Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy

Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy was provided by THQ Nordic for review. Thank you!

The three heroes of Trine are back with the newest entry into the franchise! Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy takes you across their biggest adventure yet when nefarious villains come to seize control of the kingdom. Now, you will need to work alone or with friends to traverse the fantasy world, combining the different abilities of each character.

There are a couple of aspects of the Trine series that Frozenbyte, the developer, crushes in each game. The two that I love are the visuals and co-op gameplay. Each level in Trine 5 has so much beauty and variety that it feels like a joy just to run through. The puzzle elements complement this further, which require you to combine the heroes' abilities to get through each one. This feeds right into the excellent co-op gameplay, which the series crushes. The way you need to work together to overcome puzzles or take down enemies in the much-improved combat is phenomenal.

There aren't many games with co-op that consistently feel like a necessary addition to play with others, but the Trine series does just that. The fifth one continues this and elevates the series with great level design, improved combat, and gorgeous visuals. There's also a nice skill quest system to add depth to the characters and what they can do. And, while it has some weird quirks, playing on the Steam Deck is almost perfect.

Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy - Steam Deck Performance

Trine 5 is a bit of an oddball regarding performance on the Steam Deck, but it generally runs quite well. The game tends to drain a bit too much at most times, but the biggest thing is framerate. As I was playing, I noticed that when the Deck wasn't plugged in and charging, the game caps its framerate to 30 FPS, but when plugged in, that cap is lifted and can easily go to 60. I tested this with the ROG Ally, and the issue persisted, so this isn't a Deck-only problem.

I looked around to see if I could fix it by changing values within any of the files, but I couldn't find anything on my end. Otherwise, there are a couple of changes we can make to improve battery while retaining most, if not all, of the visual quality.

Recommended Settings

It was a little bit hard to choose what the recommended settings would be since Trine 5 has different framerates when plugged in and not. With the Steam Deck being a portable device, I decided to use the device unplugged as the recommended settings.

I did notice the battery drained a bit high for 30 FPS without any setting changes, but with a mix of a GPU Clock Speed Frequency of 800 and a TDP limit of 6, we can keep the game at a stable framerate while looking amazing at native resolution.

Plugged In Build (60 FPS)

As mentioned before, the only way for framerates higher than 30 on a portable device is to be plugged in and charging. Trine 5 will automatically detect this and start pushing the framerate up automatically. After some testing, the settings used for the recommended build are the best to hit 60 FPS too. Setting textures to 2K and above brings framerate down, while using better anti-aliasing (SMAA) will also be too much for the device.

While the game looks the same, the temperature of the Deck was around 75c. There is also no need for a GPU Clock Speed Frequency lock or TDP limit since you are plugged in.

Accessibility

Along with the visual settings, you will also be able to change different audio options, including subtitles and voice languages. You can also change some controller features like improving the deadzone for movement, bow firing options, and enabling the vibration feature. There are also ways to change subtitle colors, letterbox, and UI visibility, and chat background. There's also a slider to increase the size of subtitle text.

Trine 5 does support 16:10 resolutions and has full controller and cloud save support.

Conclusion

Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy is a wonderful 2.5D puzzle-platformer that requires you to utilize the upgradeable abilities of three different heroes to overcome obstacles. It does a fantastic job of creating a vibrant, beautiful world with an addictive co-op gameplay loop that will keep you wanting to come back with friends to experience it. While it does react oddly when it's charging vs. not, the game runs fantastic on both ends, making it a wonderful experience to play on the go.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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