RSS Feeds NGN on Facebook NGN on Twitter NGN on YouTube
Thursday March 28, 2024
Header logo
  1. Index
  2. » Articles
  3. » Reviews
  4. » Trine

Trine Review

A good platforming game that brings alot more to the genre than the usual installments

Posted by on

Trine is an action platforming game for PC, which is also on PSN and soon rumoured for Xbox Live. It is developed by the Finnish company Frozenbyte, who are known for their fun top-down shooter series Shadowgrounds. The game was released on PC on 3 July 2009 via steam, with a retail release following soon. Having played both Shadowgrounds games, I was fairly confident in Frozenbyte’s attempt at a new genre. With Shadowgrounds, things were kept simple and fun, engaging the player without completely drawing them in, and that was appreciated by many. After initially playing the Trine demo, I was very impressed with what the developers have done. They went in a totally new direction with a platform action game, and an artistic design that felt very fresh and beautiful to look at. With little hesitation, I started on the full game and something like 8 to 9 hours later I completed the campaign on normal difficulty. While the core elements showcased in the demo remained in tact, there were a few welcome and some not very welcome surprises.

Trine game

The story of Trine is heavily reminiscent of a good old-fashioned fairy tale. It’s even told in much the same classic narration and character exposition. In the game, you are in control of three characters, with the ability to switch between them at any time. This ability is explained in the story – in a magical world, a King has passed away, and no worthy successor was chosen. Many tried but failed to control the throne, and while the humans were busy with the power struggle, an evil power emerged and consumed most of the world, sending its inhabitants away and turning the rest into a skeleton army. As the attack of the dark forces reached an Academy on the outskirts of the Kingdom, our three characters are introduced. The Thief, an agile woman who wants to use the attack on the Academy as a distraction, to steal a precious stone waiting inside. The Wizard, a known womanizer even at his old age, who simply wants to escape the madness via the Academy’s abandoned halls. And the Warrior, who has sworn (to himself) to protect the Academy, is out to stop the Thief. One by one, they each find the magic stone in the catacombs, and as they see and touch it, they are stuck. When Warrior, the last to arrive, touches the stone, they vanish, and become bound by the magical powers. They are now bonded together as one soul, with the ability to shape-shift among themselves at any time. They then march on to first escape the threat, and also to find a way to break the spell and separate themselves. They traverse much of the Kingdom’s lands in search for a cure, but they also want to find a way to stop the Undead army. The rest of the story is actually pretty generic, which you can discover for yourself. The game’s single player story takes about 7 hours, depending on how good you are at the platforming elements. The local Co-Op is also available, and it can be pretty fun to play with the right amount of teamwork involved. Several Steam achievements are also available, though they kind of give away story spoilers, so avoid looking at them for your first playthough.

As mentioned, you can play with three different characters – Thief, Wizard, and Warrior. Just to be clear – you progress “as one”, so it’s not like you have to get all 3 characters from one end of the level to the other separately. They all have the same physical attributes, such as size and jump height. One exception being the Warrior weighs more, but this is only noticeable during underwater sequences. The Thief is the first character introduced. She is a soft spoken individual, out to get her prize and get away with it. Her weapon is the bow, which shoots arrows either nearby or far away, depending on how long you hold the “fire” key. This also affects the accuracy of the shot. The Thief’s second ability (right mouse click) is the grappling hook. The hook will attach only to a wood surface, and you can swing on it like a rope. You can adjust the length of your rope at any time, so the hook can often be used to pull yourself to a higher platform, rather than just swing across danger pits. Thief is often needed to get to bonus items scattered around higher platforms, she is by far the best way to move around with speed and over long distances (horizontal or vertical). The Wizard is, appropriately, the weakest fighter. He has no direct attacks, and can only push enemies back from him for a short while. The Wizard is mostly used for puzzles, crossing dangerous waters and other platforming elements. The Wizard has the ability to create objects (number is varied), such as square blocks (which are good as stepping stones, or as a height boost), linear bridges (mostly used as a ramp or to cross a small opening), and a floating platform (used later in the game to traverse large gaps, and can even be used to fly the Wizard around for a short time). To create these objects, you simply hold down the Fire key and draw the object’s shape in the air. It will then appear, and using the Right mouse key, you can move this object around the world as you wish. The Wizard is also able to move pretty much any physical object in the world, such as stones, spikes, and other debris. Lastly, the Warrior is the obvious choice for combat. He is the only character which can defend from any attack thanks to the shield, and dishes out nice damage with his melee weapon. Most of the fights with the Warrior consist of blocking, and then counter-attacking until the enemy is dead. This works for the most part, but if you are facing multiple foes from both directions, blocking becomes quite challenging. The Warrior can also lift any objects lying around the levels, and throw them a short distance. He also has the ability to Charge, but it’s not that useful.

