are also starting to support the sector with measures such as the Tax Credit or the digital entertainment fund. For this we must also thank the work done in recent years by Iidea, our trade association “.
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In our country, however, there is still a cultural block that leads to look at the videogame medium with distrust, but also on this front the perception is changing: “Perhaps it would be useful if we began to explain to the general public that video games are not only violence, but also another way to tell stories. AND also an art form”.
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