xbox live indie game reviews

In Trino, you assume the role of a tadpole-like swimming critter trapped in a polygonal cage. Other, meaner critters are unaffected by the boundaries, though, and colliding with one will cost you a life. Your only line of defense is your ability to create triangle strips. For those of you who don't do graphics programming, here's what Wikipedia has to say:

A triangle strip is a series of connected triangles, sharing vertices, allowing for faster rendering and more efficient memory usage for computer graphics. They are optimized on most graphics cards, making them the most efficient way of describing an object...

...after the first triangle is defined using three vertices, each new triangle can be defined by only one additional vertex, sharing the last two vertices defined for the previous triangle.

As you swim around inside your cage, pressing 'A' will drop a point. A glowing neon line will now extend from your tadpole to that point. Drop three of those points and you've got a glowing triangle--zapping any enemies caught within the bounds. As you progress, you get more vertices... meaning you can add another triangle on top of the one you've already made (and another, and  another... and you get the point). Enemies killed in successive triangles offer bonus points (x2 for the second triangle, x3 for the third triangle, and so forth).

Each level features a different mix of enemies and a different shaped cage. Some enemies are content to just drift upwards, some drift randomly, and some will actively try to chase you. A particularly annoying bad guy follows you around and "cuts" the points you leave behind. Once vanquished, enemies leave behind a little blood-cell-looking thing that gives you bonus points. Every so often, an enemy will glow green or yellow. Yellow enemies will leave behind an extra life instead of bonus points, and green enemies allow you to unlock the vertices of the cage surrounding you. Each green pickup corresponds to one point on the cage, and once all the points are unlocked you can trace out the shape of the cage (leaving one point at each vertex) to end the level.

I've only played through the first campaign, but the variety of enemies and the shapes of the levels make for a great change of pace. I didn't think the final boss was tough enough, but hot damn it's visually impressive (you're freed from the surrounding cage, but have to trace a shape around a centipede-like creature spewing more enemies). This isn't all that shocking, though--the whole game is incredibly slick looing and as polished as anything I've seen in a downloadable XBox title (Community or otherwise).

There seem to be a couple of issues with save games (I know I beat chapter one, but when I went back to do the second chapter it made me start over from the beginning), but as a whole the only thing separating Trino from a "real" XBLA title are its lack of leaderboards and achievements (and there's not really anything they can do about that). As a single-player experience, the game is very meditative. Because sound is driven by player actions to some extent (you choose when to drop points and when to complete your triangles), it actually has a bit of a Rez vibe (though the gameplay is completely different)--high praise in my book.

I don't think the demo will do it justice, as its hard to get to the really cool bits in only 8 minutes. If you're on the fence about it (or haven't even looked at it yet), I highly recommend giving Trino a shot. It took awhile, but CarneyVale Showtime now has some competition for which game is the best Community Game. Worth the points!