Trine - Game Review

There are some moments in life when you do some things not expecting much excitement but you do it anyway. And then out of no where you begin to have a lot of fun and you come out mighty impressed. And a nice happy feeling that is. This typically happens with movies, books and music. But recently it happened to me while playing this game called Trine.


I was linked to the game trailer and asked to play it. When I asked what it was about I was informed that it was a 2D scrolling game in a 3D World. I took upon playing the game for nostalgic reasons. It had been almost an eternity when I last played a 2D Scrolling game like Mario, Contra, Dangerous Dave or Digger. These had been my favorites and clearly no game was going to replace them. Let alone replace, how impressed could I get by a 2D game in a world where 3D is the in-thing? So I began to play Trine with very low expectations, expecting to give up in repetitive boredom.

Trine, simply put, is the most beautiful game I have ever played. The art work, lighting and narration are the best I have ever seen in any game. Not because the visuals are very realistic but because the game truly is a fairy tale brought to life. If you grew up as a kid listening to fairy tales about kingdoms, wizards and magic, Trine gives you all that at its visual best and whats even better, it allows you to be a part of it.

The game is set in a kingdom beset by evil and it is up to you to get rid of the undead (thats what they call skeletons with a soul) from the kingdom and bring peace and happiness into everyones lives. A wizard, a knight and a thief are bounded into a single body because they touch an ancient artifact called the Trine and these 3 set out on an adventure to defeat evil, win riches and separate their souls from the body. There are enough puzzles, booby traps, underwater adventures, big monsters and dangerous object that can hurt you to keep the gameplay interesting.

The game makes extensive use of physics and I feel is the first game that truly shows the value of the otherwise hyped Nvidia Physx technology. You can switch between the wizard, the knight or the thief anytime you want and use their skills to kill enemies, move objects, traverse obstacles. The knight is all about brute force, while the wizard is good for creating simple objects out of thin air and moving them around magically. The thief's acrobatic skills remind of spider-man and she is also good with archery.

The background score of the game is awesome and the game is best played with all eye-candy options turned on. A game this beautiful deserves to be viewed as the developers intended to with all graphics settings set to high. It is preferable to have an Nvidia GPU that supports Physx but it will work even otherwise. To play on laptops one might have to reduce all the graphics settings in the game launch menu.

My only gripe about the game is the last level. If all but the last level was rated 3/10 for difficulty level, the last level would be rated 9/10. The game suddenly changes pace and gets extremely difficult in the last stage. To win this level requires repeated playing to memorize the path to travel to clear obstacles and reach the end. In the end it is all worth it.

All in all Trine is one of those games that you will treasure if you own it. It will bring back a lot of nostalgia about 2D scrollers if you are an old time gamer. No wonder it got the Gamespot's Editor's Choice award at E3 '09.