I already posted about the Trine demo, so I don’t want to go over the same things again. You can find my original thoughts on the game here. This post is mostly about the multiplayer.

I enjoyed the demo so much that must have been talking about it quite a bit. So much so, in fact, that friend bought me a copy of the full game on Steam, with the promise that I’d play it with him. Thus, I headed, Logitec Dual Action gamepad in hand, over to his house to play it with him and his twin brother.

We logged into my Steam account from his house, quickly downloaded the game, and jacked in our gamepads. My friend uses a 65” rear projection TV as his monitor (color me jealous), so it was a fine way to play the game. We started at the beginning, with the game set on hard.

Ten hours later we looked up from the screen. It was dark outside. I was thirsty and hungry. What had happened? We’d had the most fun playing a video game than we’d had in a long time, that’s what.

Trine allows for 3 player co-op multiplayer. Each person takes control of one of the three characters, the wizard, the knight, or the thief. All three players are active and playing at the same time, on the same screen, and must cooperate together to solve puzzles and move through the levels. And that is what happens…some of the time.

The rest of the time players are actively provoking each other. Three players on the same screen in an interactive physics game with enough checkpoints to make death not a big deal means that they will constantly be trying to kill each other. The wizard will destroy platforms as his friends are walking across them, the knight will throw boxes into the other characters in hopes of knocking them off platforms to their deaths, the rogue will happily grappling hook up to safety while the knight and the wizard are overwhelmed by some evil undead rampage. It all happens and it’s all awesome.

Playing it with my friends, we had more fun going through the levels like a fantasy combination of the Curly, Larry, and Moe, than anything else. And it’s there the game’s true strength lies. It’s possible that my experience wasn’t typical, but I’d wager it’s more typical than you’d think. Give three friends (or players) the ability to kill each other over and over, and that’s what they’ll do.

Of course, the makers of Trine probably didn’t intend this – they probably intended the players to work together and move through the game as a group. All that meant was we had to try harder to kill each other.

However, even though playing Trine in this way was fun, it leads to me to believe that there is a place for a puzzle/platform based game that encourages players to move through the levels and actively prevent the other players from doing the same. It would have been fun to be rewarded for killing my teammates, or trapping them in the corner under piles of boxes. I’d like to play a game that was almost like a platforming race, with rewards for the player who solved the puzzles the fastest and slowed down his friends. All the players would need to be in the same space, like Trine, but be able to progress independently. This would be a problem if they were all playing on the same screen, but I’m sure a split-screen or multi-screen (read: separate computers) interface would work just fine.

I’d like to be the first to jump to a higher platform, push some boxes down on the other players, or pull a lever that closed the short path I just took and made them take the long way. I’d like to come to a wall and spend fifteen seconds painstakingly stacking crates to create a stairway, only to get jumped over and overtaken by another player as he stole my puzzle solution, blasted my boxes to bits while I was still at the bottom. I’d like to take my revenge on him later by pushing him off a platform while he was walking across it.

I want to play Super Smash Brothers mixed with Trine.

Anyone know of anything like that? If so, shoot me a link in a comment and I’ll check it out.