Daily Review: Q.U.B.E

Daily Review 

Q.U.B.E

System: PC (Steam)

Status: Unfinished

Currently: Sector 5

Just some quick thoughts on this game, its obviously rather short and probably will only do one more post on it when I finish it.

Portal comparisons are obvious, so I'll avoid them. Suffice to say its a rather simple puzzle game in a first person engine, where you control various cube objects to get through each area. Each color has a set function, that you learn rather quickly through trial and error, and each puzzle gets slowly harder. Rather standard. The atmosphere is nice, a wierd grey-tone broken up by the colorful puzzle pieces that kind of reminds me of a children's playset at times. The addition of new elements is gradual enough that you never feel there's a huge jump...except for my one major gripe of the review so far.

When you get to sector five, you can tell rather quickly that its a one trick pony that is more annoying than challenging. Sector five is dark, and after the second or third puzzle, you can only work elements you have 'turned on' by hitting their power switch for their color. Essentially, this means you can't see anything but the currently on elements, and have to swap which ones are on to work with them. Given you have to move green pieces through the area and thus have to constantly check their location by turning that part on...this is really annoying. It adds nothing to the difficulty of the puzzles, it just makes you constantly have to turn the pieces on and off to make sure you didn't screw it up. If it was lit, it would be like the puzzles in the area right before it (albeit without the timing elements for obvious reasons). This entire sector is more frustrating than anything else, and really jerked me out of what had been a fairly simple and fun game.

I'll get back to this later and finish it, but gah, what a terrible design decision.