Trine is a game of contrasts. Sometimes it’s Crayon Physics, sometimes Bionic Commando, and sometimes Castle Crashers. And it works. It’s a puzzle platformer, with a cast of three adventurers in one (as opposed to Lost Vikings, which was three adventurers in three). You play a mage, a thief, and a knight who have been bound together by a magical artifact called a Trine. The game is by the Finnish studio Frozenbyte, but from the voiceover work in between levels you’d probably think Lionhead created it. There’s genuine love and humor in the narrator’s peppy interludes. Unlike with most load screens, you’ll probably stick around to hear the narration out even after the level is ready to play. You’re saving a troubled land, and you’re happy to learn about it.
The world has fallen upon dark times. Our king was unable to conceive an heir to the throne, so a number of bloody coups ensued; eventually the dead rose from their graves. This is a world populated by evil skeletons. There are skeletons with swords, skeletons with bows, skeletons with the ability to breathe fire, and skeletons with the ability to be way bigger than you are. You know this story, because you’ve played through it a hundred times before. You soon find out that the game world itself has also played the story before: time ebbs and flows, repeating itself, as everyone knows from the opening scene of Secret of Mana. The Trine is an object that, whenever the world needs help, binds three people together as Guardians. This is the same ludonarrative conceit used in the little-know JRPG Forever Kingdom (except there it was a “soul curse” or some such nonsense).
At any given time, you can switch between the three characters. Two of them, the mage and the thief, have unique ways to surmount almost any obstacle or chasm. The knight is your fallback guy, useful in case one or both of your more versatile characters becomes incapacitated. Unlike in Forever Kingdom, your three heroes do not share a health bar. They also have separate oxygen levels for swimming sections. Shared health is a provocative, yet somewhat unpopular, mechanic in games where numerous souls have become fused into one. Mostly, shared health is unpopular because it’s so unforgiving--your weakest character takes a few too many hits and then everyone’s in trouble.
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