As loathsome as it is to pigeonhole a beautiful, original game like Rat King’s TRI: Of Friendship and Madness, it cleanly locks into the stable of Portal-type puzzle games, where it bumps shoulders with its contemporaries like Magrunner: Dark Pulse and Quantum Conundrum. However, TRI manages to distinguish itself from its physics-based brethren by throwing Newtonian theory right out the window for an experience that’s ethereal, spiritual, and genuinely fun.
TRI‘s core mechanic is based around the eponymous artifact, a device that allows you to create and destroy triangles in order to traverse the game’s 16 levels, slowly adding features as the puzzles become more complex (I guess even ancient artifacts get firmware updates), all in the name of collecting a trio of fox statues that unlock the end of the level. The game starts simply enough, with players building triangles in a 3D space as platforms to move to different areas, but soon starts giving players the ability to string the triangles together in a bridge formation to walk on walls and ceilings, and the ability to reflect laser beams using these same triangles.
Sometimes the concept of spatial relativity and the game’s mechanics gets a little frustrating, especially when it comes to stitching together bridges that move from the floor to the wall. If there ever was a game that could benefit from 3D or VR technology, TRI would be it, as trying to anchor the vertices of a triangle in 3D space can be slightly daunting at times, but the game’s forgiving enough that it rarely becomes a genuine issue.
The game is thoroughly committed to its world, which is an odd mishmash of Asian and tribal aesthetics, boldly colored and realized through a hazy, dreamy lens. There’s a slow-drip backstory involving The Odd Gods, a pair of foxes, and the encroaching madness that comes from the use of the TRI artifact. It’s not a particularly compelling tale, but it provides justification for the gorgeous design of the game itself, which practically revels in its surreal nature.
However, those looking for an accessible, gripping narrative will probably become frustrated or bored with the game’s slow-burn, loose narrative. Visually, triangles pepper the landscape, from the windows and doorways to the angular leaves on the trees and the dust motes in the air, and everything is washed in bright, beautiful colors. The soundtrack furthers the realization, mixing together twanging mouth harps with chirpy electronics and Asian-flavored flutes in a way that sounds infinitely better to the ear than it does on paper.
There’s also a decent amount of meat to the game. Sure, there are “only” 16 levels, but those levels can take a long time to traverse, especially for completionists trying to find all of the idols and statues that unlock a meaty host of extras that detail the making of TRI, encouraging players to be patient, thorough, and to replay levels.