Trino Review

A-

When I sat down to play this one I sort of thought to myself, "Oh man another game with basic geometry as the premise, bleh." Based on the score you can tell that I underestimated how fun triangles can be. All those other shapes can go to hell. Yeah I said it.

But Trino is more than just a shape-based game with an average mechanic. Is has tight intuitive gameplay, slick (but modest) graphics, and most of all, character. That's what made this game stand out for me - it doesn't stop at "create triangles to trap baddies." Trino goes a step further to create a game with a little blobular hero, and the fits together the pieces (SFX, music, animation, AI, effects) to drive a comprehensive theme home. It feels complete, like an equilateral triangle.

Trino is a very peaceful game. That's not to say it can't make you sweat a little, but I really appreciated the calm atmosphere created by 'swimming' around and trapping encroachers. The soothing SFX and music really make this the type of game you can fire up when you just need a break from it all.


The mechanic that the game stands on should be clear by now. You create triangles that when closed off, trap and kill anything inside. It's essentially your weapon. It's a strong mechanic, and certainly one to base a game around, but that's going to be hit or miss for some players. The developers did a good job of realizing that even a cool mechanic like this can get old after 15 min or so, so they smartly added powerups that can alter the amount of triangles you can make and number of sides you can create on screen at one time. This is well balanced with the increasingly bothersome baddies who learn how to hone in on you and destroy your triangles at the axis. Also, the means to advancing levels is pretty innovative, as you're required to powerup the axis of the level then connect them all to "close out" the whole board. Pretty slick and adds some challenge as you navigate around the perimeter.

I don't really have any major criticisms beyond, "what you see is what you get." Even with level shape variance, powerups and soforth, you pretty much do the same thing throughout the game - so you better like the foundation this game is built on. I wouldn't have minded a little narrative describing the setting, but many players would disagree there saying it's mostly ignored anyhow in a game like this.

I do recommend this game for anyhow who read the description and is intrigued. If you're like me and think it's just another gimmicky shape game (at first glance), I'm here to tell you that it delivers beyond that. Enjoy - it's fairly priced at 400 MP.