Trine game

The game has a levelling up system, based on collected experience. You can gain experience by either killing enemies, or collection experience vials. The latter seems like a faster way to progress, since there are tons of vials scattered through the levels in hard to reach places. Once you gain enough experience, you can unlock different skills for each character. For the Thief, you can upgrade the bow to fire two and then three arrows at once, as well as increasing basic damage. You can also gain a secondary “flaming bow”, which fires lit arrows that do more damage than regular arrows. These flame arrows are also used during the “dark” sections of the gameplay to light torches, and reveal more of the level ahead. The Wizard’s upgrades give him the ability to create the linear bridge and the floating platform, as well as allowing him to create more than one object type at a time. The Warrior’s unlocks give him better armor, a secondary melee weapon (Hammer), and a special health boost that kicks in when you are about to die. All these upgrades cost increasingly steeper skill points, and while you can upgrade the abilities for any character, closer to the end of the game you will be forced to either save for more experience or upgrade the only cheap skill left. There is not very much freedom in skill upgrades towards the end of the game due to high upgrade requirements. With each upgrade, the health and mana bars for each character also adjust accordingly. Scattered throughout the game world are Treasure chests, which contain one specific item for one of the characters. These chests are mostly well-hidden and take skill to find and get to. The items they contain provide various boosts to the character which they are equipped on – such as extended mana bars, ability to breathe underwater, etc. Some items can be applied to any character, while some are specific to one of the heroes (item contains their name). Also, some chests are placed right on the main level path so it’s impossible to miss them - these mostly contain items that are designed to make sure the player is ready for what’s ahead.

Trine is a mainly a platforming game. If you are a fan of the genre, then you will likely enjoy this title. The different elements used to solve puzzles (combining Wizard’s objects with Thief’s hook ability) will provide for some entertaining solutions, possibly not those that the developers had in mind. Often times though, I found some sections to be somewhat frustrating because of the game’s imprecise controls. You will find yourself unintentionally slipping off an edge way too many times, or jumping down a platform without knowing what awaits below. But the latter is more of a camera issue – indeed, in Trine the camera works in odd ways, as it changes position depending on where you are, not necessarily where you are going or what you want to see. This helps hide the Treasure chests and other items, but can also prove frustrating by hiding enemies off screen as they fire arrows at you. Also, at some sections when you pull a level to open a gate, the camera will swing away to show which gate has been opened or platform revealed. At this time, you are frozen in place, so if there were enemies left in the area, you are going to take some damage while the camera swings back to you. Mostly the platforming and puzzles are straightforward and fun, and indeed this is very much a linear game with some hidden nooks and crannies. The platforming can be frustrating, but it’s not overly difficult until the last level. The last level of the game is quite a sudden challenge, and may cause many players to turn to cheats or altogether abandon the idea of finishing the game. A good comparison has been made in the community, that compares the last level of Trine to the “Meat Circus” level of Psychonauts. You have been warned! (Or challenged, depending on how you feel about it).

Trine game

There is a lot of fighting in Trine, possibly more so than a usual platform game. You will mostly face off against the skeleton army, who will patiently wait your arrival to their part of the level, or spawn a few soldiers during scripted events. Sometimes, it felt boring just waiting for the final soldier to spawn so you could kill them and move on. You don’t have to kill everything (except for bosses), but the experience doesn’t hurt. The skeletons get tougher as you progress through the game, getting shields and body armor and requiring more hits to kill. Interestingly enough, their upgrades often outmatch yours, so just because you have a fully upgraded bow, it will still take a few hits to kill a skeleton soldier with a shield. But it keeps the gameplay balanced. The skeletons come in various types, such as melee fighters, archers, and fire breathers. The melee guys are the hardest to kill, as they can carry shields. You will also encounter different creature enemies such as spiders and bats. The game also contains mini bosses – these are often started when you reach a room, and both exists shut closed. The Warrior is the absolute best case to defeating the boss, since you can actually defend yourself with the shield. The bosses are mostly melee fighters, and each can be defeated with proper block/attack timing, or finding the weak spot. After defeating the boss, you will likely encounter them later on as a regular foe guarding the way forward. I refer to them as mini bosses because the fight usually lasts less than a minute, and only takes a bit more skill than usual. As you fight through the game, you will likely die. This is not the end though. You are re-spawned at the last solid ground with another character you choose. From here you can go on (assuming a puzzle-critical character such as the Wizard didn’t die) until the next checkpoint, where the dead character(s) are resurrected with half health and ready for use again. Should all 3 characters die, you are forced to go all the way back to the previous checkpoint (which sometimes can be far off). In that case, you get all characters back with half health and will need to re-collect any experience you had from the checkpoint towards the place you died. All enemies will remain dead, and this often helps if you’ve failed a puzzle rather than a fight.

