Trifox - Switch Review

Steve Whiting -

The story is a bit thin on the ground but Trifox is the titular character who is chilling in paradise before some baddies come out of the blue and steal his TV remote (what a nightmare!). He then embarks on a mission to retrieve said remote while defeating a load of robots and pirates along the way. Trifox has been heavily publicised and it looks great on paper, but is this fox’s bark stronger than its bite.

And just as a side note, video games featuring foxes are all the rage these days, aren’t they? Personally, I think foxes are cute, so this is a welcome fad for me. TUNIC was a massive hit earlier this year and I can’t wait to play its Nintendo Switch port after this!

The Good

The plot’s vagueness doesn’t really hamper things because the joy in Trifox’s narrative is found in its environmental humour. There are silly happenings everywhere you look; baddies falling down holes or dancing around before you come along to serve them some sweet justice. All in all, Trifox is pretty light and funny and is a welcome alternative to many darker games experiences that exist on the eShop.

One other huge positive in Trifox is how vibrant it looks. The art style is great and really harkens back to the colourful art styles of action platformers from the 90s and early 00s. The cartoony characters are well designed and fit perfectly with the cute-yet-humorous art style. The environments are varied and pop off the screen as you meander your way through the rich vistas.

At various times, I thought of Trifox as a Crash Bandicoot homage; no wait, it’s more like Spyro; oh wait, hang on, it’s kind of like Banjo-Kazooie! I actually couldn’t make my mind up in the end. But the true joy of Trifox is that it has a little bit of all of these in its gameplay. So rather than rip off a single gameplay style, it does its best to harken back to all of them, creating a thoroughly enjoyable experience for any 90s/00s gamers along the way!

TL;DR

  • Humorous environmental storytelling
  • Vibrant art style
  • A solid amalgamation of all the games we grew up with

The Bad

Trifox’s heavy marketing campaign actually had me thinking it was awesome before I even started it; the sign of great PR! However in reality, there were a number of frustrating mechanics which tempered my expected enjoyment somewhat. For starters, the combat is pretty tame; you obtain coins which can be traded-in for Ratchet & Clank style upgrades, but it seems that the most effective upgrades are unlocked almost straight away, making the rest of them rather moot. There’s also little NPC combat variety so once you settle on a preferred upgrade, you’ll rarely need to switch this up as the game progresses.

The general gameplay is fun and the challenge is often well balanced, however I also found that this was punctuated with ridiculously frustrating sections of the game. I’m all for a challenge but there are one or two combat areas fairly early in the game where you have to defeat a stream of enemies before continuing on, and the difficulty on these seemingly spikes from nowhere. This may sound at odds with what I just said about the lack of variety in the combat system, but regardless of which upgrades you use, these randomly punishing sections just ruined the pacing of Trifox and almost made me put the controller down for good.

Lastly, Trifox does feel a bit too short. Similar to the Crash Bandicoot games, there is a hub world, and then some mini-hubs that contain a set of levels. However, here to start with, there are only three mini-hubs, each containing four levels (one of which is a boss). Overall, I had loads of fun playing Trifox but the end came into sight a little too soon and more crucially, it came into sight just as I was getting into the groove of things.

TL;DR

  • Weapon upgrades are plentiful but mostly under-used
  • Too many unnecessarily frustrating sections
  • Disappointing brevity

Final Score: 7/10

Trifox is a great game to fill a vacation or a long flight; there is some replayability available to gamers by tracking down all of the collectibles, but the flaws mean that not everyone will be compelled to do this.

Having said that though, I found Trifox to be a fun, entertaining game. Yes, the gameplay is fairly shallow and the enjoyment/frustration ratio is slightly off, but the nostalgia hit and humorous set-pieces are more than enough reasons to give it a whirl.

Thank you for checking out our Trifox Switch review, thank you to Big Sugar for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

For more reading, check out our No Man's Sky review.