Have You Played... Trine?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

If Trine [official site] were simply about a thief fighting through a magical adventure with her bow and grappling hook, I'd really dig it. I'd also be well up for a game about a tipsy wizard who saves the day by conjuring big boxes about skeleton's heads and airsurfing on magic platforms. Heck, I'd be up for a game with a knight smashing monsters with a big hammer and solving physics puzzles. Trine is all three of those games in one, and that's great.

Frozenbyte's physics-based puzzle-platformer is a merry romp through a colourful fantasy world, smashing monsters, swinging free, and generally saving the day with an unlikely trio of heroes drawn together by fate. An eponymous magical artifact binds them, locking two inside while the third roams free (unless you're playing co-op). The wizard's technically unarmed but can summon and move objects, handy for both puzzles and violence. The knight's the strongest fighter, but can knock things around a bit too. And the thief, well, the thief's flipping brilliant. Her grappling hook is an absolute joy to use, with just enough spring, reach, and speed for satisfying tricks like zipping across levels or swinging yourself up to a platform above.

The puzzling's light, mostly boiling down to physics puzzles of moving and activate things. It's fun, though, and tends to support a range of solutions.

Bold colours, warm and funny narration, and that grappling hook mean my mind often wanders to Trine. It's a fun game. It's very nice, in the nicest sense of the word.

It's now even colourful than it was at launch, as Frozenbyte recently rebuilt it in Trine 2's engine as an Enchanted Edition, bringing a makeover along with online co-op.