Trigger Time

[h1]Trigger Time: A Test Case for Valve[/h1] It’s a real shame that Trigger Time has gone completely under the radar. It’s a story-driven top-down shoot ‘em up that should hold mass appeal to action gamers. However, almost a full week after its release it has yet to be reviewed on Steam. It Is my hope that providing this review I can help start remedying this and that more eyes get on the game. Instead of a traditional view, I want to provide my insight into why I believe the game hasn’t received the attention that it deserves. I’ll start by outlining what it isn’t and then diagnose what it is holding it back in my opinion. [h1]It’s Not the Price nor the Content[/h1] Trigger Time has been released at a very low $4.99. Therefore, it can’t possibly be the price that has deterred games from purchase. There is a substantial amount of content within the game for players to spend several hours playing through the entirety of the game. The game features 9 levels. What is most pleasurable about this content is that the levels are significant in size. Further, they are entirely unique. Throughout the time that I spent playing the game I never came across repeated content. The developers lived up to their main design goal which was ‘never to repeat things.’ Further, each level feels completely unique unto itself while also providing just enough synchronicity for it to obviously be the same game. [h1]It's Not the Gameplay[/h1] The game is literally teeming with enemies, physics puzzles, and hazards. Each of these requires active thinking as well as the obvious action to conquer. My favourite component was the gravity gun. There’s an interesting puzzle when you first get the gravity gun. The first part is learning the basic mechanic. You must move a pile of rocks to enter the next area of the level. You then enter an area with quickly respawning enemies. At first, I killed the enemies and wondered why I couldn’t progress further. I soon realized that to progress you must pick up those rocks with the gravity gun and put them into the path of lasers. Once the lasers are deactivated the gateway clears for the player to progress. Puzzles such as this are indicative of the entirety of the game and the constant thinking-action challenges presented. Each level has a boss fight. The boss fights are challenging and require different strategies to defeat. The variety here is exactly what I was hoping for. Each demands a minimum amount of skill to defeat. However, the player should have theoretically acquired those skills throughout the game. There’s a feeling that you’re never thrown in at the deep end and expected to have picked up those skills from prior experience. This makes the game a reasonable gateway into the genre for new and younger players. [h1]It's Not the Presentation[/h1] The one distinct complaint that I have with Trigger Time is that the default setting is only 1280 x 720 windowed. This means that the game was not even close to being full screen for me when I first started the game. When I decide which games, I am going to stream I usually choose them based upon the default settings. Games that are windowed and don’t take advantage of full-screen functionality are the first that I decide against streaming. However, the default options can be changed through the options menu and you can select the 1920x1080 as an option. It should be the default. Even still, this is more of a personal gripe than it is a reason for purchasing the game. And it doesn’t give an actual account of the game’s actual presentation. The truth is I’m a fan of the overall presentation of the game. The retro graphics are a wise decision for the game’s genre and theme. The sound is also quite fitting and much more than suitable. I quite enjoy how the story is presented to the player as well. Although the term ‘cutscene’ inspires fear into players I quite enjoyed the periodical cutscenes. They appear at somewhat regular intervals throughout the game and keep the game flowing. Instead of just being a dull and meaningless game. This provides Trigger Time a positive point of difference between it and many other similarly priced genre games. I’m glad that the story brings the game to life because it creates much more of an experience. [h1]It's Not Entirely Unique[/h1] The overall problem that I can identify with the game is that it isn’t entirely unique. There are many other games like it on the market – both that are inferior and superior to it. I often look for games that are unique unto themselves even if they’re aligned centrally to a given genre like this one is. As much as I enjoy the mechanics and the games’ features I don’t think that there is anything here that I haven’t experienced before. There are things Trigger Time does better than other titles, including some selling at much greater costs, but there’s nothing here that I haven’t seen before. This means that as much as the content hasn’t been repeated that there are times where the player will feel a sense of déjà vu. This isn’t a bad thing If you’re a genre addict but for those seeking entirely fresh experiences may not have a reason to purchase the game. [h1]Steamified[/h1] Unfortunately, another reason holding Trigger Time back from becoming a popular title among the Steam faithful is its lack of Steam Trading Cards. With the announced changes to games being admitted into the Steam trading card program indie games such as Trigger Time may be the games to pay the biggest price. Now before I explain my reasoning, don’t get me wrong. I understand that there were many shady developers out there that abused the system. All you had to do to earn a quick buck from Steam’s trading card program was to release an asset flip or worse and add trading cards. You could give out plenty of keys to bots who would farm the cards and put them onto the Steam marketplace. Those developers would earn more money from the marketplace than they did their abomination of games. It’s good that they’re gone. However, with the limitations put into place, some developers such as Shephf Games who would stand to benefit by this feature may be losing out on key sales. There is a portion of the Steam player base who will purchase a reasonably inexpensive game for the cards. They’d play the hell out of the game but understand that they would be getting a slight discount on the game as they’d quickly sell the cards away. It is my hope that devs who do make good games that have clearly had a lot of time and effort put into their creation are able to benefit from the full array of Steam’s features. It would feel like a defeat of the system if 90+% of the game’s sales were through bundling. The reality is devs get about 10 cents per copy that way. Great for the player and great for the bundle sites but not so great for the developer looking to make enough to not have to worry about where they’ll get the money for their next game. Trigger Time does, however, come packaged with Steam achievements and utilizes the Steam cloud. These are two handy features that help raise the value of the game in the eyes of Steam players. [h1]Verdict[/h1] Trigger Time is among the first indie releases that will suffer from the inability to add trading cards until it proves itself as a worthy seller on Steam. As such it should be treated as a test case by Valve. What we have here is a game that is very much worthy of purchase and the time it takes to play through the game. The game doesn’t do many things wrong not compared to the forces working against it. However, at just $4.99 I can recommend that action fans pick the game up. Rating: 7/10 For more reviews, giveaways, insights, streams and more visit [url=http://www.gamephasis.com/]Gamephasis[/url]. Thanks for reading.