By Chris Picone, 07 June 2023

Trinity Fusion is a promising roguelike 3d action platformer that's recently released into Early Access.  It promises to be pretty big with three characters, each of which belong to a separate universe that you must fight your way through, each universe featuring its own biomes and monsters (or robots). It's already fairly sizeable as-is, and polished too, but it's still got another year of EA development in front of it, so the end product should be pretty spotless.

I was at first captivated by the art in the screenshots - they're pretty damn gorgeous, both in the cutscenes and in the actual game.  Every now and then the layering is a bit obvious in-game, where the characters and monsters don't seem to quite fit in with the rest of the world, but otherwise it's got plenty of polish. And the cutscenes are gorgeous, the opening scenes in particular blew my mind.  There's nice variety across the levels too, as you explore different regions of the multiverse.  In terms of gameplay though, the combat - while fun - lacks any real innovation, it's just a case of dashing past enemy attacks and then hitting them from behind, using your secondary attack occasionally (and if you happen to find a decent one).  As you kill more enemies you gain access to high level weapons but there doesn't seem to be a ton of variety - and while there are three playable characters, they seem to share the same abilities and weapons.  Similarly, the levels, while interesting, don't really differ that much even as you face new enemies in different biomes.  It's roguelike so you can purchase permanent upgrades between runs that let you progress slightly further each time.  There's a story that unfolds as you progress, adding an interesting element to the game and the levels are procedurally generated so that also helps the replayability a bit but I think a little more diversity in the actual combat mechanics (different abilities across the characters and weapons with different effects or attack patterns) would go a really long way in taking this title from good to great.

The verdict? It is a fun combat-based platformer which is a lot of fun for the first hour or two but starts to feel very same-ish.  Having said that, keep in mind Trinity Fusion is still destined to be in Early Access for another 12 months yet (at least), so that's plenty of time for the developers to take on feedback and make improvements to what's already a very promising title.

 Links:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1911360/Trinity_Fusion/