Putting it quite simply, Trine is a lovely little game. Perhaps before we begin, we should confess that our earliest gaming memories are of joyful, sweaty-palmed twitch-based platforming fun, so the genre holds a special place in our hearts.

But it’s more than just nostalgia that attracted us to Trine, Frozenbyte’s latest title. Few games these days evoke much of a sense of fun and wonder, but in its new 2D platform puzzler, the Finnish developer has managed to do just that. For starters, it’s hard not to be engaged by Trine’s beautiful aesthetics – a gorgeous mix of 2D and 3D fairytale graphics. And its tale of the bumbling Warrior, sultry high-swinging Thief, and inept Wizard trapped together in a mystical crystal to fight evil plaguing the land, and only able to emerge one at a time, is narrated in almost storybook form by a kindly voice that could almost be Richard Briers.

Aiding that fairytale charm is its medieval score by composer Ari Pulkkinen, but equally captivating is a unique take on side-scrolling platform play, thanks to a robust physics engine giving each character a specialised mechanic for dealing with enemies and a physics-based world of traps, puzzles and secrets.

The abilities of the Thief, Warrior and Wizard are all different, with the Warrior able to fight, the Thief able to bow and swing around levels with her grappling hook, and the Wizard conjuring objects like boxes and platforms, as well as being able to manipulate objects in the world. It’s reminiscent of Lost Vikings, but being able to change characters in an instant brings a far more fluid pace to the game. This is what gives Trine such scope for great puzzles – the best of them requiring you to use all the characters’ abilities to cross chasms, scale walls and open switches. Often the same puzzles can be solved by different characters, and that’s part of the joy of Trine.

Despite the more thoughtful puzzles driven by the Wizard’s abilities, Trine is still a very quick game, as you leap around and constantly fight undead nasties. As you progress, you’ll gather experience shards and discover special items enabling better abilities in each of the characters. Control over the trio is excellently tight, with PC mouse best for the Thief and Wizard’s abilities, but we do wish we could control the camera itself, as often we couldn’t see as high or as far as we needed.

Sadly multiplayer is only local, with three players on the same machine, but it’s good bicker-inducing fun. Trine wasn’t quite as difficult as we’d hoped, but the curve slowly rises, with the final couple of levels requiring both lightening fast platforming reflexes and a good understanding of each characters’ abilities to win the day. We wondered whether Trine could maintain our interest over the sixteen levels, but happily a combination of engaging level design and increasingly tricky puzzles meant that the end came sooner than we liked.

Trine is a joyful jaunt into fantasy and a brilliant blend of twitch-based reflexes and clever puzzles. It’s a lovely game. We wouldn’t often use ‘lovely’ to describe a game, but there it is. Now go play it.