TRI: Of Friendship and Madness

TRI is a strong recommendation against. While the game is really creative and unconventional in a good way, the main game mechanics are still too janky to be fully enjoyable. Sometimes you understand exactly what you need to do, but struggles against the mechanics and the keyboard in order to be able to achieve what you want, which is one of the most frustrating things a game can do --- the challenge should be in figuring out the solution to a puzzle, not in executing it (at least not in a game like this -- maybe yes in a precision platformer, but not here). If this was bad in the first 10 levels, wait until you get to level 11 and the whole light bending stuff. This is where you ragequite, believe me. Now, don't get me wrong - this is a bold game. There are not a lot of first person puzzlers out there, and TRI is entirely capable of standing out from the crowd on its own. The idea of conjuring triangles out of nowhere to use as ramps, platforms, ledges, of defying gravity, walking on walls - this is not something you see everyday in a game. And my guess is because this must be hard as hell to implement. Well, TRI tries its best to implement it, and what we have is a playable product that suffers a bit from the jank mentioned earlier. Triangles are drawn but sometimes they are not walkable on. Sometimes they invert gravity, other times they don't. It's a bit too inconsistent and finicky to be enjoyable. Aesthetically, it's a pleasing game. There are no photo-realistic graphics, but the stylized graphics we get are well done and enjoyable, and effects are usually pretty good. Most importantly, given the surreal geometry of the levels, the graphics are pretty readable which is something the devs could easily have fumbled. The soundscape is very unique and engaging -- it's a mix of zen with tribal sounds, and soothing tunes that carry enough energy to keep you playing, but not enough to drain you. It's a good mix. There are outlines of a plot there, but we all know we're not playing for that and it barely matters. It doesn't hurt either, and to be honest, the few times you glimpse the fox running away from you are usually enjoayble. For achievement hunters (not my case), getting all the idols is an absolute chore even with a guide, and without a guide some of them are near impossible to find. While some might find this an engaging challenge, it felt like busywork to me. The base game is already challenging enough alone, and the idols add to the janky challenge, which is not something I was particularly after. TL;DR: janky first person puzzle platformer with great aesthetic, both in visuals and sounds, but with meh controls and a steep difficulty curve that could throw you off more people than it retains

[h1] Dongo [/h1]

I really wanted to love this game - it has an excellent visual direction and wonderful soundtrack, and I am normally a fan of puzzle games - but I just couldn't get into it. I think it might have to do with a level of tedium that other reviewers comment on, but more importantly for me, I found that most of this game's puzzles were simply not fun. I never got that "wow - I see it now!" smart feeling that makes me love puzzle games like Portal or FEZ; more often than not I felt frustrated or bored, slowly adjusting triangles into what felt like pixel-perfect corners. Overall, I don't think TRI is a terrible game, but I can't recommend it for fans of other puzzle games who might stumble on this and think it would be a similar experience.

Dans un style assez épuré avec un gameplay qui se rapprochera dans l'esprit plus d'un 'Disoriented' que d'un 'Portal', ce jeu de puzzle-plateforme à la 1ère personne va littéralement vous retourner le cerveau. Il a une petite trame narrative dans le fond mais qui servira juste à l'esthétique du titre. A chaque niveaux bien distincts, il s'agira donc d'aller récupérer 3 idoles principales pour passer au niveau suivant (ainsi qu'en moyenne une dizaine d'autres plus petites optionnelles bien planquées un peu partout, mais qui rajoutent un challenge supplémentaire pour débloquer la galerie d'images bonus) Au départ, nous avons juste la possibilité de créer des triangles pour en faire des plateformes, puis des possibilités supplémentaires s'ajouteront comme marcher sur les murs/plafonds sur ces triangles, s'en servir pour réfléchir des rayons de lumières pour résoudre des puzzles, téléportation etc... Pour un concept issu à la base d'une game-jam le Ludum Dare #20 en 2011, ils l'ont poussé bien loin. Très plaisant à parcourir avec sa bande son reposante, même s'il sera de plus en plus difficile d'enchaîner les niveaux qui deviendront de plus en plus grand & complexes à explorer surtout avec les possibilités que l'on possède qui devront nous faire voir l'espace & la gravité comme relatif...voir presque psychédélique & envoûtant à la recherche du renard dans le labyrinthe... (& pas le lapin blanc...)

