Trine arrived in 2009 with a simple pitch: three heroes, one body, a kingdom in ruins. Frozenbyte built a puzzle-platformer around that idea, and Nobilis published it for PC. The game has since spread to PlayStation 3, Linux, Mac, and Wii U. Seventeen years on, it holds up because the physics do the talking.
Trailer, via GRYLINIA.
Zoya, Amadeus and Pontius at the Shrine
The setup is a forsaken kingdom. A king died without an heir, political instability followed, and an undead army attacked. Most inhabitants fled. The few who stayed are the ones you play.
Zoya the Thief, voiced by Vicky Krueger, is the quietest of the three. She carries a bow and arrow that charges when you hold the fire button. Longer charges mean farther, straighter shots. Her grappling hook fires at wooden surfaces. Regular arrows and the grappling hook are unlimited and do not drain her energy. Flaming arrows do drain it, but they hit harder, break certain objects, and light torches in dark areas.
Amadeus the Wizard, voiced by Kevin Howarth, moves objects remotely and conjures new ones. He starts with a cube. Later he gains an oblong platform called a plank, then a floating square pyramid that stays fixed in space unless he moves it. Everything he makes obeys physics and gravity. The plank bridges gaps. The box stacks.
Pontius the Knight rounds out the trio. The three meet at the shrine of ancient treasure and touch a magical object at the same time. They disappear. Amadeus recalls the treasure is an artifact called the Trine, which binds souls. Only one of them can physically exist at a time. The other two wait inside.
That is the whole trick, and it is a good one.
A Kingdom Told by a Narrator
Terry Wilton voices the all-knowing narrator. He speaks after the fact, filling in plot between levels and introducing and concluding the game. The Astral Academy, a school of magical studies, is evacuated because of the undead. Zoya sees a chance to search it for treasure. Amadeus wakes from a fortnight-long sleep after a backfired potion he prepared while learning the fireball spell. Pontius arrives convinced it is his duty to protect the academy.
The narrator carries the story. Without him, Trine would be three strangers in a ruin with no reason to care. He gives the kingdom a past and the heroes a reason to be in the same room. It is an old-fashioned choice, and it works better than cutscenes would have.
Blue Bottles, Green Bottles and Silver Orbs
The gameplay is physics first. Each character has a health meter and an energy meter. Energy fuels certain weapons and abilities and refills from blue bottles scattered through levels. Health refills from heart-shaped containers that drop when you destroy certain enemies.
A single experience rating is shared among all three characters. Green bottles and defeated enemies raise it. Every 50 experience points, each character gets one point to spend on upgrades. Treasure chests hold charms that grant new or upgraded abilities. You can move charms between characters, though some only affect certain ones.
Checkpoints are silver orbs on pedestals. Crossing one revives dead characters and tops up health and energy for anyone below a threshold. How much you get back depends on the difficulty setting. When a character dies, you pick another living one and keep going. If all three die, you return to the last checkpoint and all three come back.
Enemies are mostly walking skeletons, spiders and bats, plus boss characters. The bestiary is thin. The puzzles are not.
The Upgrades Worth Chasing
Zoya’s upgrade path is the most interesting of the three. She can learn to fire more arrows per shot, charge faster, and deal more damage with flaming arrows. She also takes a strong liking to the magical forest ruins near the end of the game, which is the closest Trine comes to giving a character an inner life.
Amadeus is the one who changes how you play. The cube is a tool. The plank is a bridge. The floating platform is a key that unlocks vertical space. Once you have all three, levels that looked impossible open up. The game leaves the combinations to you.
Pontius is the straightforward one. He hits things. That is not a criticism. Every puzzle game needs a character who solves problems by removing them, and the knight is the one who does it here.
Here is how the series has run since:
- Trine — 2009
- Trine 2 — 2011
- Trine: Enchanted Edition — 2014
- Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power — August 20, 2015
- Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince — October 8, 2019
- Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy — August 31, 2023
The Enchanted Edition rebuilt the original on Trine 2’s engine and added online multiplayer. That is the version that carries the original into the current console generation.
| Release | Date |
|---|---|
| Trine | 2009 |
| Trine 2 | 2011 |
| Trine: Enchanted Edition | 2014 |
| Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power | August 20, 2015 |
| Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince | October 8, 2019 |
| Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy | August 31, 2023 |
Where Trine Still Holds
The co-op design is the part that has aged best. Multiple players can join at any time and control different characters simultaneously. That sounds like a feature list item. In practice it changes the game. A solo player swaps between three toolkits. A co-op group argues about who should be the wizard. Both are good.
The combat is the weak point. Skeletons, spiders, bats and bosses are obstacles, not opponents. You fight them because they are between you and the next puzzle. The physics that make the puzzles sing make the fighting feel loose.
The story is thin on purpose. A dead king, an undead army, a magical artifact that binds souls. That is enough scaffolding for a game that wants you to think about a plank and a gap, not about a plot. The narrator carries more weight than the writing deserves, and Wilton’s delivery is why.
What matters most is the restraint. Frozenbyte built three characters with distinct abilities and then refused to give any of them a move that solves everything. Zoya cannot conjure. Amadeus cannot fight. Pontius cannot reach. The game is a conversation between three incomplete tools, and the levels are written to make you have it.
The Enchanted Edition rebuilt the original on Trine 2’s engine and added online play. The first game remains the cleanest statement of the idea.
Trine is not the best puzzle-platformer of its era. It is the one with the clearest thesis. Three heroes, one body, a kingdom that needs saving. The physics are the argument, and the argument holds.
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