Rubix Roller

Genre: Puzzle / Arcade

Players: 1-2 Competitive Split-Screen (Local)

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Review:

Rubix Roller, released on Nintendo Switch in 2021, is a game with Puzzle and Arcade elements that has you rolling a Rubix Cube along a tile grid, trying to make sure that you do not roll your cube onto a tile with a different color than the face of the cube touching the ground.

For a $4 game, the presentation here is surprisingly decent if a bit simple. The cube sheds light on each of the four sides around it, with those lights moving as your cube does. This is not only a nice effect, but helps to reinforce which side is facing which direction. Beyond this, there’s not much to the presentation, although the game does have a decent but somewhat repetitive techno song playing to back up the gameplay.

As far as that gameplay goes, the gameplay basically generates a wide path of tiles of various colors, and challenges players to find their way forward without rolling a side of their cube on a color that doesn’t match. White tiles are perfectly safe, and there are power-ups that can give you the ability to do things like spin your cube once, but gradually the white tiles become increasingly scarce, and players will have to pay close attention to which color of their cube is facing which direction. This is true both in the game’s endless mode and in the game’s progression of fitine levels.

I’ve never found this style of cube-rolling game to be particularly intuitive, but the randomly-generated tiles and Arcade-style nature of the gameplay help to make this a bit more palatable – there are usually multiple potential paths forward, and players are not solving a pre-made puzzle so much as they’re trying to work out which route forward is the most feasible.

There’s another element that makes this game better than the usual games of this type, and that is a competitive multiplayer mode where two players are trying to claim the most territory. While not the most thrilling multiplayer game I’ve ever played, this mode is enjoyable, and its inclusion adds a lot to this game.

However, even beyond my usual gripes about this style of game, there are some issues. The game doesn’t give players free control of the camera, and the only way to see the opposite side of your cube is to press the B button, which makes the camera make a time-consuming full rotation around the cube. Also, the game occasionally generates tiles that randomly change color, which can be frustrating when you’re about to move to a tile that seems safe, only to have it change just as you’re moving into position. This issue is made worse due to the unforgiving nature of the game – one mistake and you lose and must start over. This is particularly frustrating in the game’s level-based mode, where you don’t restart the level you’re on, you restart the entire mode from level one.

Still, while Rubix Roller isn’t without its flaws, for $4 it is a decent Arcade-style Puzzle game that’s worth the low price to pick it up. If the premise of this game seems interesting to you, you might want to give it a try, as it won’t set you back much to do so.

tl;dr – Rubix Roller is a game with Puzzle and Arcade elements that has you rolling a Rubix Cube along a grid of colored tiles, trying not to move your cube on the wrong color. While it has some frustrations, it’s a decent game for its low $4 price, and its 2-player competitive mode is a nice inclusion. If the premise of this game interests you, I’d say it’s worth a try.

Grade: C+

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