Trolls is an utterly adorable little jump-and-run style platform game similar to the Super Mario Brothers series made popular by the Nintendo gaming systems. It is a nice, colorful Flair Software release that stars the crazy-haired trolls that were so popular in the eighties and nineties for sitting on the ends of students’ pencils. No drooling, slobbering, scaly skinned hero for this game! It is nothing but pure cute. It began as an Amiga console game, but was converted almost flawlessly to the PC format.
Trolls is an utterly adorable little jump-and-run style platform game similar to the Super Mario Brothers series made popular by the Nintendo gaming systems. It is a nice, colorful Flair Software release that stars the crazy-haired trolls that were so popular in the eighties and nineties for sitting on the ends of students’ pencils. No drooling, slobbering, scaly skinned hero for this game! It is nothing but pure cute. It began as an Amiga console game, but was converted almost flawlessly to the PC format.
The user controls one of the cute little cartoonish trolls. The object of the game is to rescue baby trolls, of which there are nineteen scattered about each level. The levels can be completed in any order, and each of them is a beautifully designed, vividly
colorful background that perfectly compliments the rainbow-headed troll designs. Each level is enormous and contains many cool and colorful power up bonuses, as well as hidden areas to discover. Most of the power up items come in the form of bright rainbow balloons, which burst upon impact. Sometimes the only thing within the balloons is a point bonus, but sometimes there are some fun items that the troll loves, like the yo-yo weapon.
The game play is simple and is also very reflective of the Super Mario Brothers games. The enemies are dispatched by bouncing the little troll hero off their heads and knocking them out of play. Some baddies are too tough for that strategy, however, and cannot be vanquished at all. The only choice is to avoid these tough hombres and move on to the next. The user does not need to find all of the baby trolls hidden in each level, but a certain percentage is required to progress to further stages, and obviously more points are awarded for rescuing more babies.
The Trolls game play is also very smooth, with nicely flowing side scrolls and great graphics that look nice but don’t gum up the memory to hamper play. The keyboard works beautifully to control the hero troll, further adding to the pleasant gaming experience.
In short, the theme and look of Trolls screams “Children, Children!” but this is a platformer that can be enjoyed by gamers of any age. Its animations are so crisp and fun that any adult will either find the naked little monsters irresistibly cute, or will at least appreciate the game play and ignore the subject matter altogether. This is a great must have platform game, a built-in baby-sitter, and an all-around fun play.
