Despite its appearances this is not Aperture Laboratories and GLADoS is not out to get
you.... and despite its title, this is not the iPad game Derek reviewed.
The cake may or may not be a lie, in fact confections are not even mentioned and there
are no orange gelatinous box shaped things in this new physics-based puzzle game developed
by Toxic Games, Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion... or Q.U.B.E.
for PC.
Beyond it’s sterile environment setting, first person perspective, and the fact that
you’re solving puzzles, you might think this seems like a portal rip off.
But actually the puzzles involved in Q.U.B.E.
are quite a bit different.
You play an unnamed, unknown, silent protagonist and moving from room to room comprised entirely
of cubes with some that are colored.
Red will extrude or intrude, blue acts as a trampoline kind of block, yellow will always
be in sets of threes, purple will move whole sections of the room and green will be used
as either a block or ball to make it through certain areas.
That’s the basics of the game and you’re actually given zero instruction while playing.
You just kind of have to figure out what you’re supposed to do.
Throughout the game, puzzles will grow in difficulty and also build on what you’ve
learned so far which is to be expected, but the way you overcome the puzzles changes as
you go.
The objective is always to get to the next area and starts off just as reach a platform
or something, but switches to different objectives like opening a door or sending certain colored
lights to matching cubes or just busting a hole through the wall when need be.
This is one of the things I like about Q.U.B.E., it does a fairly decent job of not being too
repetitive by not recycling solutions very often.
Q.U.B.E.
will throw other twists at you, like shutting off all the lights or add magnetizing into
the mix.
There is little to no pressure in solving the puzzles.
You can take your time and plan out your strategy or use as much trial and error as you like.
The puzzles in this game seem to be of the persuasion of getting stumped, frustrating,
giving up, and then coming back after five minutes and solving it instantly.
Spatial relations definitely play a big part of Q.U.B.E.
so if that’s not exactly your cup of tea when it comes to puzzle solving you make be
more frustrated than not.
The developers really wanted to focus on puzzles.
So there’s little to no story involved, the setting is pretty much constant and lacks
variance throughout most of the game.
Not much of a soundtrack or really one to write home about other than to just kind of
set the mood.
You may come to expect all these things in any game you drop more than 50 or 60 bucks
on.
But for a 15 dollar indie title, you sort have to expect the right things.
If you were expecting a huge pay off in the end or enthralling back stories or huge orchestral
numbers you might be disappointed.
I’m not saying an indie game couldn’t have that, but like I said the focus is on
puzzles, so you will get some really good puzzles that keep fresh through the game and
that’s what the indie developers wanted to give you.
Speaking of indie, Q.U.B.E.
is the first released game to be funded by the Indie Fund, an organization created by
several independent game developers to help fund budding indie video game development.
Which is a pretty cool concept.
Yes there is a lot of “shovelware” out there.
But I think we saw last year that some really great games can come from indie developers.
There is a demo available, it doesn’t offer much, but you can get a feel for the gameplay
before you commit to a full buy.
Q.U.B.E.
at least for now, lacks any real replay value.
We’ll see if there will be any DLC packs or sequels or anything like that.
I did enjoy playing it, but my guess is it’s probably not the next Portal.