Cubicity – Review
A puzzle game by Brush and Code, available on Pc. Time to dust of the grey matter, get your thinking caps on to find your way out of the labyrinthine laboratory. Under its charming graphics lies a mind boggling challenge.
Story
You play the role of Seamus, a curious guy who can’t seem to keep himself out of trouble. Seamus stumbles in a very secret laboratory and can’t help but dig deeper in its secrets. He can’t fly, and yet he never touches the ground. Seamus hangs by a rope and harness as he maneuvers his way through 60 challenging levels across 5 worlds. He’ll need to acquire new weapons and learn new strategies in order to solve the increasingly difficult puzzles that block his path and stop the evil Doctor: Shmeev Shmobs.
Graphics
Seamus has a disarming charm, as he hangs from the ceiling, swinging around, hanging from a rope. As he descends, the cavernous lab gives of different vibes, as the hues change. Seamus takes the change of scenery with bravado, as he wonders if he’ll ever get out of the place. The game rings with simplicity and that’s what makes it so charming. The game screen is clear and open, no clunky interface, and a very simple control scheme. Every room has a different set of rules, and every object has a set of rules. A Pavlovian response echoes from the objects as you encounter them throughout the laboratory.
Sound
The narrative of the game is delivered not by voice actors but by little blips. It helps you identify with the hero and the villain. The game is simplicity in every aspect. The music isn’t too repetitive and it doesn’t divert your attention too much. It doesn’t rile you up or give you any kind of emotion. This helps you concentrate on the puzzles themselves. The clinking of the metal cubes on different surfaces is also done very neatly.
Gameplay
The main focus on the game is control: funnily enough, the control of your character is limited, left clicking with your first magnet will pull the metal blocks to you. Right clicking or the down arrow will drop them. Seamus can move left and right with the left and right arrows respectively, up and down are registered through weight distribution. Let’s say a pillar is in the way of you delivering your black cubes unto its destination? You use the weight of the other cubes scattered across the level to get enough weight to be able to pass under the obstacle. Thinking ahead is also a part of the game, if you use the cube on that switch, it will trigger a magnet to pull away the other blocks, will it help me finish the puzzle or will it only hinder me? Should you made a tiny error in thinking and you find yourself stuck, the R button will reset the level, and you can start your thinking anew. As your progress through the worlds, different weaponry will unlock itself. Among them, a portal gun, a gun which sticks different blocks together and a gun that pulls blocks toward them.
The game boasts a puzzle strategy AND an action adventure status. The first three worlds seem like tutorials. They’ll introduce new ways of solving puzzles, easing you into a pattern to get the solution, but as the game progresses things will get a little more difficult. You’ll lob bombs onto things, and dodge rockets to makes sure you’ll live to finish the level. It’s quite surprising that a game that has such a soothing background music, and such easy starting levels, can turn into such mayhem. You’ll go from slow thinking things through, to rushing to find a solution as things are fired at you. A niggling annoyance were the controls, or better yet, the accuracy of the controls. You see as you point and click the gun or magnet will follow your lead, pointing at whatever place your mouse is at that particular time. There are puzzles which ask extreme precision on dropping blocks. You’ll sometimes have to build towers and it can get quite difficult to be able to stack them if you can’t tell their trajectory. Sometimes you’ll think you are right on the dot, only to have the block and in some cases even more frustratingly all blocks, fall down and you’ll have to start over again. More annoying is the mechanic where you have to glue reverse magnet blocks to normal blocks so they create momentum. It’s a great mechanic, but when you have to pick up the whole thing, and hope it rotates in the right direction so you can finish the puzzle isn’t quite pleasant. A little more control would be nice. Still it’s not a game breaker, it just adds a couple of seconds to your time which isn’t really a worry, because the puzzles aren’t timed, and there’s no leaderboard or score system in place.
Conclusion
What seems to be an easy puzzle game evolves into a challenge as the difficulty curve goes upward. You’ll learn the controls through text tutorials, but the levels give you enough ways for you to accustom to the changes. If you are into puzzles and you can manage stress levels, you’ll have fun with this game. Even smaller kids will have fun with this, they might not understand what’s going on, but they’ll get a great way to learn about momentum and forward thinking.
Cubicity - Review,
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