Physics Review: "Trine"

Watch out! The dead have risen and are headed for the kingdom. The good news: A wizard, thief and knight are prepared to stop it. True, they’ve been fused together by this thing called the Trine, but the wizard, Amadeus, suspects the two things might be linked.

TRINE is a 2-D sidescroller set in a 3-D universe with realistic physics, meaning when a rope is cut, whatever it’s holding falls. You switch between characters on the fly, sort of like Trevor Belmont did in CASTLEVANIA III.

Like most sidescrollers, the goal in every level is to make it from the left to the right, and occasionally up. Frozenbyte puts a series of obstacles in your way that can be overcome using the skills your three characters have at their disposal. Walls must be scaled. Lava must be crossed. Skeletons should be dispatched. And experience must be collected.

Amadeus is a conjurer and telekinetic. He makes boxes and platforms appear, then moves them around. His only offensive maneuver is to conjure a box above a skeleton’s head and let it fall, which is amusing when it works, but skeletons have a tendency to move.

The thief, Zoya, is the most flexible character. Her grappling hook is the fastest way to solve simple puzzles, and it’s more fun than making boxes and platforms. And her arrows can handle most enemies, especially when she starts firing four at a time.

The knight, Pontius, starts off pretty weak but becomes a useful character toward the end, when he picks up a hammer. His preferred method of combat is bludgeoning, which swords aren’t great for, but with a hammer he’s suddenly bashing through shields and sending out lightning shock-waves. The diving hammer strike is the second most fun you’ll have. He also has a shield, which can be pointed in any direction to stop fire or arrows.

The shield keeps Pontius nice and cool.

Trine encourages exploration by tying experience to two things. Half of the experience is earned by destroying skeletons. The other half is earned by finding green potions hidden throughout the levels. For every 50 green potions you earn, each character will level up.

There’s a skeletal story structure, but it’s extremely basic and serves only to give the characters something to do. But excellent voice acting and elegant narration hold the stages together and make the loading screens painless.

And the 2-D gameplay in a 3-D world works surprisingly well. The backgrounds are finely detailed and littered with objects, but it never becomes hard to differentiate between what’s in the background and what’s in the character’s path.

In co-op, Pontius finds himself at the mercy of Amadeus.

My only frustration with the game is the lack of variety in things to kill. Aside from a few bosses, everything that’s trying to kill you is a skeleton. Some of them breathe fire, some have shields and some have bows, but they’re all skinless. It didn’t make the game any less fun, but a zombie here or there would have livened things up.

It’s $30 on the PC, but there will be PSN version soon, and it’s probably worth waiting for because it’ll probably cost less. To hold you over, Steam or Frozenbyte have the demo.

(Editor’s note — Patrick Klepek at G4 reveals today that Trine will not be out by the end of July, i.e. tomorrow, as Frozenbyte originally promised.

In designer Lauri Hyvärinen’s own adorably Engrish breakdown of the situation: “Regarding 6th August release, can’t say for sure is that even possible. US and EU releases ‘should’ be very close to each other. However, I must stress out I don’t know for real, as there always can come surprises like yesterday did.”

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