Screenshots :.
Trine
PC
Jay
10-07-2009
"A beautiful game indeed."
"Good fun in co-op too!"
"Unless you're cack, like Matt."
I certainly have a warm spot (no not there) for platform games. They've started to become more popular again with Live! Arcade and Steam offering the chance for smaller developers to produce the games they want and shift them in a reliable, widely available way. Great news for the rest of us as personally I'm all up for seeing these ideas make it into my grubby little hands for a good blat.
Strangely, I didn't realise that Frozenbyte, makers of Trine also developed Shadowgrounds that was a game I stumbled on...ooh a while back now. Shadowgrounds was a top-down action game, the likes of which I hadn't seen in a long damn time, done really well. While on the grape vine I'd heard that the game didn't shift as many units as they wanted, this could perhaps fall down to the lack of decent digital distribution giants that we all now have access to. Trine, drawn to my attention on Steam, looked to be something well worth playing.
In essence, Trine is a 3D side-scrolling platform, action adventure, puzzle solving, shooter. Which, is quite the mouthful I appreciate. You start the game with 3 separate characters, a thief, Wizard and a knight being joined together, somewhat clumsily, by the Trine – a giant blue gem. Transported off to a magical location, they awake to realise their souls have been combined. In a gameplay sense, this now means you can swap between any of them at any time.
Each character has their pro's and con's and can be levelled up as you collect experience throughout the game. The thief can swing herself from wooden platforms and fire a bow for long-range damage. The Wizard can create objects such as blocks and planks by way of drawing them on screen. He can also levitate objects, not only that he's created, but ones that exist in the environment too. The guard acts as the muscle – smashing his way through objects, picking them up and hurling them and using his shield to protect him from falling debris and flying arrows.
Each level contains chests, lots of which are in hard to reach places, encouraging the player to explore each level and utilise the characters to get to them. Most of the time the chests contain trinkets that add boons to the characters stats, but additionally can contain new skills. Each character has a total of 3 skills to obtain and a further 3 levels in each to improve them. Levelling a skill is easy as it is simply a matter of collecting 50 experience orbs (some again located in tough to reach places), upon which each character will get a point to spend towards a skill.
Most puzzles in the game can be solved with the minimum of skills and usually by any one of the characters. It may not seem like that at the time, but then from a development standpoint you might not have obtained the right skill or put enough points in it to rely on any of them and of course any of your characters can die denying you access until you get to a checkpoint. So, you have to be able finish each level bearing this in mind. Now, that's not to say that your life is a damn sight easier if you can levitate an object out of the way, create 3 planks to avoid a spike pit and then change to the thief to light the way with her fire arrows and swing to freedom. Rather than bumbling along with the knight, falling onto spikes, barely making it out alive, not being able to see what's in front of you and falling into water only to slowly drown as you sink to the bottom in your highly protective but non-buoyant armour.
As with any physics games there are a few cheap routes to take with a lot of the puzzles as is the problem with offering the ability to levitate over things. Late into the game, the Wizard learns the ability to draw and summon a floating platform. Unlike the other objects in game where you can't levitate them while directly standing on them, the floating platform allows you to just that, bypassing quite a few puzzles and reaching those tough to reach spots much more easily. Hell, one thing me and Matt found is that while playing a cooperative game where player 1 chooses what they want to be and player 2 chooses from the remaining characters, is that it gets a lot easier again.
All that said, it at least means the game opens up it's doors to a large age group as while I enjoyed playing the game, I'm sure someone of a younger disposition would too. The storytelling, artwork and music all fuse together to create a really beautiful environment to roam around - offering sensory candy to all! Hopefully this'll give Frozenbyte some extra cash to produce another title if they can iron out their distribution issues, as this was aces!
[Matt – I'd like to thank Jay for not relating what a bumbling, useless buffoon I was whilst playing co-op. Looks like I've gotten away with it! Hang on... am I saying this out loud?]
Strangely, I didn't realise that Frozenbyte, makers of Trine also developed Shadowgrounds that was a game I stumbled on...ooh a while back now. Shadowgrounds was a top-down action game, the likes of which I hadn't seen in a long damn time, done really well. While on the grape vine I'd heard that the game didn't shift as many units as they wanted, this could perhaps fall down to the lack of decent digital distribution giants that we all now have access to. Trine, drawn to my attention on Steam, looked to be something well worth playing.
In essence, Trine is a 3D side-scrolling platform, action adventure, puzzle solving, shooter. Which, is quite the mouthful I appreciate. You start the game with 3 separate characters, a thief, Wizard and a knight being joined together, somewhat clumsily, by the Trine – a giant blue gem. Transported off to a magical location, they awake to realise their souls have been combined. In a gameplay sense, this now means you can swap between any of them at any time.
Each character has their pro's and con's and can be levelled up as you collect experience throughout the game. The thief can swing herself from wooden platforms and fire a bow for long-range damage. The Wizard can create objects such as blocks and planks by way of drawing them on screen. He can also levitate objects, not only that he's created, but ones that exist in the environment too. The guard acts as the muscle – smashing his way through objects, picking them up and hurling them and using his shield to protect him from falling debris and flying arrows.
Each level contains chests, lots of which are in hard to reach places, encouraging the player to explore each level and utilise the characters to get to them. Most of the time the chests contain trinkets that add boons to the characters stats, but additionally can contain new skills. Each character has a total of 3 skills to obtain and a further 3 levels in each to improve them. Levelling a skill is easy as it is simply a matter of collecting 50 experience orbs (some again located in tough to reach places), upon which each character will get a point to spend towards a skill.
Most puzzles in the game can be solved with the minimum of skills and usually by any one of the characters. It may not seem like that at the time, but then from a development standpoint you might not have obtained the right skill or put enough points in it to rely on any of them and of course any of your characters can die denying you access until you get to a checkpoint. So, you have to be able finish each level bearing this in mind. Now, that's not to say that your life is a damn sight easier if you can levitate an object out of the way, create 3 planks to avoid a spike pit and then change to the thief to light the way with her fire arrows and swing to freedom. Rather than bumbling along with the knight, falling onto spikes, barely making it out alive, not being able to see what's in front of you and falling into water only to slowly drown as you sink to the bottom in your highly protective but non-buoyant armour.
As with any physics games there are a few cheap routes to take with a lot of the puzzles as is the problem with offering the ability to levitate over things. Late into the game, the Wizard learns the ability to draw and summon a floating platform. Unlike the other objects in game where you can't levitate them while directly standing on them, the floating platform allows you to just that, bypassing quite a few puzzles and reaching those tough to reach spots much more easily. Hell, one thing me and Matt found is that while playing a cooperative game where player 1 chooses what they want to be and player 2 chooses from the remaining characters, is that it gets a lot easier again.
All that said, it at least means the game opens up it's doors to a large age group as while I enjoyed playing the game, I'm sure someone of a younger disposition would too. The storytelling, artwork and music all fuse together to create a really beautiful environment to roam around - offering sensory candy to all! Hopefully this'll give Frozenbyte some extra cash to produce another title if they can iron out their distribution issues, as this was aces!
[Matt – I'd like to thank Jay for not relating what a bumbling, useless buffoon I was whilst playing co-op. Looks like I've gotten away with it! Hang on... am I saying this out loud?]
9/10