Trion Worlds’ blocky action game Trove heads to China through publisher 360 Games

Blocky, creative adventure is coming to the Chinese.

360 Games, the publishing arm of the massive Chinese internet-security company that started on mobile, has picked up the rights to release Trion Worlds’ Trove. This free-to-play multiplayer action-adventure game brings gamers together in imaginative worlds that they can shape how they like. To establish Trove for the massive Chinese audience of 300 million of PC gamers, 360 is working to fully localize the game for that segment of the market that was worth $15.3 billion in 2015.

Trion Worlds showed up at the ChinaJoy gaming event in Shanghai late last month to show off Trove to audiences in that country. Trion Worlds founder and chief executive Scott Hartsman explained to GamesBeat that Trove has had a strong reception so far, and his team is prioritizing a number of new features that 360 highlighted as important.

“Fortunately, when 360 Games looked at it, they realized Trove would be an excellent fit, visually speaking,” said Hartsman. “When you think of a typical fantasy game, you have an image in your mind of what it looks like — and a lot of times, the Western take is too dark, too gritty for a global audience. That meant we could focus more on what the onramping looks like compared to a Western player.”

Since the game won’t change much visually, Trion and 360 are instead putting the localization efforts into ensuring a more hand-holding first experience with Trove. That’s very different from how the game was set up previously.

“For our players, learning how to play the game is part of the fun,” said Hartsman. “For 360’s players, that’s not really the case. They want something that has more guidance.”

But beyond that, other changes will benefit players around the world. Trion showed its roadmap to 360, and the publisher picked out some things that it offered to help work on to better suit the game for the Chinese.

For example, typical players in China put a heavy emphasis on competition and head-to-head gameplay. Trove already has player-versus-player action, but it’s getting more.

“We’re expanding the definition of what PVP means in Trove,” said Hartsman. “New types of PVP is one of the things we’re working on.”

But Hartsman also notes that China is changing as more younger gamers come online.

“360 had a large interest in the creative element of Trove,” said Hartsman. “This is a new generation of gamers — and there are shockingly few differences between what gamers want in one locale compared to another.”