A resourceful fox is on a mission to recover his TV remote after some bad men have taken it in Trifox, a game that is innovative, dramatic, uplifting, and devoted. This Glowfish Interactive game won’t be the epic that defines this hardware generation, but its simplicity ensures real and honest fun.
Trifox is an action-adventure game with a top-down perspective that is full of nods to old gaming greats and has twin-stick shooter-like gameplay. For those who are more committed, there are also some mysteries to find. The levels are full of coins to collect to unlock new skills.
There is a boss that may be defeated quickly in under 10 minutes after each quest.
The game stands out from the competition thanks to an intriguing skill selection and upgrading system that lets you customise the fighting and exploring style to suit the preferences of each player. This Trifox review will examine all the factors that should encourage those seeking a fun and well-made experience to try out this odd action adventure.
Three foxes in one
Trifox’s skill management system, which utilises a system of three classes—warrior, mage, and engineer—is what gives the game its name. The first one centres around hand-to-hand fighting, the second on magic-enhanced medium-range combat, and the third on traps, turrets, and machine guns. Each is connected to a specific movement skill. The engineers have a small helicopter in their backpack that allows them to fly for a brief period, a clear reference to Ratchet and Clank, while the warriors have a dash similar to that of hack and slash.
Players are teleported to a hangar that serves as a skill tree after the first level. The specific skills of each class, such as the spin attack for the warrior, a flamethrower turret for the engineer, or mystical self-aiming bullets for the magician, can be unlocked with money gathered during stages and given after each mission. There are nine distinct skills for each class, a total of 27 skills, and you can mix any of them. Do you want a melee attack, magic bullets, and a helicopter? Quickly completed, in part because of the clever Trifox command management system.
If this game’s heart is an action adventure, then its gameplay mechanics are similar to twin-stick shooters, in which one analogue controls the character’s movement while the other changes his aim. We advise using a controller specifically for this purpose, although when we tested it with a mouse and keyboard, the experience was not significantly changed. The simplicity of Trifox is what makes it so appealing. There are only two buttons, A for jumping and B for using the unique movement of each class. You can customise your command system by assigning the skill you prefer to each trigger and backbone of your pad in the equipment room (or to the keyboard keys that feel most natural to you).
Explore, fight, upgrade, repeat
The warrior class is unquestionably the most effective for learning how adversaries behave, the breadth of effects that skills can have, and how to explore each level. When adversaries began to swarm, one of his first unlocked attacks is a strong punch to the ground that stunned everybody in its path. You will need to shatter a lot of boxes, vases, and other set pieces to unlock several skills in the game’s early stages. The magician’s major weapon is the ability to accomplish it more quickly since it produces missiles that, within a certain range, will hit the target on their own.
The engineer’s fire-breathing turrets will also be there for you in a pinch, especially as three can be deployed at once, to keep the larger foes at bay.
The watchword is experimentation once you’ve gotten acquainted with the top-down perspective, the twin-stick shooter mechanics, and the management of the talents’ (extremely brief) recovery intervals. The game doesn’t offer refunds after you pay for an upgrade, but because you earn so many coins per level, you can acquire a new ability after just one mission if the one you just obtained turns out to be inefficient for your fighting style. Each stage has multiple items buried within it and is repeating (with upgradeable stats like the number of deaths or total time). Only the most ardent completionists should look for them because they don’t provide any game benefits.
Quotes and originality
Trifox draws inspiration from and quotes many of the greatest old-school games, including Crash Bandicoot and Ratchet and Clank, in everything from the settings to the narrative style. For instance, the game’s opening four levels have a Caribbean/Tiki backdrop that Crash fans will be very familiar with. Only the bosses later in the game offer distinctive mechanics, as the enemies lack variety and originality. In the first four stages, they always seem different but soon begin to repeat themselves.
On the other hand, platforming and environmental puzzles consistently manage to astonish without getting challenging. To complete a level, you must engage in combat as well as exploration, from traditional platforms that vanish once you jump on them to electrical circuits that activate automatic turrets.
Trifox is the perfect example of a casual video game; it’s a little retro but still fresh enough to avoid becoming stale. Only a few doors automatically close and prevent returning inside a single level (albeit you can always replay it) and the fact that the perspective from above occasionally makes it difficult to handle jumps and exploration are annoying.
