Trine

I’ve been buying the Humble Indie Bundles on principle since I think pay-what-you-want is a great idea that I want to support, and I also want to support the EFF.  I picked up Trine with the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle, the only humble bundle so far to feature games all from the same developer.  I felt it was somewhat of a weak bundle since I wasn’t interested in Shadowgrounds or Shadowgrounds: Survivor, Jack Claw’s development had stopped, and Splot while it looks good was a pre-order you get when it’s ready.  Trine on the other hand looked like something I would greatly enjoy, and I was absolutely right about that!
 
I’ve said before that I like exploring and clearing all the enemies from a level, and Trine rewards that sort of behavior by hiding green experience vials throughout the level and also granting experience for defeating certain enemies.  The concept of collecting bottled experience is strange, but as a gaming element it works well.  Maybe they should have named it something else, but mostly I was thinking of how to get to that green vial I could see rather than trying to figure out how experience could be bottled.  Collect enough experience and you can upgrade the characters’ abilities, so exploring the level more fully means you can level up sooner.
 
The three characters’ abilities complement each other well, though I found I preferred using the thief most of the time, switching to the knight if I needed his shield to protect from fireballs or the wizard if I needed to conjure up an object to help get somewhere.  I think the knight was intended to do most of the fighting, but somehow he just isn’t as much fun.  Also, he’s a portly fellow while the thief is a svelte lady with a robe slit high up the thigh which is much nicer to look at.  She also has the best tool for traversing levels (provided there’s something made of wood above) — the grappling hook.  Her ranged attack (bow and arrow) is available from the beginning of the game (the knight gains a throw ability later) and is fun to aim using the mouse.  Building structures with the wizard or even dropping them on enemies to crush them is challenging but also fun, especially when you’ve gained enough experience to have numerous objects at the same time.
 
The fighting can get a little annoying at times since skeletons come from spawn points one at a time.  You’ll often be fighting skeletons from multiple spawn points, but when there’s just one you have to wait around a while to see if another one is going to spawn after you took care of the last one.  Other aspects that could have been better are drawing objects to conjure with the mouse sometimes doesn’t work unexpectedly, either it doesn’t recognize that what you drew is a thing at all, or it thinks you wanted a square when you drew a triangle.  Mostly it worked for me as I wanted it to though.  The wording and voice acting of the script is somewhat dorky, but is actually sort of fun and even humorous as a result.  Cutscenes are mainly a sequence of still images with pan / zoom effects being read over by a narrator; more like a slideshow than a movie.
 
The graphics are downright beautiful, something that frequently surprises me in indie games!  The characters and enemies move in a 2-dimensional plane in a 3-dimensional world — you can clearly see objects in the foreground or background (out of reach, of course).  The animations are smooth and realistic, except for the occasional object getting launched into the air for no apparent reason that seems to happen in most physics engines every now and then.  The variety of environments is also impressive.  Mechanically it’s all the same, but visually you get forest, caverns, ruins, and a forge to name a few.
 
The levels include fighting enemies (mostly skeletons) and solving how-do-i-get-to-there puzzles.  Often the puzzles can be solved multiple ways using one or more of the characters’ abilities.  Things get interesting when you mistakenly get your thief killed and have to conjure a pile of boxes and planks to get over an obstacle the thief could have grappled over.  Of course if you lost a character who seems to be essential for what you need to do next you can just backtrack to the last checkpoint and get everyone back, just with partial health.
 
The last level changed things up quite a bit though, and I wasn’t really into the abrupt difference it brought.  Now instead of taking my time I had to race through the level, only taking time to fight or do the other things I enjoy about Trine if I needed them to keep going.  You can’t really take the time to explore knowing you’ll die for staying in the same place too long.
 
According to Steam I’ve put in nearly 20 hours of Trine, and still have a few more achievement I plan to get.  I greatly enjoyed this game so far and it’s made me feel better about getting the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle even though I wasn’t interested in that many games from it.  It looks like Trine 2 is coming out later this year so I’ll definitely be getting that!