Trinity is a commercial puzzle game by “black ice00100” in which you play through a variety of challenging levels requiring you to click on blocks and switch their colors until at least 80% of the generated pattern is one color. The block you click on does not change color, but the blocks around it do. To make things even harder they change in sequence. A blue block will change to red, and a red block will change to green. Confusing? You’ll pick it up.
Trinity sells for just 98 cents (USD) at the time I write this article, via secure online purchase with BMT Micro. If you don’t have any electronic money you can try the demo but it has limited features. I snapped up a copy myself for only $1.56 (NZD) which generously includes free updates. I received Trinity in an email only minutes after purchase and downloaded the 47 megabyte game. A bit excessive, huh? Turns out its due to a massive sound file included with the game. Trinity is just 12 megabytes on its own.
After purchasing I discovered that my key was getting rejected by the registration system. You’ll be pleased to know the issue has been reported and a new update has fixed the problem.
After getting through a couple of splash screens you are greeted with a nice menu full of lots of options. You can set the difficulty level (I seriously recommend easy for any newbies) and you can tweak a few settings. There is also a small tutorial explaining the basics of the game and a very simple level editor allowing you to construct your own challenges.
You’ll notice that parts of the GUI are blurred which can become a little uncomfortable, and popup messages are transparent. The game also has a flashlight that follows the cursor so parts of the screen will be shaded until you hover over them. These three factors combine confuse me, and I am not sure if it hurts or promotes gameplay. Its one of those things that you either love or you hate.
When you finally decide to play a level you’ll be thrown in to a dark, luminous, mysterious layout which is complimented by both bright and dark graphics and a funky background. You’ll be overwhelmed by explosion sounds and emitters ranging from sparks to ellipsoids, followed by the default rain effect that changes colors corresponding the what blocks are currently dominating the generated pattern. It truly is a beautiful display.
You are given just 60 seconds on easy mode to complete the puzzle. I believe it's only 40 seconds on medium mode. As for hard mode, I don’t even want to know.
There is a counter to the left of the screen that shows you what your time limit is and how much time has gone by so far. There is also a clock at the bottom right of the screen. I guess it comes handy when you want to keep track of time rather than suddenly realizing you have been playing for hours.
Once you complete the level the counter stops and the colored blocks that dominate 80% or more of the pattern spark and explode. When you are ready you can proceed to the next level. If you fail you can retry that level, but it regenerates a block sequence so you won’t be able to have another go at that particular pattern. There are indeed levels, but the shape and form of the puzzle variates all the time unless you load a pre-made map.
As far as bugs go I noticed that sometimes when returning to easy mode, the save file will not load correctly. At times I have had an easy mode level and the level editor overlap at the same time. On one occasion I also had the load screen hang over the game until I exited to the main menu, blurring all features of the game. The only fix to this appears to be deleting your save files and starting from scratch. I find that if I use the menu button rather than pressing escape this doesn’t occur as often, if not at all.
To conclude, Trinity is a beautiful and addictive puzzle game that sells at a price anyone can afford. There are a few features that might not appeal to everyone and the odd bug can twist things up a bit, but if you can appreciate the engaging levels then it truly won’t matter. Again, the demo is available to anybody with an internet connection and 12 megabytes spare.
For what it's worth I rate this game an 8.5/10.
