Ubisoft hails Trials Frontier as a free-to-play success
Downloaded 6m times in a week.
Trials Frontier - the free-to-play mobile spin-off of RedLynx's physics-based bike series - has been downloaded 6m times, Ubisoft has announced.
Trials Frontier
Key events
10th April 2014
25th March 2014
11th June 2013
Bike curious.
RedLynx has made its name by placing fiendish hurdles in front of players. In taking its beloved Trials series to mobile, it has erected a few obstacles in its own way. Namely: how to adapt the games' famously nuanced control to a touchscreen, and how to translate their firm-but-fair approach to victory to the baggier requirements of free-to-play. In both instances, Trials Frontier grinds its gears and suffers penalties - but it's not quite the fatal crash fans might expect.
One of the big changes from Trials past is that there's now a story, of sorts, populated by a colourful cast of characters in a dusty frontier town. You've wound up there after an opening level cave-in - sadly, not the last time the game forces failure on you to move its tale forwards - and since the townsfolk have been ripped off by a rival biker, you're recruited to save the day.
To begin with it still feels a lot like Trials, despite the superfluous trimmings and cartoony visual style. Your early objectives are simply to beat the courses that are opened up for you on the map screen, and while those courses are noticeably shorter and simpler than what Trials devotees will be used to, enough of the petrol-fumed atmosphere has been retained.
Trials Frontier will wheelie its way to the iOS App Store on 10th April, Ubisoft has announced. An Android version will follow at a later date.
It's the first mobile version of RedLynx's famed stuntbike series, and one that - rather controversially - runs on the fuel of microtransactions.
However, the free-to-play mechanic is just for the game's mobile version, RedLynx has assured us.
RedLynx defends Trials Frontier's mobile micro-transactions
And reassures there's none in Trials Fusion.
RedLynx has defended the inclusion of micro-transactions in Trials Frontier, the upcoming mobile version of its addictive racing series.
VideoVideo: a first ride on the free-to-play Trials Frontier
Story! Currencies! Touch controls!
Naturally, Ubisoft's taken some flak for putting RedLynx's Trials on mobiles and tablets as a free-to-play game - especially since the skill-based motocross arcade game is a hardcore favourite. Even if you don't hate freemium gaming as a rule, you might be hard-pressed to defend Trials Frontier's use of an energy system that limits how long you can play for if you don't cough up.
RedLynx explains why Trials Frontier is free-to-play
UPDATE: Uses energy system to restrict how long you can play.
UPDATE: Trials Frontier uses an energy system to limit the amount of time you can play in one session.
Two new Trials games announced for 2014
Trials Fusion on next-gen and Trials Frontier on mobile.
Ubisoft has announced two new titles in RedLynx's lovably sadistic Trials series of physics-based motorcycle platformers.
Trials Fusion is being developed for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, and PC. The Wii U was curiously not mentioned here.
Meanwhile, Trials Frontier is an upcoming mobile game in the series. RedLynx has dabbled in Trials-like mobile games before like Motoheroz, but this marks the first time the Trials series proper will have made its way to mobile.