TROVE

Digs deep, but comes up empty

INFO FORMAT PS4 PUB TRION WORLDS DEV TRION WORLDS REVIEW N/A

Survey the geometric world and you might feel an odd sense of déjà vu. Your surroundings bear a striking resemblance to those in a game that rhymes with Shineshaft. What to do first? Tackle the hourglassshaped dungeon in the distance? Or excavate some glowing minerals? Yet despite all this potential, this free-toplay MMO has as much depth as a mineshaft dug with a teaspoon.

For an online Beta, Trove can be surprisingly lonely. Raiding dungeons is a solitary adventure, as finding a club to join is a difficult process (it’s secondary school all over again *sob*). Even when someone works out how to tag along, the lack of emotes means you can’t silently proposition them to stick around and come plundering with you. It’s a pity as the kooky classes – Candy Barbarian, Dino Tamer and Chloromancer, to name just three – are made for mischievous group adventures. Admittedly, slashing your way through dungeons is addictive, as the quadruple-jump mechanic makes dodging during its frantic fights as key to winning as dishing out the hurt.

Sadly, Trove’s a ghost town as far as NPCs and quests go, meaning you’ve got to create your own fun. But the community is a goldmine. Strutting their stuff in the peaceful social hub, everyone shows off their skills while mock-fighting. You won’t feel isolated constantly, though. After a random knight trawls through a spectre-infested castle with me, a message from them pops in. The poignant missive? ‘GG’. As they ride away, I find myself staring wistfully after my mute companion.

If you’re hankering after some team-based duelling, Trove has PvP matches where you

IT’S A GHOST TOWN FOR NPCS AND QUESTS, MEANING YOU’VE GOT TO CREATE YOUR OWN FUN.

either battle 5v5 or play Capture The Flag. Currently, players of all levels fight together. Some you’ll send to the grave with a couple of swipes of your spear; others can decimate you with one hit. Random loot boxes floating around are supposed to give you a helping hand, but often do zilch when you run through them. But, aspiring architects, rejoice: you can erect your dream home on your small plot of land. Upon creating a club, you get an entire world to personalise however you wish.

With some serious bug fixes and some well-made tweaks to the multiplayer formula – cobbling together a club really shouldn’t eat up this amount of time/gold/brain cells – its impish community could make it well worth playing. But Minecraft can rest easy: for now, at least, Trove’s overoptimistic little trowel scratches only at the surface of greatness.

VERDICT

Neither as effortless as multiplayer Minecraft, nor as objective-focused as Dragon Quest Builders. That “best of both worlds” game continues to elude our clutches… Zoe Delahunty-Light