Score: 9 out of 10

Many of us remember the first time we played through Portal. It was an amazing Puzzle-Platformer. The Puzzles made you stop and felt so rewarding when you finally figured it out. We have seen many games that have tried to copy that feeling. Q.U.B.E is one of those games and it succeeds where most fall short.

Q.U.B.E. stands for Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion. The Game is a first-person puzzle-platformer, and is very similar to Portal, but different enough to where it isn’t a clone or knock-off. Q.U.B.E is available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC and priced at $9.99. It is published and developed by Toxic Games and Headup Games.

The story is interesting. You are an astronaut with memory loss. Your only communication is from a woman at the international space station. Your communication gets interfered with when she get out of range due to orbit. This leaves you alone to figure out the next few puzzles until you are able to hear back from her to feed you more information to progress the story. She informs you that you are Earth’s only hope. You must solve the puzzles to get through to stop from crashing into Earth.

The different mechanics for the puzzles are colored differently for each mechanic of the game. A few examples are Red is 1 block that can be pulled out of or pushed into the wall/floor. Another one is Yellow that is 3 blocks that turn into stairs for one to climb. The Yellow block stairs can be formed either way depending on where you hover your cursor when using your ability to interact with the blocks. The Blue block turns into a trampoline when you push it into the wall/floor. There are several other colors and mechanics to the game that create the solution to the puzzles in the game. The one tiny flaw I have is that the movement seems a little sluggish and that can cause frustration because some puzzles involve precise timing in order to solve.

Conclusion: Overall the game is fantastic. The story is interesting enough to keep you paying attention. The puzzles reward you with a satisfied sense of accomplishment. The price of $9.99 is a sweet spot for this type of game, and gives you way more value then the cost. If you are a fan of Puzzle Games then you will not regret picking up Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut

Written by: William McDonald Writer