Trinity

I finally finished Trinity, a game I started 20 years ago and finally joined forces with a friend (over Zoom) to finish.

The game could be thought of as in three parts: the prologue, the Wonderland puzzles, and the stressful endgame.

The prologue itself is perfect, one of my favorite compact text adventures with emotional moments and whimsy.

The Wonderland middle section is long but also tightly created with its dreamlike setting and classic Infocom humor and puzzles. This is a save-often, unforgiving type of IF but nothing too tricky.

The endgame has a time limit where you have to do things in an efficient order. The feelies (available online by searching for "trinity feelies") become essential here. This was the weakest section of the game for me - there were more red herrings and harder puzzles. We did have to give up and look at the Invisiclues because we hadn't brought the right item(s) from the middle section (without any hints to guide us).

The ending...well I applaud Brian Moriarty's attempt to be moving and artistic but I thought for a while it was simply buggy. In the version we played (using Lectrote) we actually missed the final few paragraphs so it was even more abrupt for us than it should have been. It didn't have the effect on us as it has for many other players over the years.

It was one of my favorite Infocom replays that still feels fresh after so many years. Highly recommended!