For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Trinity Fusion, from Angry Mob Games .
I didn't know anything about this game going in, after i played the demo i saw that it has already come out on other platforms. so for me, i was looking to the demo as being my introduction to the game.
It starts well by telling the back story of this universe. i thought it was interesting. it ends on a character called Maya who seems to the the main character. But then when the tutorial starts we're a new character called Naira with no explanation as to who we are, where we are, nor what we should be doing. at least on screen there are basic tutorial instructions telling us how to control her.
But this lack of "Why" permeates throughout this demo and is what was the most frustrating part of playing it. When i died, in what was a cool death sequence, we get a brief bit of story before the gameplay starts up again and i'm someone new. again, not this Maya character we've been introduced to and not as Naira as before. the level was also different and you can hear in my commentary that i was very confused by the situation. But it doesn't end there as when i died a second time i was sent back to some sort of hub world, again with no context as to what was happening. it was a little difficult to know what to do here and it was more by accident that i worked out how to continue playing the game. as well as a lack of Why, the tutorial also is surprisingly limited in this demo.
The lack of why and what our purpose is is such a let down because the gameplay itself is really good. combat is varied, the controls are responsive, the levels look great and there's some variety in where and how you navigate them. the music is fantastic and just as impressive where the decent load times, too. there is soo much to like about how it plays, that this demo gives the impression that they came up with the gameplay first and then tried to build a story around it, that's just how separate they fill.
The Switch demo for Trinity Fusion is well worth playing and a lot of people are going to enjoy how it plays. as i say i the video, with it's lack of story it'll be a great podcast game. But it's not for me. It teased a world that i wanted to play in, a story where there seemingly are going to be losses on all sides and no one is the winner. that sounded really interesting. But they gave me none of that here.