Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Trolls and Tribulations begins by making you earn access to each maze. Cretins rush the opening area, and your gun changes them into eggs rather than simply removing them. You need to push those eggs into the sewer water before they revive, all while watching limited ammunition. It is a compact, pressure-heavy puzzle that immediately asks for more thought than the game’s side-scrolling platform format suggests.

Once the door opens, the pace changes from crowd control to cautious route planning. Treasures boost your score, keys unlock further doors, and the exit sits beyond platforms and hazards where sloppy movement is expensive. Buzzards, skulls, and spiders cannot be shot away, so you must time jumps around them. That division works well: the opening is about controlling a threat, while the maze itself is about surviving a sequence of precise decisions.

The control scheme is the central test. Down fires, the button jumps in the direction your troll faces, and up produces a vertical jump. More importantly, left and right move one complete step at a time. At first that can feel awkward, especially near narrow ledges, because an extra input may carry you straight off the edge. Give it time, though, and the fixed movement starts to turn each room into a spatial problem rather than a reflex-only obstacle course.

Frustration comes with the same trait that gives the game its personality. Falls and hostile monsters punish imprecision, and you cannot solve every danger with the gun. But the rules are clear enough that mistakes tend to teach a route, a jump, or the timing needed to get through. Pick a level at the start, learn its multiple mazes, and treat progress as a series of small solves rather than a sprint.

Graphics

The game uses a 2D side-scrolling view of cavernous sewers, with the troll moving through maze-like platforms toward relics, keys, doors, and enemies including cretins, buzzards, skulls, and spiders. The view suits the careful platforming: you can focus on the next ledge, obstacle, or route through the room.

Story

This is a simple treasure expedition rather than a story-driven adventure. You are a troll descending into dangerous sewers to recover valuable relics, and the monsters exist to turn that assignment into a perilous maze run.

That light framing is enough for the game it is. Relics give the journey a clear prize, keys and locked doors give each maze a sense of forward motion, and the hostile sewer setting makes every detour feel risky. There are no complicated narrative demands competing with the platform puzzles.

The lack of narrative clutter helps the objective stay sharp: get in, collect what you can, find the keys, and reach the exit alive. If you need character drama or a developing plot to stay invested, this will feel thin. If a clean arcade premise is all you need, it keeps the focus where it belongs.

Overall Experience

Trolls and Tribulations is a stern, thoughtful platformer whose best idea is making movement itself part of the puzzle. The cretin-to-egg routine gives its combat a memorable wrinkle, while the step-by-step controls turn ordinary-looking jumps into tense calculations. It asks you to slow down and respect the layout.

That makes it a stronger fit for gamers who enjoy deliberate 1980s challenge than for anyone looking for fluid, forgiving action. The three selectable levels and their multiple mazes offer a compact set of trials, and the payoff is the satisfaction of mastering rules that initially seem unfriendly.

Stick with it past the first few accidental falls. Once you stop treating the joystick like a standard platform-game controller and start planning each full step, the game’s oddness becomes its strength. It is not easygoing, but it has a sharp enough puzzle-platform core to reward patience.

Retro Replay Score

7/10