Editorial: Trove's Upcoming Console Release

It's been quite some time since I last sat down and played Trove, Trion Worlds' free-to-play voxel sandbox/creation/adventuring game. Since then, we've kind of seen the voxel world (which looked poised to EXPLODE at the time) fade away quite a bit with high profile titles falling by the wayside or disappearing altogether. Cube World, Landmark, even the high profile EverQuest Next were all using this style of voxel building and presentation and now...Trove stands mostly alone as the "big dog" in this space, excluding smaller indie titles we see all over the place. A year or so ago, I probably wouldn't have put my money on Trove, but after spending some time in the PS4 version of the game's beta and chatting with the team at Trion a bit, maybe I should have...

As Trove closes in on its official console launch on the PS4 and XBox One on March 14th, beta has already garnered over 4 million players checking out the game. It's easy to see why. After some hands-on time and a guided tour from Executive Producer Andrew Krausnick and Lead Animator Ted Sanger, I started to feel like Trove should have been made for consoles from the start. The gameplay is smooth, the graphics are (of course) colorful, and the overall style lends itself to consoles. While draw distance is obviously very different given hardware limitations, the game rarely suffers from any huge issues on my PS4...I will say that the camera can get a bit crazy on you in tight spaces, but it does that on the PC version of the game as well. Inventory is a nightmare, plain and simple. I noticed how cumbersome it is to use on the controller right away. Luckily, Andrew advised that this was the feedback they heard loud and clear and the game is receiving a console inventory overhaul when Trove launches on the 14th.

As we continue our tour, we poke our noses into some Clubs (user created worlds), get my Cornerstone (personal plot of housing that's customizable and mobile in that you can move it to other dedicated plots) set up in an early, low level world, level up my Shadow Hunter a bit through some dungeon gameplay, and craft a few items. All the while, Andrew and I are chatting back and forth about the console version of the game. To answer some questions PC Trove players may have, no, the game is not cross platform and no, you cannot transfer your PC account to your console. If you want to play while sitting on the couch, you're starting all over on the console version...but you do get some prizes if you link your console to your Glyph account, so there's always that...right?

All in all, I feel like I'd probably play Trove a lot more on the console than I did on PC. It just felt right. Given that, I did ask the team if we were headed in a mobile direction with the title even if that just came in the form of maybe managing some crafting and other items through a mobile application. Trion didn't bite though. If they have something up their sleeves, they just aren't ready to talk about it besides to say that they look for as many opportunities to get players into Trove as possible. In my book, look for something Trove related on mobile devices soon...but that's literally just speculation on my own part.

If you'd like to check out Trove on consoles, or maybe come back and check it out like I did, it's worth a go. The gameplay is similar to what it always was so don't expect HUGE changes, and if you just aren't a fan then the console versions aren't going to convert you. That said, it is certainly more relaxing to play it on the console if that's what you're looking for. You can jump in now and carry your beta progress through next week's launch. For me? I've got some Shadow Hunter and Mastery leveling to do still. See ya there!