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" Trials Frontier, a mobile edition of the best-selling physics-based racing-platformer, has been fully revealed by RedLynx. Developed in-house at the Finnish studio, the iOS and Android title will be free-to-play and features touch controls, but retains the same silky smooth 60 frames-per-second frame rate seen in previous games. Instead of a strict list of missions that scale in difficulty, a new story-driven campaign is set in the same universe as upcoming console sequel Trials Fusion, albeit 100 years later in a post-apocalyptic world.  Trials introduces a story, loot and an energy system Waking up with amnesia, the player first escapes caverns before accessing races from quest givers via a world map overview, offering different objectives such as earning medals, collecting coins and performing specific tricks. There is also a villain to the story, a mysterious rider that you have to chase down, who acts as &amp;quot;the driving force of the narrative&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;One thing we&amp;#039;ve done with this game is build a robust metagame around the core racing experience,&amp;quot; lead designer Justin Swan told Digital Spy. &amp;quot;We looked at Trials Fusion and Trials Evolution, and it&amp;#039;s about getting the medal, being the best, and getting high on the leaderboard.  &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve tried to look at the mini-games in past Trials games, and find out how we can turn those into missions, and drop them in all over the place.&amp;quot; Completing quests will reward players with experience, coins - a &amp;#039;soft&amp;#039; currency spent in-game on bike upgrades - and diamonds, a much rarer &amp;#039;hard&amp;#039; currency that can also be purchased with real money, and are used to quickly bypass upgrades. Skill will also factor into the loot received at the end of missions. Fewer wrecks between checkpoints results in more coins, while earning a platinum medal and carrying higher level ranks increases your odds of getting better loot on a reward wheel, that is spun to earn different loot types. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re tried to make it so that if you&amp;#039;re a very skilled player, you&amp;#039;re going to be able to get through the game and upgrade your bike [faster] than a non-skilled player,&amp;quot; Swan explained. &amp;quot;But even a non-skilled player can get there eventually.&amp;quot; Elsewhere, like some other free-to-play games, Trials Frontier utilises an energy system that restricts the time you can spend playing.  Each race will cost fuel to play, which recharges in real time. While the specific amount of time you have to wait has yet to be balanced out, you can buy more fuel using the diamond premium currency. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re not going to be able to sit and binge for two hours straight on the game without running out of fuel,&amp;quot; Swan said. &amp;quot;If you did run out of fuel, you can go hang out and do something else, even hang out in the game, upgrade your bike and do whatever you want to do. But you&amp;#039;ll just have to wait to get enough fuel.&amp;quot; Even with the inclusion of a hard currency and fuel, Swan says that everything in the game can be unlocked and played &amp;quot;without spending a penny&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s absolutely no pay to win,&amp;quot; he explained. &amp;quot;You cannot purchase anything that&amp;#039;s going to make you have a higher chance of victory that a player can&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot;  How RedLynx approached touch controls for Trials Frontier Trials is a series that requires the utmost precision, and since Trials Frontier has all the same tricks and moves as previous Trials games - including bunny hops and back wheel bounces - RedLynx spent &amp;quot;a lot of time&amp;quot; on the control scheme. First it tried tilt controls, which were ultimately too laggy, while sliders were considered to mimic the analogue sensitive of triggers, but didn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;feel good&amp;quot; and were at times confusing. In the end, the team settled on simple buttons that move forwards and backwards and tilt left and right. Without triggers, the &amp;quot;on and off&amp;quot; feel to acceleration is similar to the Trials games before they debuted on Xbox 360, which was originally played with a keyboard. &amp;quot;[Buttons] seem [to] be the easy solution, but honestly it works the best,&amp;quot; Swan said. Despite acceleration being binary in nature, our short hands-on suggests they perform very well. On an iPad, buttons are situated close enough that you can roll your thumb back and forth for rapid hops, while gentle taps can easily even out the bike&amp;#039;s angle on both harsh and gentle leaps.  Even with touch controls and shorter stages designed around portable play - each one will last around the 30 seconds mark - the biggest impact on level design in Trials Frontier is upgradable bikes. &amp;quot;In past Trials games, there were no upgrades,&amp;quot; said Swan.&amp;quot;You just had the bike, and that&amp;#039;s the bike. With that, you can very specifically design a level, and every single jump can be very specifically made. &amp;quot;But in this game, because we have a huge sliding scale of all our bikes, you aren&amp;#039;t going to have that stuff.&amp;quot; Levels are designed to include &amp;quot;speed savers&amp;quot;, where the same track would offer a different flow line with a more powerful bike. For example, returning to earlier stages will see you clear dips with a single leap. &amp;quot;The way you can redo the tracks after upgrading your bike makes it a different track with a different flow line, and you&amp;#039;ll get better times then as well,&amp;quot; he added.      Level editor, new content and Trials Fusion crossovers post-release As with previous Trials games, all campaign levels have been designed using an in-game track editor, which will &amp;quot;definitely, eventually&amp;quot; be added to the game post release, complete with full track sharing online. RedLynx are also treating the game like &amp;quot;a service&amp;quot;, with plans for regular, free content post release, including new missions and characters. It will also connect with Trials Fusion, which is currently set to release on consoles sometime after Trials Frontier, and will do something &amp;quot;more interesting&amp;quot; than simply unlocking exclusive levels in each respective version. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s the easy way out,&amp;quot; Swan said. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re really interested in this concept that these cities are connected in the way they are connected, and leveraging that. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s what it&amp;#039;s all about with our cross connection stuff, is showcasing that these games take place in the same world, but are just separated by time.&amp;quot; Trials Fusion will be available on iOS and Android in 2014. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/previews/news/a514128/trials-frontier-preview-first-details-of-free-to-play-mobile-spin-off/>