Technology and charm are not two things that naturally go hand-in-hand. This year has seen massive studios create technologically stunning new ways to render brown dirt roads and shattered concrete – there’s just no room for whimsy in triple-A development, it seems. That’s where the indie scene comes in. Frozenbyte’s Trine 2 is a great big cozy comfort-blanket of a game, but is charisma all this fairy-tale storybook has to offer? It takes more than graphics to make a complex platform-puzzle game sing, after all. Wrap up warm, grab yourself some hot cocoa and read on for our verdict.

Story-wise, it feels a fairytale, and that’s just fine. The narrator sets the scene at the beginning of each chapter, and the protagonist’s banter fills in the rest. The three heroes of the first game – Pontius the portly knight (who fights, smashes stuff and blocks/lifts stuff with his shield), Zoya the sassy thief (runs, jumps, shoots with her bow and swings from wooden objects with a grappling hook) and Amadeus the nervous wizard (who summons boxes and platforms out of thin air and can levitate physics objects, so long as he’s not standing on them) – have been called back into action by the Trine, the mystical artifact that bound them together and led them to save the kingdom in the first game. They don’t know quite what is wrong, yet, but that doesn’t stop them from setting off for adventure post-haste. There’s a lot of places to go, a few nice characters to meet, and a lot of charming back-and-forth dialogue between the mismatched heroes. While neither deep nor detailed, the story provides ample excuse to bound and run across the 13 quite lengthy levels.

The trailer really says more about the graphics – and, in turn, the first impressions the game makes – than I ever could. The world of Trine 2 is a lush, bright, colorful fairytale world full of witches, goblins, giant animals, dragons and spectacular magic. Even the darkest of caves is colorfully lit, and sunlight dazzles as it reflects off anything even vaguely shiny. The devil is in the details, though, and this game is devillishly detailed. It seems that almost everything in the game-world is affected by the physics engine in some way, from grass to leafy platforms that bend convincingly as you jump on them, to creaking mechanisms and even random bits of debris. So consistent and coherent is this fine detailing that you don’t notice it after a while – it just feels right. It’s also unquestionably prettier than a great many higher-budget games, with only the hand-drawn artistry of Rayman Origins providing any recent competition. Audio-wise, the game is a class act, too. The soundtrack is rousing, the sound effects are convincing and the voice acting – while not up to the glowing highs of Bastion’s narrator – is never less than good.

As good as it might sound or look, it’s computational power that steals the show. Extending far beyond background details, the physics, of course, are the cornerstone of the majority of puzzles in this game. While there’s plenty of running and jumping, and a smattering of combat (which is weakest element, although not bad), the core of this game is stopping, thinking and puzzling your way past complex arrangements of obstacles. Sometimes it’s as simple as navigating a spike-pit by lining it with boxes that are safe to stand on. Sometimes it’s more complicated, like assembling a series of pipes to divert wind to somewhere you need it to be. Sometimes it’s more situational, with control levers moving around magical portals that translocate moving objects or even fire from one side of a room to the other. There’s plenty of variety in the challenges that are presented, but none of them are excessively difficult.

‘Cozy’ springs back to mind as the adjective of choice. Unless you specifically bump up the difficulty (leading to tougher combat and more fragile health-bars) there’s nothing massively challenging to be found here. Oh, you’ll occasionally be stumped on a puzzle for a few minutes, or even have to give a boss fight a couple of extra shots, but the experience is seldom – if ever- frustrating. The platforming is forgiving, the puzzles often have alternative solutions stemming from the abilities your characters will gain through collecting enough magical experience orbs around the levels, and the combat is largely a matter of keeping Pontius’ shield up until you can safely counter with a few solid sword swings.

‘Forgiving’ is another word that applies well. If a single character dies, you just have to wander back to the last checkpoint in the level to revive them at no cost. If you get thoroughly stuck on a puzzle, the game will offer you a hint after a few minutes. Adding additional players for co-operative play (allowing all three heroes to be on screen at once, rather than switching between them – the game also supports both local and online co-op) makes less difference to the difficulty than you’d think, too. While having more players does make combat easier, it introduces new problems, like how to get all three characters across an obstacle that only one of them can cross easily, forcing them to use their abilities in new ways that just don’t apply to single-player mode. Amadeus can levitate friends across gaps on his flying platforms, but can’t perform this trick on himself. In return, Pontius can raise his shield to act as a makeshift platform, for instance.

It’s not all sunshine and lollipops, of course (although the game contains both in ample quantities), but most complaints that can be levelled at the game are minor grumbles at worst. As mentioned, the combat is relatively simplistic, and the combat-oriented upgrades for Zoya and Pontius just speed up the process. Enemy AI isn’t amazing either, with them getting lost behind obstacles as simple as crates, sometimes, or even just glitching out and spinning on the spot. Nothing a quick arrow to the head can’t fix, but a minor blemish on the overall presentation. Perhaps it’s just my ham-handed nature, but I also found the limited recovery-clamber (in case you almost miss a jump) a little inconsistent on when it would work, but that’s maybe just my fault. In an interesting decision, some things have been simplified over the original Trine, with character abilities now being unlimited and inherent, rather than limited by a skill energy bar. The magic artifacts from the first game are gone, too, replaced with a basic skill tree, meaning less emphasis on exploration and bonus puzzles, unless you want to track down all the bonus experience orbs, hidden paintings and poems scattered in the less obvious corners of the levels.

In the end, Trine 2 is a fine sequel to a very good game. The highs are higher and the lows aren’t quite as low and the difficulty no longer spikes in strange places, offering a more steady learning curve and a more accessible game overall. The environments are dazzling, the puzzles are satisfying and the atmosphere is utterly enchanting. Even the seemingly odd disappearance of all the magic artifacts in the game is laughed off in a little bit of dialogue during an early level, as Amadeus pauses to question where all their earlier loot had gone. While not a huge game – 6-8 hours for a single playthrough, depending on how thoroughly you want to scour the levels – it doesn’t feel short or truncated, either, making the $15 price-tag feel very reasonable, especially considering the AAA-demolishing production values on show. While the PC version was reviewed here, the PS3 and 360 versions of the first game were fine ports, and there’s no reason to doubt in their quality this time round. Frozenbyte have done a fine job here, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

[Trine 2]

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This article’s game is Trine 2 for the PC/Steam, by Frozenbyte!

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