Trine
This article was featured on LevelFortyTwo.
Finnish developers Frozenbyte have taught me something that I didn’t know about myself until after playing this game. I cannot draw squares for the life of me, I’m rubbish. This issue aside, I can comfortably say that my time with Trine has been a massively positive one.
Trine is first and foremost a platforming puzzle game with a little RPG and hack 'n' slash combat merged in between; it’s a refreshing taste on this usual brand of game. It revolves around your seemingly typical fantasy cast, that being a womanising wizard, a curious thief and a brave knight.
All three of the protagonists stumble upon the Trine; this fascinating object binds their souls together. Story elements aside (which is better than average), Trine gives you control of all three characters after a brief and simple tutorial. You can instantly switch between the characters easily, depending on the situation you’re faced with.
For instance, the wizard doesn’t fireball the stuffing out of the enemies; instead he conjures planks and shapes so that traversing the many obstacles in the environment ahead is sufficiently easier. Without him, you’d be lost. The lady-thief on the other hand can let loose shafts at the enemy from afar with her bow, that’s not her only advantage though, she can handily shoot her grappling hook at anything wooden to swing from place to place, you’d be lost without her. My particular favourite, the Knight spends his time making crude, bad jokes and thwacking anything in his path with his sword and shield, you’d be lost without him.
Seeing a pattern here? Normally in any game with multiple characters, you favor one over the others dramatically or just plain despise a few. Yet in Trine, Frozenbyte did a marvellous job of making sure that every single character is just as important as its counterpart. This makes for a balanced and outright fun game to play.
It doesn’t stop there; each character levels up a la any traditional RPG. With leveling, comes new, fun abilities and great progression.
It is a massive break, it's casual and fairly easy (although there are harder difficulties) so you can sit back and relax while figuring out how the hell you’re supposed to get past the next area. The sound in Trine is brilliant and light-hearted; you won’t find music that is annoying or poor voice acting for that matter. In fact, Pontius the Knight really is hilarious.
Graphically, you can’t expect much for a low-budget game, but it comes out in top. Let’s just say it looks about as good as anything side-scrolling can look, with great lighting, animation and physics.
There are a few faults I found with the game. It is particularly short and can be done in a few casual days of gaming. Also, I found a lack of co-operative play on the PC very perplexing as co-operative play is available on the Playstation Store version. Personally, I would also have liked to see a little more environment differentiation too.
Nevertheless, Trine is a solid little game can keep you hypnotised by its wonderful colour, voice acting and captivating puzzle and combat amalgamation. Trine is cheap too, having a current retail price on Steam for just $19.99; there are definitely no complaints in that department.
In conclusion, if you want to participate in a better than average fantastical adventure, Trine is the way forward. Because with this adventure, what you see is what you get, a very polished and relaxing albeit sometimes frustrating, enjoyable game.
Finnish developers Frozenbyte have taught me something that I didn’t know about myself until after playing this game. I cannot draw squares for the life of me, I’m rubbish. This issue aside, I can comfortably say that my time with Trine has been a massively positive one.
Trine is first and foremost a platforming puzzle game with a little RPG and hack 'n' slash combat merged in between; it’s a refreshing taste on this usual brand of game. It revolves around your seemingly typical fantasy cast, that being a womanising wizard, a curious thief and a brave knight.
All three of the protagonists stumble upon the Trine; this fascinating object binds their souls together. Story elements aside (which is better than average), Trine gives you control of all three characters after a brief and simple tutorial. You can instantly switch between the characters easily, depending on the situation you’re faced with.
For instance, the wizard doesn’t fireball the stuffing out of the enemies; instead he conjures planks and shapes so that traversing the many obstacles in the environment ahead is sufficiently easier. Without him, you’d be lost. The lady-thief on the other hand can let loose shafts at the enemy from afar with her bow, that’s not her only advantage though, she can handily shoot her grappling hook at anything wooden to swing from place to place, you’d be lost without her. My particular favourite, the Knight spends his time making crude, bad jokes and thwacking anything in his path with his sword and shield, you’d be lost without him.
Seeing a pattern here? Normally in any game with multiple characters, you favor one over the others dramatically or just plain despise a few. Yet in Trine, Frozenbyte did a marvellous job of making sure that every single character is just as important as its counterpart. This makes for a balanced and outright fun game to play.
It doesn’t stop there; each character levels up a la any traditional RPG. With leveling, comes new, fun abilities and great progression.
It is a massive break, it's casual and fairly easy (although there are harder difficulties) so you can sit back and relax while figuring out how the hell you’re supposed to get past the next area. The sound in Trine is brilliant and light-hearted; you won’t find music that is annoying or poor voice acting for that matter. In fact, Pontius the Knight really is hilarious.
Graphically, you can’t expect much for a low-budget game, but it comes out in top. Let’s just say it looks about as good as anything side-scrolling can look, with great lighting, animation and physics.
There are a few faults I found with the game. It is particularly short and can be done in a few casual days of gaming. Also, I found a lack of co-operative play on the PC very perplexing as co-operative play is available on the Playstation Store version. Personally, I would also have liked to see a little more environment differentiation too.
Nevertheless, Trine is a solid little game can keep you hypnotised by its wonderful colour, voice acting and captivating puzzle and combat amalgamation. Trine is cheap too, having a current retail price on Steam for just $19.99; there are definitely no complaints in that department.
In conclusion, if you want to participate in a better than average fantastical adventure, Trine is the way forward. Because with this adventure, what you see is what you get, a very polished and relaxing albeit sometimes frustrating, enjoyable game.