Q.U.B.E. 10th Anniversary

Genre: First-Person Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Q.U.B.E. is a First-Person Puzzle game released in 2011 on PC, with a Director’s Cut releasing on PC in 2014 adding new story elements to the game. This game was then ported to mobile devices, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U in 2015, with a 10th Anniversary version of the game with remade visuals and new gameplay content releasing in 2022 on PC, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, with a PlayStation 4 version of the game releasing in 2023. This game sees players waking up with amnesia inside a strange structure seemingly made out of different kinds of cubes, with a voice on a one-way radio instructing you to make your way through the structure so you can destroy it.

The story here feels somewhat uninspired. The game tries to add intrigue by having another character pop up on your radio telling you a different story, with players trying to decide which to believe, but the fact that you’re only ever seeing a bland, featureless structure made of cubes really limits the dramatic potential of any story being told here.

The presentation here, while not bad, is nevertheless bland and unimpressive. There’s some decent lighting here, but otherwise you’re just looking at samey rooms constructed from 3D cubes. And despite this bland visual presentation, this game suffers from some nasty aliasing on Nintendo Switch. At the very least the voice acting here is decent enough, though this is all backed by a somber and subdued soundtrack that’s far from inspiring.

When it comes to the gameplay, this is a First-Person Puzzle like Portal and The Talos Principle, with the main gimmick being different types of cubes the players can interact with via line-of-sight. Different-colored cubes act in different ways, and the player must use these to reach each stage’s exit.

This all works well enough, and there are a few clever different mechanics, but there’s nothing here that’s truly groundbreaking, nothing to make you stop and truly take a moment to take in the cleverness of the game’s design in the same way as Portal’s portals. Even worse, the player character’s walking speed is abysmally slow, making the entire game feel somewhat like a slog.

In the end, Q.U.B.E. is still a mostly-solid First-Person Puzzle game, and its puzzle design is generally good, but the bland presentation, uninspired story, and tediously slow-paced gameplay overall make this a far less-impressive game than some of the better entries in the genre. If you enjoy this sort of game, you will still probably like Q.U.B.E., but don’t expect it to compare to the likes of Portal.

tl;dr – Q.U.B.E. is a First-Person Puzzle game that has players in the role of an amnesiac solving puzzles inside a structure made of different kinds of cubes. The puzzle design here is good, but the pacing is slow and plodding, the story isn’t great, and the presentation is bland and uninteresting. This isn’t a terrible entry in the genre, but it’s far from a great one.

Grade: C+

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