The longer I play this, the less and less I want to. This is just unfun. Puzzles aren't really "puzzles", it feels more like sitting and having to do and redo triangles that are just a bit off on angle and most of the playthrough can be brute forced with them. Plus last time I've touched it before was in ancient 2018. I open the game and find myself on level with insane amount of white on top of the ceiling where one of the idols is hidden and it's such a pain to navigate in it and it's just a pain for the eyes. On positive side it has cloud saves (otherwise i won't be able to load to that chapter that I did when I came back years later to give it another try) and artstyle is nice enough that it doesn't look outdated thanks to it.

I bought this when it was released and played until chapter 14, I think. Then I got stuck in something, which needed me to act a bit too fast. I still enjoyed the game a lot. Yesterday I started a new game and was going to just play a bit, and played 5 hours straight. I'm getting stuck, falling a lot and my finger joints hurt (no controller support), but the game is still fun. Although this time it seems I got stuck a lot earlier (maybe I'm even slower than 10 years ago). The basic idea of making your way around by creating triangles is different from other puzzle games and gives you some freedom in making your own way around, which is always fun. So, still enjoying the game and not bothered by the fact that I will never manage to reach the end in this game.

Довга, нудна, неоптимізована, з графікою в стилі "смерть очам", практично без сюжету і музикою, від якою ниють зуби вже через п'ять хвилин. В ідеалі вона повинна бути коротша втричі.

Not having controller support ran me off.

While this game started out interesting and had some very good and fun levels, over half of the levels were not enjoyable and took a lot of pixel perfect tweaking to align the triangles, or required "find the different tile that you can move but its identical to all other tiles". Additionally, the death mechanics from poison or lasers were extremely annoying and did not add any value to the game as the "stick to your triangle" gravity rotation would sometimes fail without reason and plunge you to your death. This doesn't sound bad until you find out your last save was from 20 minutes ago and you now need to redo 20 minutes of pixel tweaking or careful parkour. This lead to a very annoying/un-fun "save-scumming", creating a quick save point any time I was near a death mechanic or cliff, and then constantly updating said quick save after I made any small amount of progress. I sadly cannot recommend this game to others unless you are OK with a tedious experience and can tolerate either re-progging a level multiple times or enjoy pixel tweaking things to get a reflection to happen perfectly. -- Side note that did not affect the recommendation or any of the above text, the triangles had a horrible flashing effect from something with the graphics engine not agreeing with linux perfectly (specific hardware/OS setup: EndeavourOS/Wayland, CPU: AMD 5900X, GPU: AMD 7900XTX). While this is likely an incredibly tiny group of people, if you are on linux and have epilepsy, be very careful trying out this game.

This is a puzzle game like no other. I play a lot of first person puzzle games and I’ve encountered no game to compare this game with. Its core puzzle mechanics are unique. The implementation of these core puzzle mechanics are well done. The level design is very creative and every level is significantly different than the previous one. The levels are quite large also. All in all this is a good game and certainly worth playing if you like an original puzzle game. But there is one word of caution and that is that this game is very long and you are probably going to get stuck many times not knowing how to proceed. It took me a long time to get far into the game. So long that I actually stopped playing the game at one point. I only picked it up many months later and then spent many hours finishing the game. I’m glad I finished the game but boy did it take a lot of effort. I got stuck many times which is one of the reasons it took so long. But in the end I only used outside help twice to be able to proceed. You need a lot of patience and experimentation to finish this game. From the steam achievements I know that only 6.3% of players finished the game. Is it a good puzzle game? Absolutely! But I do have a bit of a love / hate relationship with it.