Review – Trine (PC)

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Trine is a good game overall, though it’s not without its fair share of cons and annoyances.  Basically it’s a physics puzzle, and it feels like they wrapped a terrible story around an idea to achieve this goal.

As a player, you can rotate between 3 characters – a mage, a thief, and a knight.  These three get thrown together into a single, shared body, and must find an artifact called the “Trine” to heal their woes.  The mage can conjure boxes and planks, and eventually floating platforms – this is useful for getting over the strange terrain of the path of each level.  The knight (in my opinion the most useless character of the three) has the unique abilities of sinking quickly in water and carrying a shield/sword.  Though there are times you are forced to use him, those times suck.  The thief was my favorite by far – she has a bow which can shoot flame arrows and a grappling hook that can swing her around like a madwoman.

There is a great variety in the level landscapes – over the game you will encounter open spaces as well as cramped dungeons – even a few underwater sections.  Using the abilities you earn through finding treasure and upgrading your characters, you will be able to perform new and enhanced abilities as well as make your characters stronger and more resilient.

The characters have unique personalities, and by that I mean extreme personalities.  The Knight is, of course, dumb as a rock, and the wizard is somehow the world’s oldest ladies man.  Perhaps this is one of the biggest factors that attracted me to the thief – she’s quiet.  The terrible voice acting really had a tendency to “immerse” me in annoyance.

Despite all of the shortcomings, this was really a great experience as far as actual gameplay.  I enjoyed the fighting because I was able to make it tougher on myself by crushing enemies with wizard blocks and using the bow as a primary offensive weapon.

There wasn’t a great variety in the types of enemies encountered, or even in the number of levels.  In fact, the game design causes you to repeat some levels multiple times in search of secrets.  Because you earn more abilities as you progress, this was almost mandatory for unlocking everything to be found.  (Though I never did make it to 100%)

As an inexpensive steam title, I gave it a shot because of the ability for it to play on both windows and OSX.  I hope more game creators are taking note of the fact that the Mac market for games is rapidly expanding.  Especially with steam, I love it because I can use a single account to play on any operating system I choose.

Though there were times of frustration and annoyance, I think that overall this game is deserving of praise.  They did go out on a limb to run with a concept that I hadn’t seen before, and the graphics were just nice enough to impress me while running smooth on a laptop.  My final score for Trine is a 7/10 – and I look forward to any possible content expansion through DLC or possibly a sequel.

Graphics 80   Audio 60   Gameplay 80 Creativity 70   Execution 75   Offset 70

7.3

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