Trifox [Xbox]
Developed by Glowfish Interactive, Trifox is an adorable, colourful action adventure game, that takes a lot of inspiration from classic platformers such as Crash Bandicoot. After having your precious TV remote stolen, you must set out on a quest to recover it. Fittingly titled, your little fox can take on one of three forms: Engineer, Warrior, and Mage. These give you access to different perks and abilities, to change up the playstyle to some degree. You’ve got different difficulty modes ranging from easy to crazy (which triggers a warning), making it suitable for all different skill levels.
The Loadout Room is where you can go to purchase new abilities as well as equip them, with up to four equipped at any one time - on each of the shoulder and trigger buttons. Perks can be assigned to B - with only one of these assigned. You can also view your current stats, including completion percentage, which is always useful to let you know how you’re getting on. From here you can also access a training area that allows you to familiarise yourself with the abilities you’ve just equipped, such as turrets and new moves. One gripe we had is that it doesn’t have a specific button for running, instead opting for the whole ‘move continuously and you’ll eventually begin to run’ method, which ends up feeling quite frustrating as you stop so frequently, or jump to get around that it cancels out the run.
Controls feel decent, though it can feel a little overwhelming at times due to just how much combat is involved - which often ends up feeling quite samey, despite the fact that enemies don’t put up much of a challenge (with some even being quite dumb, and just standing there) - though going up against bosses feels good and changes things up. Finding a loadout that works best for you is super satisfying - and really encourages you to collect as many coins as you can so that you can buy everything in the Loadout Room. Many of the puzzles within levels revolve around picking up various items and placing them on pressure pads to open up doors and gates, which does feel a tad repetitive after a while, so between that and the combat it does grate on you slightly, though it is still enjoyable.
The bright, cartoony visuals of Trifox are gorgeous, with stunning environments that are filled to the brim with breakable objects such as little clay pots for you to smash open and reap the rewards within. While the levels themselves feel quite linear for the most part, with a straightforward layout that guides you on where to go, there’s still a lot of exploration to be done to find the collectible gems hidden around the levels. These are definitely well hidden, as sometimes you’ll find yourself reaching the end of the level after searching high and low, only to discover you’ve still managed to miss some! The level select screen harks back to that Crash Bandicoot inspiration, with buttons to open portals much like in Crash 3: Warped, and this is a nice little nod. Similarly, Trifox has a little idle animation where they will fall asleep if you leave the controller for too long - before startling awake when you return - and this reminded me of Crash’s little animations, as well. The soundtrack is great, with tunes that are very reminiscent of early platformers too, and were a joy to listen to.
Overall, it’s not a very long game to get through, lasting only a few short hours - which turns out to be a bit of a good thing so as to not overstay its welcome. It has a lot of good points, but, it does miss a lot of marks too. It has a lot of potential, so I’d love to see where the developer goes next, either with this IP, or another. If you want to give Trifox a go, you can find it priced at £16.74 on the Xbox Store.
In the end, we decided to give Trifox the Collecting Asylum rating of 7/10.
Are you interested in Trifox? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Pirate PR for the Trifox Xbox review code!
