Community Game Review: Trino(X360)

I have not played too many community games on my 360, and honestly it is because I found most of them to be either ideas that have been done already, and are not fun, or new ideas that are just not executed too well. Then I came across a game called Trino, which takes the whole concept of a puzzle game, and turns it on its head by making an experience that is unique, challenging, and just plain fun.

Developer/Publisher: Trino Team
Genre:Action, Puzzle
Rating: E for Everyone
Price: 400 MS points ($5)
# of Players: 1

Here is the story of the game according to the developers. Trino, an evolving alien, must escape the Nanites, an insidious nano-robot swarm, that have imprisoned trino for his powers! Use Trino’s powerful triangle trap to defeat the nanites and break free from their Laser Prison! Basically there are people trying to attack you, and you need to keep yourself alive, and also destroy the enemy aliens that are attacking. The story is not important, as there are no cutscenes or anything like that, what matters here is the fun and exciting gameplay.

Let us start with the look of the game, and honestly, it looks great, in my eyes at least. There are no high polygon counts here, just one small little creature in the middle of the screen, that is encompassed by a neon light outline of a geometrical shape, which is placed on top of a vibrantly colored background. For what its worth, Trino looks ok, even though you cannot really see him too well, he is basically a tiny blue tadpole, that expands a little in size as you progress through the game. The shapes, as well as the backgrounds, are so full of color that you will ignore the simple layout of just one geometric shape against the background. All the enemies have the same color to them, but each of them are different sizes, and they look pretty good.

The music was great, with a variety of upbeat techno beats in each level, which really sets the mood for how fast paced this game really is. Anything from the zapping sound of when an enemy gets trapped in your triangle, to bombs exploding all sounds great, and really packs a punch. I just wish that there were some different music other than techno beats, because sometimes things are not so fast paced, and maybe a relaxing piano melody might have made me calm down a little after a frustratingly hard level. I can see why they went the other route though, so i am not too upset about it.



The best part about Trino is how easy it is play, and how challenging it is to master each level. The idea is simple, you are given a shape in which you are supposed to collect green orbs for, and once you have collected all of those orbs, you can then start to trace the shape, and once you are done with that, the level is complete. The challenging part is that there a number of different enemies out to stop you from achieving this goal, so what are you to do to defend yourself, you capture them in a triangle, and kill them. You move your character with the left thumbstick, then use the a button to create three different points, then move around the area until you have a wide enough space to kill an enemy, then tap the a button once they are inside to trap them, and that is it.

The enemies might all be the same color, but each of them can mess up your quest in a different way. A spider can move away from your triangle, a scorpion can cut a piece off of your triangle while you are a drawing it, and an ant can absorb your triangle, and make it disappear if you are too close to him. You will obtain a couple of powerups, as you complete each chapter, to help you out with these problems. A bomb can clear out an area if you are cornered, a shadow triangle will allow to use a triangle you just drew as a decoy to catch other triangles. As you kill each enemy, you can earn either a blue orb, which will raise the amount of triangles you can draw (the highest i got was 7), a red orb( which will increase your score), or a yellow orb(extra life).

Like I said, the game is easy and fun to play, but hard to master. As you progress through each chapter, the amount and types of enemies change, the shapes require more orbs so that you can trace them, a boss fight with occur, and so on. The boss fights are simple in theory, all you have to is outline the shape of the enemy, and then they are defeated. The enemies that appear other than the boos can be hard to avoid if you are concentrating on the boss, which made me repeat each fight at least 3 or 4 times before i beat it. There is also a time limit to worry about, but since there are no online leaderboards, completing the level, and taking your time is what matters here, and also having fun, as it is completely satisfying capturing enemies in triangles, and blowing them up with bombs.

There are around 40 plus levels, each of which can take multiple times to complete, but once you are done, there is nothing else to do, since there is no co-op function whatsoever. The game can be completed in around five hours or so(I have 3 levels left to finish), which may not sound like much, but that is more than enough to expect out of a single player experience in a community game.



Trino is a fun, challenging, and interesting game that will please gamers of all ages, go ahead and download it now, as you will not be disappointed. (A)

-Matt H.