Almost sounds like Bigfoot doesn't it?
Over the last few years there has been a few attempts at duo only games where you take control of one player while trying to coerce the AI controlled player into performing a specific action so you can progress. Troll and I by Spiral House is the latest entry that tries to prove gaming is more fun with a friend even if it is driven by AI.
Troll and I is an action adventure game with which uses a buddy/friend mechanic to drive the narrative forward. You are Otto a Scandinavian boy who lives with his Mother in a forest. Otto forages for his own food using tools that he makes himself. It's a peaceful existence until a millionaire hires an army to track down a Troll that is said to live in the forest. Otto's world is soon turned upside down.
Your first mission/tutorial places you in Otto’s shoes as you hunt down wild boar using the game's stealth mechanic. It's a nice touch but it's very broken. You are suppose to be track the boar by pressing A and following a set path that gets illuminated by the hoof prints the boar leaves behind. That sounds nice and easy but in practice it's ridiculous because the highlighted colour (white) blends in with the scenery and becomes invisible. A simple tutorial that ended up taking me nearly half an hour to complete. This wasn't looking promising. With that completed you toddle off home only to find it set ablaze and your Mother in danger and this is where the game hits even more problems. The game places you in a running level where you need to press A at exactly the correct moment. This allows you to duck under or vault over burning trees that are collapsing all around you. The camera control is absolutely horrid and you only have to brush up against a rock and it's sudden death. The camera is clunky and unwieldy and for a section like this a fixed camera angle would have been much better. I died over and over, sometimes I couldn't even work out why I had died. So I just had to sit through the ludicrously long loading time again and again. It got that bad I put the controller down and walked away. When my temper tantrum had disappeared I sat back down and through gritted teeth finally managed to complete the level.
It's at this point where the Troll makes himself known to you and the adventure begins. Otto and the Troll are two very different characters. Otto relies on stealth and weaponry to get by but the Troll relies on his size and power to defeat his enemies and his strength to move heavy objects to use as passageways or shields for him and Otto. Unfortunately playing as either character is laborious and frustrating. Combat with the Troll is slow and cumbersome and it seems to take forever to defeat an enemy. Otto on the other hand is weaker than a house of cards and is basically canon fodder.
The puzzles in Troll and I are not difficult to solve but they are difficult to locate which is a major problem. I don't want a game to hold my hand and point to where X marks the spot but when a doorway is so hard to find amongst the rest of the scenery or a different colour piece of wall is only slightly different that you spend ages wandering around completely lost and wondering what the hell to do next. One environment can look exactly alike and objects suffer the same fate. The framerate can also be problematic and background objects suddenly appearing right in front of you does not make for a good immersive experience. The amount of times a rounded a corner only to see trees, bushes, rocks and various other objects appear out of thin air was ridiculous. It looks so sloppy and it made me think if the developer couldn't be bothered then why should I. One slight redeeming feature is the sound. It's not groundbreaking and it's not brilliant but it's passable and suits the mood of the game. The voice acting is also good but very repetitive.
I had high expectations for Troll and I but I get the feeling that Spiral House overstretched themselves. Everything that they need to make a great game is there but the execution is to sloppy. People always moan when games are held back so the developer can take their time to add more spit and polish and this should have been the way to go with Troll and I. What kind of testing was done on the game before release because it feels as if it was just released into the wild with none taking place. Troll and I is a clunky and frustrating experience that nobody should put themselves through. I'm lucky to have had a review copy because if I had parted with money for it I would be fuming.
Developer: Spiral House
Publisher: Maximum Games
Website: Troll & I
Twitter: @spiralhouse/ @MaximumGames / @trollandi
Review code supplied by ONE PR Studio