Game Review: Triforce
2018-Dec-19, Wednesday 16:55![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Newbies can't Triforce.
Someone linked to an article on Kotaku about this game, saying that it was a take on the original Hyrule Fantasy, but with puzzles involving warping of space and perspective. I loved Antichamber when I played it, the way that the puzzles all involved changing how you thought and trying actions that would be nonsensical in a normal game. Walking backward through a door led to a different room than walking forwards through it did, A window might look on two separate rooms, neither of which is the one on the other side of it. I grew disenchanted with Antichamber when it turned into more colored goop puzzles than unorthodox thinking, and I was hoping that Triforce would recapture the feeling of the first half-hour of Antichamber.
It was fun, but being another Antichamber isn't what it was trying to do.
I don't...I...what?
Triforce begins with familiarity, the same way that the original Legend of Zelda began. After grabbing the sword from the old man and exploring, you'll find an old woman who tells you to go up, up, up, up the mountain to go forward, and and then going down the stairs reveals...this. A mountain level warped on itself, and that's when Triforce starts to get interesting.
Triforce has two separate control schemes and both of them are required to beat the game. The first control scheme is the standard one to move Link around in the four cardinal directions and swing the sword. The second is to move the level on which Link is standing. When the donut appears, Link moves independently of the level. Here it's possible to avoid having to move the camera and simply go up up up, but the first dungeon (of three) is a cylinder and beating it requires moving the camera around. Each further dungeon is more complicated, and the rooms where the triforce pieces are located are all more complicated shapes still. I think at least one of them is a Möbius strip twisted again on itself, though since the floor is black and blends in with the black background floor I can't quite fix the shape in my mind. Navigating the triforce rooms was the hardest part of the game, and in a way, I feel like it was unnecessarily hard. A bit more differentiation between the foreground and background would have made it must easier to figure out where Link was so I wouldn't have had to keep rotating the camera around trying to find out not just where to go, but where I was starting from.
At least there were no bosses, nor any enemies harder than Darknuts. I can't imagine trying to fight Manhandla on a level shaped like an hourglass or a pretzel, which is probably why the designers didn't force me to.
There's more to the game than just navigating the dungeons and controlling the camera, though only a bit. Before each triforce piece is a short text conversation between Z[elda] and G[anon], with L[ink] in the role of the person playing through the game. They talk about perspective, and about whether replaying warps it in a way that playing it the first time didn't. That's probably why Triforce is based on the first Legend of Zelda game, now that I think about it, since the Second Quest moved everything around so that the game was the same, and yet different, requiring a new way of looking at it to win. Much like Triforce itself, though at least here I could use the camera controls to force a new perspective. Doing so in real life is much harder.
Triforce is available for free on Itchi.io. Get it before Nintendo gets to it.
Someone linked to an article on Kotaku about this game, saying that it was a take on the original Hyrule Fantasy, but with puzzles involving warping of space and perspective. I loved Antichamber when I played it, the way that the puzzles all involved changing how you thought and trying actions that would be nonsensical in a normal game. Walking backward through a door led to a different room than walking forwards through it did, A window might look on two separate rooms, neither of which is the one on the other side of it. I grew disenchanted with Antichamber when it turned into more colored goop puzzles than unorthodox thinking, and I was hoping that Triforce would recapture the feeling of the first half-hour of Antichamber.
It was fun, but being another Antichamber isn't what it was trying to do.
I don't...I...what?
Triforce begins with familiarity, the same way that the original Legend of Zelda began. After grabbing the sword from the old man and exploring, you'll find an old woman who tells you to go up, up, up, up the mountain to go forward, and and then going down the stairs reveals...this. A mountain level warped on itself, and that's when Triforce starts to get interesting.
Triforce has two separate control schemes and both of them are required to beat the game. The first control scheme is the standard one to move Link around in the four cardinal directions and swing the sword. The second is to move the level on which Link is standing. When the donut appears, Link moves independently of the level. Here it's possible to avoid having to move the camera and simply go up up up, but the first dungeon (of three) is a cylinder and beating it requires moving the camera around. Each further dungeon is more complicated, and the rooms where the triforce pieces are located are all more complicated shapes still. I think at least one of them is a Möbius strip twisted again on itself, though since the floor is black and blends in with the black background floor I can't quite fix the shape in my mind. Navigating the triforce rooms was the hardest part of the game, and in a way, I feel like it was unnecessarily hard. A bit more differentiation between the foreground and background would have made it must easier to figure out where Link was so I wouldn't have had to keep rotating the camera around trying to find out not just where to go, but where I was starting from.
At least there were no bosses, nor any enemies harder than Darknuts. I can't imagine trying to fight Manhandla on a level shaped like an hourglass or a pretzel, which is probably why the designers didn't force me to.
There's more to the game than just navigating the dungeons and controlling the camera, though only a bit. Before each triforce piece is a short text conversation between Z[elda] and G[anon], with L[ink] in the role of the person playing through the game. They talk about perspective, and about whether replaying warps it in a way that playing it the first time didn't. That's probably why Triforce is based on the first Legend of Zelda game, now that I think about it, since the Second Quest moved everything around so that the game was the same, and yet different, requiring a new way of looking at it to win. Much like Triforce itself, though at least here I could use the camera controls to force a new perspective. Doing so in real life is much harder.
G: I LIKE THAT GAMES ARE ALWAYS BIGGER THAN WE THINK THEY ARE, EVEN OLD GAMES LIKE THE LEGEND OF ZELDA.And that's really why video games are one of my favorite forms of entertainment. They're interactive. They're social in that you can discuss them with others and draw meaning from them, but players also interact with the game itself in a way they don't interact with theatre or movies.
Z: BIGGER ON THE INSIDE THAN THEY ARE ON THE OUTSIDE.
G: IT MEANS PART OF THE GAME IS FIGURING OUT WHAT WE WANT TO DO WITH IT. WHAT RULES WE WANT TO PLAY BY.
Triforce is available for free on Itchi.io. Get it before Nintendo gets to it.
