Cubicity

Cubicity is one of those games to tax the old grey matter. It starts out simple and before you know it, you’re sat there for a few minutes contemplating your next move on how to get the box in to the target area.

Upon starting the game, you’re treated to a little intro video where the hero, a curious ginger bearded guy named Seamus, jumps down a cordoned off manhole to be greeted by an evil scientist, Shmeev Shmobs who won’t let Seamus leave until he has solved all the puzzles.
Armed with just a magnet, the idea is to place a specific cube in an area which unlocks the next puzzle. Controls are simple enough with movement being just left and right, the mouse is used for aim, weapon selection and picking up/dropping cubes.
While it may only be in two dimensions, it looks very nice and has some electric special effects. Sorry, didn’t mean to use electric as an adjective pun there, but anyway, Cubicity has such an attractive element to it, you’ll be drawn in for ages.
While it’s a good effort at being a standalone game, you feel it wouldn’t look out-of-place as a Facebook app, but that doesn’t mean it’s purely a casual game. I encountered a glitch a couple of times while playing which resulted in the object cube disappearing and causing me to unnecessarily reset the level. [Now fixed]
Cubicity
Another thing I had a quibble with was the speech text, someone decided it would be different to have the text appear as a typing animation and not just appear with the speech bubble. Not only that, the wrong font was used, so that “I’ll” became “I’ ll”, this made Cubicity seem a little amateurish.
Not that the text problem had any impact on the gameplay, that would fall upon the invisible portal type glitch as previously mentioned. Not to spoil anything, but you gain another tool to help complete levels and it works similar to a fairly known item in another game that has you shooting an orange circle on a wall in order to reach another place.
Depending on where you shoot the opening wormhole, the object cube may not go through properly and vanish behind some kind of hidden wall. The wormhole (well, portal, but it’s not the same as that other game I forget the name of now) allows you to get access to parts of the level necessary to transport the cubes to to reach the goal.
Some cubes cannot be grabbed by the magnet and so you have to find another way of moving it, this usually involves the use of other cubes and objects. Some levels will leave you completely stumped and you may find yourself resorting to brute force.
It’s not on Steam yet, but it still has achievements which, if successfully processed through Greenlight could become Steam achievements. So what you all want to know now is, is the game worth buying or not?
You can play in full HD with an Xbox 360 controller which is nice if you have your PC connected to a monitor or television capable of that resolution. Lots of levels are good, but it may not be the kind of game that would have you going back for a second play through.
That said, it’s worth the price they’re asking. A decent game which will keep you occupied on a relaxing night, I say go for it. Cubicity will last until another indie game catches your eye and probably for a while after that, buy it if you like mentally challenging puzzle games.
Buy the game from the official website (well, pre-order. Cubicity is released November 12th). Please note that the game has been updated since the review was written and should no longer contain the aforementioned glitch. Vote for it on Steam Greenlight.