I'll get started by recounting exactly how I found Trine. Surfing the net, a little bird told me something known as Humble Frozenbyte Bundle. Frozenbyte, a good indie video game firm hailing from Finland, teamed up together with the Humble Bundle. How the Humble Bundle works is straightforward and saintly: you only pay whatever you want, you receive a few video games, and it all flows to charity. You can virtually pay out one penny, and you can get hold of all of these game titles (but come on, 1 penny?). I figured what the heck, contributed some money, and downloaded Trine.
I truthfully didn't anticipate a lot when starting up Trine for the first time. That's the fantastic thing about indie games to me, that my mind is really a clean slate entering them. There's not any buzz or sensationalism swaying my viewpoint on a game before I even place my very own fingers on it. An viewpoint is made solely around the game play on its own, and not really based on if it surpassed my expectations or disappointed. Frankly, I had no clue exactly what I was stepping into. Heck, I didn't even know exactly what genre Trine fell into.
Starting off the action up and going into the initial stage, I became impressed with what I observed. First off, the adventure turned out to be a side-scrolling platformer (very much to my pleasure). The background quickly grabbed my attention, and I also understood that this platformer was going to have a good deal to consider. The environments are really quite easy on the eyes, and they also give off a really unique, magical ambiance. These, bundled along with the narration, genuinely make it appear like you're playing through the fairytale.
Ruining as very little as I'm able to, the plot goes a little like the following. First beginning the video game, you take management of a thief while she moves inside a sanctuary, wanting to get her hands on various treasure. She finds an interesting object, the Trine. You next take control of a sorcerer, and in addition establish your way to the Trine. Additionally, you adopt control over a knight whom (you guessed it) gets to the Trine and even touches it. The spirits connected with the 3 are joined together, so they consequently turn into one. From then on, you look for a way to turn back combining and also the three heroes get thrown within some thing a lot larger than themselves.
These beginning instances from the video game, while acting as a tutorial for the three characters, sets up the central mechanic of the game. That is, at just about any time you can easily switch among one of the 3 characters. This opens up a plethora of methods that you can solve the variety of hurdles Trine throws your way. The wizard, my favorite of the 3, can easily generate boards, containers, and platforms, and may furthermore relocate materials with magic. He definitely doesn't possess very much fighting abilities, other than dropping boxes onto naive adversaries heads. The knight, on the other hand, is very good at killing things and remaining living. Having a good shield, he can defend from arrows or falling debris effectively. My issue with the knight is definitely that even though he truly does have his uses, his abilities just aren't as awesome as the other two different characters. He came off as your main simple hero, without a whole lot flair. You end up making use of the knight quite a lot at the starting of the game, seeing that his shield comes in handy frequently and he's excellent at killing skeletons. A problem came into being when ever I got nearer to the finish, on the other hand. I actually observed that it had gotten to the position where the thief could eliminate things a lot easier compared to the knight. You could just volley arrows at the enemies from very far without being worried about getting damaged. Because of this, the knight's function is minimized and I didn't use him as much as I used to. It wasn't that utilizing him was in fact any less exciting, simply that he had become less beneficial as the video game elevated. The thief was in fact a powerhouse, capable to snipe NPCs by using the bow, and in a position to get through the particular stages with ease many thanks to her grappling hook. I can't count the range of situations in which grappling hook conserved my life, or how many treasures it let me get to. Every main character has his or her function, and you can't stay to 1 simply due to the fact you enjoy them far more. The thing is, each hero is without a doubt in fact genuinely fun to implement. Unique scenarios called for various heroes, and it is a delightful thing.
Very likely my favorite element of this video game is that there are several ways you can go about solving the particular complications Trine has to offer you. It definitely makes you to get inventive at moments. The sorcerer performs exceptionally well in a lot of these situations, as you can certainly create boxes and platforms and work them straight into whatever spots you need. What can make each scenario in Trine much more fascinating is the use of physics. Moving items and swinging about with the thief gives off a good sense of weight, and objects react reasonably realistically according to the particular forces applied upon them. These qualities definitely help to make it pleasurable to simply play about with the environment.
Every single character has different abilities, and the thief along with knight each obtain unique weaponry to work with. As you gain experience, in the shape of green bottles scattered all over the stages, ones heroes level up and also gain proficiency points. All these skill points tend to be used to help update the particular skills of your heroes. For example, 1 of the particular wizard's skills (as I stated before) was the ability to develop a container out of thin air. This is carried out by holding down the mouse key, and drawing a container wherever you would like it made. From the starting, the sorcerer will be able to exclusively generate 1 container at an instance. Whenever you level upward this specific skill, he can easily have much more boxes in presence at one time. The idea is a nice touch to the game, and offers an Role-playing game sense to Trine. Likewise, you may locate treasure chests throughout each and every stage that hold magical items. You can certainly equip the characters along with these items, which in turn can carry out nearly anything from helping them oxygen under water to giving all of them a lot more overall health. I made it a point when playing to find each and every treasure chest in the game, and several are usually fairly hard to detect.
The cons with regard to Trine are few and far between. The knight hero lost some practical use while you get nearer to the end of the game, as the thief results in being simply as superior if not better at eradicating opponents. His particular skills were also deficient in the cool factor. The storyline by itself wasn't exceedingly special, and the conclusion (although I wasn't anticipating much out of it) had been pretty anticlimactic. In the vicinity of the conclusion of the video game, the thief gets to be virtually overpowered, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could beat a total level using her all alone. Honestly at this point I'm striving hard to find things wrong with this video game.
On the flipside, I couldn't cease playing the video game. I most likely beat it in two or maybe three sittings, and that was merely because duties kept me personally from sitting down and beating it in a day. The physics and equipment you have at hand to pass obstructions is pleasing as heck (here's lookin' at you sorcerer). The addition of gadgets and ranking up provides this platformer a nice feel of Role-playing game, without affecting the true platformer experience. In fact, it makes you want to seek every nook and cranny hunting for the chests and experience. And that's not a bad thing. I was going to sit here and tell you that there was little replayability for Trine, but here I am starting it up again to beat it for the second time.
Bottom line, if you want to waste a whole day on an indie game and have fun doing it pick up Trine. You'll be pleasantly surprised by what it brings to the table.
GamerAdvice's rating: 8/10
- Be sure to keep an eye out at the humblebundle for the next Humble Bundle project.
Oh, and look for the upcoming Trine 2 set for a late 2011 release.
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