Trust No One has been my mantra since the mid-90s when some chap named Fox exposed a few home truths about people and their motivations. Since donning a tin hat and living off the grid for the last few decades, it’s only gotten worse. Who can you trust? What can you trust?
Coincidentally, that’s the name of Triomatica Games’ latest entry on Steam – a point and click that sails towards first-person detective work in the real world where you play a journalist searching for a missing source who is ready to expose an AI company. And it’s far from the dev’s excellent Boxville.
This is an out-of-the-box puzzle game that requires an internet connection or a big brain. Beginning in a train station armed with your letter from the insider, there’s only a row of lockers and a payphone, and outside is a taxi rank. Surprisingly, the first puzzle is intuitive and makes sense – there are no false starts here: you’ll need your thinking cap.
Trust No One Review
After receiving the next clue, you head outside for the taxi and select your destination from an extensive database of actual addresses. The first point of call is obvious, but once you’ve hit a wall, you need to decide where to go next—and this can be quite overwhelming if you’re unfamiliar with Ukraine!
This could have taken a long time, but my overall game time in Trust No One was just shy of 90 minutes (more on that in a minute). What was bizarre was when I arrived at the correct place; it was intuitive, given the clue of what to do next. While the puzzles have you think out of the box, they’re well-executed.
It’s like reverse engineering the solution and going off on a tangent. Held up to the light, the puzzles are abstract, though when you look at the clues and take into account the inspiration for them (there are lots of pop culture references here, from The Matrix to Star Wars), it all makes sense—apart from the number sequences.
Look Into The Mirror, And It Looks Back At You With A Fibonacci Sequences
Numbers are my undoing as I have dyscalculia and go blank with what my brain considers a complex equation. This didn’t help as despite the multiple locations to visit at any point; Trust No One is linear in its approach. There was no way to progress, so that meant taking a screenshot on my phone and working it out ‘offline’.
This undoubtedly meant more game time as it took me ages to solve, and it was only by a fluke that I did it. Hats off to Triomatica, as they did more to motivate me than my math teachers. During this solution, I had to return to a previous location but had no idea where it was. Cue Google, search for the place name and then find the address via the taxi database.
Searching for clues outside of the game was Trust No One strength. The artwork is nicely illustrated, though a bit underwhelming when you compare it to something such as Boxville. The Top Trump card here is the way you solve the puzzles.
Google It
Accessing websites for the next clue, I foolishly entered my email address to receive non-existent newsletters, then received emails from staff saying to stop harassing them. Trust No One employs some great AI techniques, even getting the old ticker racing. Am I emailing real people now?!
The back-and-forth emailing on my phone with clues was genuinely exciting. Unlike those ridiculous movie representations of frantic typing followed by, ‘I’m into the mainframe’, there was this liberating feeling of being a hacker or a herald of truth. Trust No One presents you with multiple endings, too; alas, they were anti-climatic – the reason being is I wanted more!
That brings us to the game’s duration. On reflection, Trust No One is a short experience. I received a code for review and was not aware of the price beforehand, though it’s worth it. The interactions outside of the game were brilliant, as was darting back and forth to locations in search of answers, though once the pace had picked up after the number sequences, I wish it had been a bit longer.
Trust No One Review Summary
It’s worth the asking price, and if you’re anything like me regarding number sequences, you’ll get value here and plenty of head-scratching. The pop culture references were a nice addition and aren’t overdone. Still, the real star of the show (besides the very real people who made the game) is how AI can be used within gameplay – in that context, the storytelling, not the behind-the-scenes how it is made – making it an immersive experience.
