Q.U.B.E. is looking like it might just be the first game backed by the Jonathan Blow, 2D Boy & friends curated indie fund to get released, and it’s certainly fitting that they kick things off with something special. The lads from Toxic Games popped along to Nottingham to let the public get their hand on the latest build of the cube-centric first person puzzler, and this was my first chance to try it. Here’s my early impressions:

You wake up in a series of rooms built out of white cubes, with no clue as to how you got there, or any real clues about who you’re playing as. But there’s no time to think about your character’s origins, or who put those gloves on you, there’s puzzles to be solved. You’re presented with a range of coloured cubes, which can be interacted with by pointing and either right or left clicking on them, and depending on the colour, they will react in a different way.

So far, I’ve seen:
Red cubes, which will either extend out of their current position with one button, and retract with another.
Blue cubes, which act like springs, but need to be primed with a click before you can use them.
Yellow cubes, that come in sets of three, and extend in a staggered fashion, with the one you interact with extending the furthest.
Green cubes, these cannot be directly interacted with, but instead you can push them around with the other cubes.

This combination of elements, plus buttons embedded on walls, are the ingredients Toxic Games have used to cook a series of fairly cerebral puzzles, and it’s a seriously economical design. All you ever have to do is get from A to B, where A is your current position, and B is the exit of the room you’re in. There is absolutely no filler content, it’s just puzzle room after puzzle room after puzzle room. I’d even go as far to say that Q.U.B.E. almost makes Portal feel flabby and bloated.

Based on the first 15 or so puzzles, you are absolutely not going to be able to play this game on autopilot. More than once I got stuck for a while, until I fully engaged by brain and managed to get my head around the one true solution. In a few puzzles there seemed to be decoy solutions: Ways of nearly, almost getting to the exit, but not quite.

Since the world is made only of cubes, there’s no distractions to get in the way, and once you’re parsed how all the different level objects work, there’s no confusion about what you have to do, just you, your brain, and the puzzle. You quickly learn that you can jump only one block high, and the environment is great at communicating exactly what the challenge is, as long as you’re paying attention.

It seems to me like it might be a great game for fans of speedrunning, and if the puzzles can maintain the variety and challenge throughout the game, then they’re certainly onto a winner.

Here’s the latest trailer:

[Q.U.B.E.]