Triversal is a puzzle game that knows you’ve had a long day. It’s all about giving players options to adjust difficulty and the overall experience.
Casual games are difficult to design. They must be challenging enough to provide incentive for players to hone their skills, but also accessible enough for players of various skill levels. With Triversal, indie developer Phantom Compass succeeds in finding that perfect middle ground.
Triversal is a puzzle game with a simple concept. You only need to guide a glowing orb into a black hole.
From Simple To Complex
However, the concept’s simplicity hides just how complex things can get. You’ll move the orb by tethering it to various anchors placed around each level. The trick is to find the correct sequence of anchors and, ideally, to finish the level under par. Of course, as you progress, each puzzle is more complex.
Luckily, Triversal does a fantastic job of walking players through the fundamentals. The game achieves this through short tutorial text and via simple puzzles. Just don’t get too comfortable. What begins as levels with three or four potential anchors eventually evolves into challenging puzzles with several anchors and various obstacles.
Play How You Want
In terms of content, Triversal offers players several ways to play.
If you’re looking for a traditional puzzle game experience, you can tackle Triversal‘s puzzle packs which range from beginner all the way to master. Each pack contains 20 levels and each level contains three puzzles. As you progress, you’ll face an ever-increasing challenge that will test your spatial awareness skills.
For the ultimate challenge, you can take on the game’s Endurance Mode. In Endurance, you begin with a set number of coins. Every move you make will deduct one coin from your reserves. If you reach zero, it’s game over. You’ll need to balance picking up coins scattered through the puzzles while completing each level for completion bonuses. Endurance Mode features an unlimited set of levels, so you can keep going until you fail. Thankfully, you can always leave and pick up where you left off another time.
Triversal also features a Daily Puzzle mode. As the name implies, this mode features a new experience every day. It features ten challenging levels which you must get through in a single go. Like Endurance Mode, every move deducts coins from your reserves.
Of course, sometimes you don’t want an intense challenge. There are times where you just want to sit back after a long day and take a break from the real world. In that case, Sandbox Mode has you covered. It’s an endless mode in which you cannot fail. Better yet, you can adjust the difficulty to your liking. Not being challenged enough? Increase the difficulty. Is the puzzle just too hard? Tone down the difficulty. Sandbox Mode is a great way to enjoy Triversal’s gameplay and to bask in its visuals and soundtrack.
Sights and Sounds
Speaking of sights and sounds, Triversal features great looking neon space-inspired visuals. Should you wish to shake things up a little, you can also select a different look from presets within the game’s menu.
The gameplay is complimented by satisfying sound effects and one of the most laid-back soundtracks in gaming. Triversal‘s music doesn’t take center stage. Instead, it is content with staying in the background and subtly enhancing your experience. In fact, as you play and inevitably focus your full attention on solving a particularly difficult puzzle, you likely won’t even associate the music with the game; it will just be this pleasant ambient piece that fills your headphones.
Triversal : Final Thoughts
Triversal goes above and beyond to be accessible to players of any skill level. Apart from the various game modes detailed earlier, you can also use coins to make puzzles a little less challenging. As you play, you’ll end up collecting little green coins strewn across each level. In turn, you can use these coins to purchase hints, simplify puzzles by blacking out wrong anchors, and purchase protective armor to prevent coins losses when hitting obstacles.
In short, Triversal is the perfect casual puzzle game for players of any skill. It’s also perfectly suited to quick, short bursts of playing or extended marathons. The ability to tailor the difficulty to your liking, as well as the multiple different game modes means that there is something for everybody in Triversal. If you’re looking for a fun puzzle game to sink some time into, whether for the challenge or simply as a way to relax and relieve stress, Triversal is the game for you.
