Apparently Tringo was first created as a multi-player gambling game within the online world of Second Life. The game did so well in that genre that it was successfully licensed to be ported to Gameboy Advance format. And this, dear friends, is where I first meet Tringo.

The basic parameter of Tringo is that you have 35 different block shapes and a 5 x 5 block grid. You need to place the shapes, provided to you randomly, one at a time onto the grid in order to make at least 2 x 2 combinations with other blocks shapes. The bigger the combination of blocks you can clear at one time, the more points you get.

Tringo has both single player and multiplayer modes of play. The single player version of Tringo has three different game options. You can play Classic Mode, Time Trial or Infinite play.

Classic mode begins with all 35 shapes available. You are given 10 seconds to place each piece in the grid. If you successfully place a piece, it remains in the rotation and you may well see that shape again. If you can’t find a place for the piece and skip it, the skipped piece is taken out of the rotation. A piece is automatically skipped if you don’t place it within the 10 seconds allotted. In addition to losing the piece from the rotation, you also lose 7 points per skip. It can add up. As far as I can tell, each piece is picked randomly from the shapes still available in the grid. It seems to me that I have seen some pieces more than once, so I don’t think it’s one time only per piece, but I could be wrong. I’m not exactly charting the results. I do know the order is random because I am getting different starting pieces all of the time.

Time Trial is not limited to a specific number of pieces. You choose a time limit of 1, 2 or 3 minutes. You place as many pieces as you can before time runs out. You will still lose points for skipping a piece but it doesn’t get taken out of the rotation. It could be just me, but I would like to see some statistics at the end of my time trial – like how many pieces placed and how many pieces skipped. As it is, you only get a score.

I found Infinite mode to be the most intriguing of the three single player modes. You don’t have a set time limit (although you do still have 10 seconds to make your move) and you don’t have a set number of pieces. As long as you can keep playing and clearing pieces, you can keep going – except for those dang blocks. As you play, 1 x 1 blocks will appear in your grid. Along with this change, some of the blocks you get to place will show a small bomb in some part of their shape. Unless you clear the block square with a bomb piece, you can’t clear any of the squares in the combination you’ve just made. I guess I wouldn’t mind if you got the blocks as a punishment for skipping pieces (along with that 7 point slam), but even if you’re doing well, you will still get those blocks appearing in the grid. I’ve also noticed that frequently when I place a piece that clears a section, if I had a bomb showing on my next piece up, the bomb goes away. I have no idea why it’s sometimes doing this and sometimes not. Supposedly you get a bomb every three pieces, but if this is the case, why are some of the bombs going away? One other little tidbit I found in the book is that as you clear each set of 35 pieces, they actually subtract one second off of the play clock, down to a minimum of 5 seconds per move.

There is also a Multiplayer option. I was not able to try this since I did not have a buddy around to try it with. I wish I could tell you what this game play looks like, but I have no clue. The instruction booklet states that multiplayer mode follows the same rules as Classic mode.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

It kind of bugs me that unlike Tetris (part of the name, remember), you can’t rotate any of the pieces. Some of them would fit great if you could just rotate them, but that’s not an option.

Some of the things I experienced in playing Tringo, especially during Infinite mode, didn’t seem to match what I found in the booklet.

The background music was kind of generic, bouncy, video game music. If it gets on your nerves, you can turn it off in the Options menu. The background does change between games. The pictures aren’t bad, but I really stopped noticing them as I played Tringo.

If you want to track your high scores, you need to make sure and enter a player name on the main screen prior to starting your game. Unlike most video games, you don’t get to pick a name at the end when you’re seeing your score. Also, if you want to save your scores from one session to the next, you will need to explicitly save the game on the main screen. Next time you start Tringo, you will need to load your saved game to get those scores back. In addition, if you had entered a player name prior to saving the game, you will get that player name back when you load the game.

I found Tringo to be a reasonable game to play in short increments of time. It’s an easy game to haul along and play while waiting for an appointment and not so addicting that I couldn’t turn it off and put it away when my name was called. You Tringo, are no Tetris, but that’s okay. You’re fine as you are as a mildly distracting arcade game.

Good news for those that fear that 7 point penalty for skipping pieces or not moving fast enough – your score in Tringo will never go below zero.

Happy gaming.