Treasure 'n Trio Review

Three heroes, one path, and a puzzle box that keeps outsmarting you

Treasure 'n Trio, developed and published by solo studio TNT, released 9 October 2025 at NZ$21.99, takes the decades-old Sokoban formula -- push boxes onto marked tiles, one careful step at a time -- and complicates it in a way that turns out to be genuinely fresh. Instead of one character, players control three: a warrior who solves problems with brute force, a thief who can ignore most environmental dangers, and a cowardly wizard whose only real power is short-range teleportation. No single character can clear a level alone, and reading which one the puzzle actually wants at any given moment becomes the game's real test. Its 242-review sample is entirely Positive, with zero recorded negative reviews at the time of writing, and reading through it in depth reveals a genuinely consistent, detailed story rather than a thin or suspiciously uniform one.

The core puzzle design earns the most specific, varied praise in the sample. Reviewers describe individual levels as feeling impossible for long stretches before a solution suddenly clicks, with one calling the experience "the feeling of doing something truly intelligent" and several independently comparing the structure to Lost Vikings crossed with classic Sokoban. What keeps that praise from reading like marketing copy is how differently reviewers describe getting there: some finish the main story in ten to fifteen hours and stop, others report pushing past fifteen hundred minutes chasing every achievement and side-quest mode, and the specific levels and mechanics each reviewer singles out as their favourite vary widely across the sample, a pattern much more consistent with genuine, individually-formed opinions than coordinated or copied praise.

Presentation draws similarly warm and specific notice. Reviewers repeatedly call out small, deliberate touches, crates leaving visible trails when pushed through snow, deer reacting to the player's presence, a distinct visual and puzzle-mechanic identity for each of the game's themed worlds, and credit the game with a level of polish and evident care unusual for a solo-developed puzzle title at this price. The developer's post-launch support record backs that impression up directly: over 30 patches shipped in the roughly six weeks following release, several adding features requested directly by players in the Steam community, a level of responsiveness reviewers explicitly credit when weighing the game's rougher edges.

Those rougher edges are real, and worth being specific about rather than glossing over given the review sample's unanimous positive framing. Shortly after an early patch, players began reporting a save-progress-reset bug serious enough that the developer had to publish a manual file-recovery workaround, walking affected players through locating and restoring a backup save file, before eventually shipping both a proper fix and a dedicated in-game save-reset option. Separately, the game launched without any in-game hint system at all, an omission the developer partially addressed by adding hints to a curated set of difficult levels in a later patch, but early players who got stuck on the game's hardest puzzles before that update had no in-game recourse beyond community discussion. At least one reviewer also flags the game's final chapter specifically, arguing it leans on mechanics the game never actually teaches, a notable inconsistency given how carefully the rest of the game's difficulty curve is built and praised elsewhere in the sample.

A smaller cluster of complaints rounds out the picture. Multiple reviewers single out one particular achievement as disproportionately punishing relative to the rest of the game's challenge, with one describing the process of earning it as "hell on earth" despite otherwise loving the experience. A separate reviewer reports an audio bug where the background music stops entirely mid-session, requiring a full restart to resolve. And at least one reviewer, while still recommending the game, notes that its single-path Sokoban structure -- true to the genre it draws from -- will frustrate anyone expecting the freer, more open movement of other box-pushing puzzle games, a useful expectation-setting note for buyers unfamiliar with the classic format.

It's worth putting the game's price and value proposition in context, since reviewers themselves return to it repeatedly. At NZ$21.99, Treasure 'n Trio sits above the price many buyers instinctively associate with a solo-developed puzzle game, and a handful of reviewers explicitly flag the cost as worth weighing against competing genre entries before buying at full price, even as they go on to recommend it. What tempers that concern across the sample is the sheer amount of content reviewers say the price actually buys: a full main story that takes most players ten to fifteen hours to finish, plus a substantial slate of high-difficulty side-quest modes that unlock afterward and that several reviewers say meaningfully extend the experience for anyone chasing full completion. Reviewers who bought in during a discount tend to describe the value calculation as an easy one, while those weighing a full-price purchase are more likely to suggest waiting for a sale, a distinction worth keeping in mind depending on how price-sensitive a given buyer is.

Taken together, Treasure 'n Trio is a genuinely clever, well-crafted puzzle game whose three-character mechanic earns its warm reception on its own merits, not through review-count padding or copied enthusiasm. But its launch period carried real, specific problems, a save-corruption bug serious enough to need a manual fix, no hints until after release, and a final chapter some reviewers say breaks its own teaching contract, that are worth knowing before buying, even from a developer who has clearly worked hard and fast to address them since.