Trine is a very good looking game. Both from technical and artistic perspective, it’s very beautiful to look at, and you often find yourself admiring the background 3D art of the levels. Since this is a platformer, you do not need a powerhouse machine to max this game out. It will run flawlessly even on medium range setups, and showcase its gorgeous environments even on weaker graphics cards. Being physics-based though, the game will likely take a toll on your CPU resources. So, unless you have an Nvidia video card (with PhysX drivers), make sure your CPU can handle the extra load. Artistically, the graphics are top notch – developers did a great job of creating a magical world you really feel a part of. From the character detail to the amazing background and foreground 3D, the look and style of Trine is memorable and presented with great skill and passion. The sound design is great as well, background music is quite memorable and effects are well recorded. The story narration is done by an older man, who tells you the events during level loads and cutscenes. However, he does not speak during gameplay, so it feels like they crammed their best voice talent in-between game levels, which is disappointing. I would have loved to have narration as I played. The voices of each hero are done well, but they have barely any lines. Thus, you spend most of the gameplay with just you and background music. I really wish a lot more voice acting was happening during the actual game rather than just level intro/conclusions. It would have added much value and atmosphere to the game.

Trine game

If you have played Trine demo, you are likely aware of what you’re in for. The action is actually challenging, the puzzles and platforming can be frustrating but remain fun for most of the game. The ability to play with 3 characters at once is unique and innovative, and it’s done well enough to warrant their existence. You only need a strong CPU to run this game well on the higher settings, and a PhysX capable card will actually come in handy. The very good narrative voice acting and the beautiful art style will sweep your imagination away. Definitely give the demo a try, and if you like what you see, get the full game.

Our ratings for Trine on PC out of 100 (Ratings FAQ)
Presentation
85
A beautiful and imaginative world with some great 3D backgrounds and visual effects
Gameplay
80
Platforming feels a bit sloppy at times, but difficulty remains fair until the last levels. Some camera issues.
Single Player
84
A fairly lengthy campaign with a very good story and narration. All characters feel relatable and each have a story to tell.
Multiplayer
70
Only local co-op is available, and it can be fun with the right players
Performance
(Show PC Specs)
CPU: Intel Core i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X 1GB
RAM: 6GB DDR3
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
PC Specs

87
Runs very stable with limited crashes or errors. The visuals look great, but since they are mostly 2D backdrops, even older machines should have no trouble running the game well. Almost no bugs were encountered.
Overall
82
Try the demo, and when you like it (and you will) be sure to get the game for your platforming cravings. Just be ready for a challenge later on in the game.
Comments
Trine
Trine box art Platform:
PC
Our Review of Trine
82%
Great
The Verdict:
Game Ranking
Trine is ranked #341 out of 1957 total reviewed games. It is ranked #25 out of 63 games reviewed in 2009.
341. Trine
342. Left 4 Dead 2
PC
Related Games
Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy
Platform: PC
Released: August 2023
Developer: Frozenbyte
Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince
Platform: PlayStation 4
Released: October 2019
Developer: Frozenbyte
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power
Platform: PC
Released: August 2015
Developer: Frozenbyte
Trine 2 Trine 2
Platform: PC
Released: December 2011
Developer: Frozenbyte
Nine Parchments Nine Parchments
Platform: Xbox One
Released: March 2018
Developer: Frozenbyte
Has-Been Heroes Has-Been Heroes
Platform: Switch
Released: March 2017
Developer: Frozenbyte
Screenshots

Trine
4 images added Aug 5, 2009 05:10
Videos
Trine - Gameplay Video 1
Posted: Aug 4, 2009 20:06
Advertisement ▼
New Game Network NGN Facebook NGN Twitter NGN Youtube NGN RSS