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A lot of games have a physics engine of some sorts these days, but very few can be bothered to do something interesting with it besides make prettier explosions. The games that do make use of a physics engine for interesting gameplay tend to look like they were beat with the ugly stick. Trine manages to have fun physics-based gameplay and be one of the prettiest games to grace my system in years.

It's a 2d side scroller/beat em up/platformer where you play as a wizard, a thief, and a fighter. You bounce through spike, fire, and skeleton infested dungeons and forests in search of the generic fantasy end goal. The thief has a grappling hook and a bow, the wizard can summon boxes and planks as well as levitate objects, and the fighter hits things.

The beauty of Trine is that you can switch between characters at any point at the press of a button. Big army of skeletons? Switch to the warrior and bash them. Or switch to the wizard and summon boxes and planks over their head to crush them. Or switch to the thief, swing up to a high perch with the grappling hook and shoot them full of arrows. Pretty much every challenge in the game can be dealt with by any of the three characters. The fast character swapping means you can do fun things like summon a plank in midair, switch to thief to run across it as it falls, then launch across the chasm using the grappling hook to fly over, and then switch to the fighter in midair to crush a skeleton with his weight.

The thing that struck me about Trine as I played was it never fucked me in the ear. I could easily switch to any class to suit my fancy. I could bounce between levels and raise and lower the difficulty easily. There was a pretty constant trickle of new skills and loot. There were frequent checkpoints in case I wiped, and any dead party members were rezzed when I made it to the next checkpoint. If I wanted to try something again I could pop back to my last checkpoint with two mouse clicks. It just let me have fun in their world. It's sad that that is high praise, but there's the gaming industry for you.

Oh, and there is multiplayer which is tons of fun. My cousin and I played a lot of it last week. There's nothing like having your friend accidentally drop a crate on your head while you try to swing across a pit of lava. I'm dying to get my new big ass TV so I can hook my computer up to it and play this properly with three people.

Buy it. Twice even.

Here's the trailer (http://store.steampowered.com/app/5301/). I think it gives a pretty fair sense of the gameplay.

For the budget wary, I hear the console versions are going to be $10 cheaper.  I've heard it's relatively short.

It is short but it's very replayable. I've been trying runs with just the wizard for fun, and there are vials of experience and treasure to find in each level that are fun to track down. Some of the Steam achievements also look like fun to go for.

Played the demo a bit yesterday.  I enjoyed it, but I'm waiting to see if the PSN version ends up having a demo since I've heard the analog sticks work really well for this game.

Is it also able to play coop? I noticed sometimes there seems to be two players at once, or when you switch does the computer control the character you just left?

I think it's just local co-op (requires you to have two gamepads or somesuch).

There's local co-op, which is what the video shows off. When you are playing on your own there is only one character and you can switch between all 3.

This video (http://store.steampowered.com/app/5300/) shows off the single player.

Anyone know when the console version is coming out?

Supposed to be up on PSN sometime this month but no firm release date.  Seems to be up in the air as to whether or not an XBL version is coming.

Loved the demo but can't justify the $30 atm. $20 and I'd have already bought it. As it is, I'll see how much the eventual XBLA version is, or see if it goes on special on Steam.

It's definitely a compelling game.

What a little gem of a game. I've never been one for platform games but this puzzle/platform thing works well.
Bad point: it tends to crash on me when I alt-tab.

Trine is down to $22.49 on Steam. If not for being just back from a vacation where our budget became a distant memory...

Just bought this one from Steam, I played only a little but I find it very well done and fun. The characters are cool too

Really liked this game. But was disappointed in the coop-mode - both me and a friend bought the game to play coop, only to find out afterwards that it only supported coop on the same computer.