Let’s Foxing go!
Glowfish Interactive might not be a studio you are familiar with. The Belgium-based developer has put out only a few titles with the likes of Spectra and Space Pirate Trainer, but with Trifox, their attempt at a colorful and personality-filled platformer, that just might change. Trifox sees you taking on an evil pirate that has stolen your TV remote, tracking them down across three sizable worlds before confronting them once and for all.
Simple premise aside, I do have to say that it’s a shame that there is no additional narrative to this setup, no reason for the theft, and nothing to provide any sort of context as to why this fox suddenly has the arsenal he does. While the gameplay certainly shines with a few clever ideas, engaging combat, and well-executed boss encounters, so much more of this game could have been elevated if its story was given really anything to see the short 4-hour experience through.
While I’ve been made aware of a patch coming to address performance issues on the Nintendo Switch, Trifox ran incredibly poorly in both handheld and docked. My short time with the game was met with constant slowdown, frame drops into the single digits numerous times, and a sluggish feel to how responsive the controls felt. This is a shame since the foundation of what is here is remarkably solid and really kept my interest, but when you are trying to jump over five lasers, and three missiles, and dodge half a dozen enemies as you are leaping from platform to platform, you need every last frame to be running as solid as possible.
Trifox has a lot of the appeal of several platformers that were around during the original PSone days and the transition into the PlayStation 2. Its simplistic visuals are bright, and colorful, and work extremely well within the confines of what Glowfish Interactive has built here. Levels are small and largely bite-size, each built with some sort of mechanic or theme, offering variety around almost every corner. One moment you’ll be locked into a shootout on top of a minecart, blasting enemies behind a mounted turret, to rolling around on top of enemies in a huge electrical ball, crushing them underneath as you speed to your goal.
Trifox has you adventuring to three areas, a lush jungle-like environment, a mountainous region with machine factories, and a winter location that has one level that is longer than the entire first world. Each location is rolled out in sequence via a hub world where you’ll step on each level’s button and then jump into the portal to travel there. The levels are sadly unconnected and the encounters there really have nothing to do with the story. You’ll see the pirate you are chasing from time to time, but he will usually evade your grasp and then you’ll take on that world’s boss after a series of three outings.
Between each level, you’ll have some sort of video feed either from the pirate himself, who, for some reason, is aware of you or of a news broadcast that details the boss you will fight during your visit to that world. There is no dialogue apart from laughs or random gibberish, which is a shame since the game seems to be going for the same sort of slapstick quality of the Ratchet and Clank games, but without giving their characters the same presentation when it comes to their personalities. Even if the voice acting had been bad, I feel it would have really made me get invested with the characters, such was the case with the Kao the Kangaroo remake.
Trifox allows you to take on this adventure in one of many ways. You are initially given a choice between being a Warrior, Mage, or Engineer. The warrior is more about swinging a big hammer, the mage around performing feats of magical spells, and the engineer can summon turrets and packs a pretty awesome chaingun. While locking in a set class wouldn’t have been a bad idea in its own right, Trifox allows you to mix and match how you outfit your class, granting you the ability to take the warrior’s dash or hammer swing, the mage’s defensive shield or whip, or the flame turret or mines from the engineer. The mixing and matching of each class’s available skills really allow combat to flourish and offer up a greater sense of variety in replaying previous levels to try out new loadouts.
To earn all these abilities, you’re going to need to collect coins… for reasons. The hub world you’ll return to after each outing has a skill shop that allows you to buy skills and equip them to any button you pretty much want. Skills get more expensive as you unlock them, available via tiers as you progress through them. Coins are available pretty much everywhere and are hidden in chests, rocks, barrels, and even bad guys. While you likely won’t unlock everything in one playthrough, as the game is only around 4 hours long, you’ll be able to collect a wide assortment to easily find the build that carries you through.
While I leaned more into the engineer class, which causes the shooting to have a twin-stick shooter approach, much of the game is built around platforming, and while I have been largely positive about Trifox so far, and rightfully so, its platforming can be a bit temperamental, largely due to a very floaty and slow-acting jump. As the game can often have its camera turn or angle to fit the scene, it can be a tad frustrating to miss what should be an easy jump, but you will miss, constantly. To put it plainly, the jumping feels bad, and that sucks considering most of this game relies on it. It feels as if there is no weight to it, no concrete feel of leaping and confidently reaching your intended goal. While so much of this game nails the assignment, the core fundamentals of what a platformer needs is simply not here, and that is just unfortunate.
While there is a decent checkpoint system, apart from one level that has you riding planks across a stream, you are rarely having to retread areas over and over again should you fall into an abyss or perish due to combat. Missing a jump can deplete one segment of your health bar, and honestly, I’d be a bit more forgiving on the floaty jump if missing said jump didn’t actually affect your health. In fact, 90% of my deaths came from missing jumps, especially in the final locations where you are dodging lasers and teleporting platforms with a camera angle that really wants you to think you have it lined up, but you don’t.
The enemy variety ranges from tons of smaller fodder to trounce, to larger and more hulking enemies that have even larger guns, spitting out bullet-hell-like spirals of bullets. There are large mech-like robots and other creatures that can slink into the ground or those that vary on the environment, or those that even lasso you with a laser that stalls your momentum. However, the best reason for combat here is each of the four bosses that you’ll take on. Each boss has multi-layered mechanics and phases, and apart from the shifting of certain platforms in the ice world’s finale, these were all the best elements of this whole game. If anything should return from a gameplay perspective for a potential sequel, it’s more bosses, because these absolutely ruled.
Much like its class system, Trifox is a mixture of some bad, some good, and some great. The look and overall feel of the game works extremely well, with combat that is vastly enjoyable and very experimental due to its flexible class system. Its story is similar to the types of platformers we got back on the PlayStation 2 and OG Xbox but could have done more to give their central characters and villains more personality to have us invested in what was actually taking place. And while I had a good time here with Trifox, its floaty jumping and angled camera sadly pulled me out of that fun more times than I can count, which is a shame because Glowfish Interactive certainly has a potential franchise here that I am very keen to see more of.
Developer - Glowfish Interactive. Publisher - Big Sugar. Released - October 13th, 2022. Available On - Nintendo Switch, PS4/5 (TBA), Xbox One/Series X/S, Steam. Rated - (E-10) Fantasy Violence. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.