TRON: Identity Review: Uno Meets Solitaire in This Well-Written Return to the Grid

The game isn’t the action-oriented experience that TRON fans may be expecting.

TRON: Identity
Photo: Bithell Games

There’s only one light cycle in TRON: Identity, and you don’t get to ride it. As a member of the Disciples of Tron, essentially an independent detective agency within the Grid, you don’t get to do much of anything, having sworn an oath to be a “professional observer.” As a result, Identity is left with a bit of an identity crisis, as the game isn’t the action-oriented experience that those familiar with Disney’s TRON universe may be expecting. Rather, this visual novel is more of a guided (and extremely limited) tour of the massive Arq Repository, to which the protagonist Query has been sent to investigate a potential theft of data.

Identity is well-written, with an intriguing cast of suspects that includes Prinz, the User-worshiping zealot who runs the facility; Sierra, an independent Automata from the Sprawl; Ada, the analyst who cultivates the library’s data trees; and Cass, a young guard from the Core. And it’s interesting to hear their views on whether data should be disseminated or controlled and to discuss the merits of a homogeneity of belief in the Grid versus independent thought.

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It can, though, be difficult to follow these conversations, especially if you’re not familiar with the TRON universe, as these characters aren’t devoted to exposition. It’s also ultimately frustrating to speak with them across the short campaign, as you’re limited to a handful of binary options, many of which only become available after you’ve spoken to each character multiple times.

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Identity also features an enjoyable mini-game, but it’s one that’s too easy and free of stakes. As Query interrogates suspects, he sometimes needs to defragment their malfunctioning identity discs, a task that’s carried out in Uno-meets-Solitaire fashion, with players having to reduce the number of tiles along a circular grid by matching them by shape or number.

Throughout this mini-game, a handful of errors—rule variants—are introduced that may temporarily block certain tiles, or swap their locations, but outside of Identity’s optional Endless Mode, the lack of a time limit and an unlimited number of takebacks makes the game all too trivial. If given the option, Query always uncovers his suspect’s hidden memories.

Across Identity, you’ll spend about two hours traveling between the game’s five locations, chatting up the various people within them, until they reach a conclusion (i.e., ending). The static images that accompany the text descriptions in each area are very well rendered, alive with the familiar neon joys of TRON, but there’s no mystery hidden in the background of the glorious energy waterfalls in the Lobby or the sparkling book-trees of the Library, just extraneous information about how the Grid works and why Users like Flynn are worshipped.

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The game doesn’t feel particularly focused on or interested in the mystery at hand so much as in better establishing the world of TRON for a future sequel, which may or may not come to fruition. Identity is beautiful and brilliant in spots, but more times than not, there’s no weight to the derezzing or freeing of the various suspects, no emotional connection between these digital creatures and their world. That and more leaves the game feeling too much like reading a rulebook—and one that stops just short of letting you actually take it for a hell of a ride.

This game was reviewed with code provided by Bithell Games.

Score: 
 Developer: Bithell Games  Publisher: Bithell Games  Platform: PC  Release Date: April 11, 2023  ESRB: T  ESRB Descriptions: Violence  Buy: Game

Aaron Riccio

Aaron has been playing games since the late ’80s and writing about them since the early ’00s. He also obsessively writes about crossword clues at The Crossword Scholar.

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