Double Cubes Demo

Cubes have gotten very popular ever since Minecraft and Portal featured them, although Portal featured far fewer cubes than Minecraft. However, many have tried to integrate the companion cube in various other settings, as well as copy the mechanics and see whether something new can be obtained. A few have managed that, while other games just went as silently as they came.

Double Cubes is a first-person puzzle-platformer in which you play the role of a soldier trying to familiarize himself with the virtual reality environment in order to train for a mission. The game’s main idea is that you can use cubes to create a path out of every level, as well as learn how to orientate yourself when everything around you looks almost identical.

To begin with, only the red cubes can be picked up, and your character stores them in his device until they come in handy again. You can easily switch from adding blocks to removing them by using the scroll wheel on the mouse, at least as long as you are holding the right-click down while doing so. The controls are very intuitive and simple, so at least they do not make your life harder.

The fault lies with the fact that the experience never truly evolves along the way, since you are merely doing the same thing over and over again. The environments are not varied enough to hide this fact, so the experience gets boring in a rush. No new gameplay mechanics make an appearance later on, so it’s only natural that you may find it difficult to keep playing after a while.

The graphics are not bad at all, given the fact that they are powered by Unreal Engine 4, but the level design is quite poor. Hence, there’s nothing to see but cubes and disorienting walls, which get annoying after a few minutes. The music and the sound effects fail to impress as well, although they are less important in this case.

When it’s all said and done, Double Cubes fails to provide you with a meaningful experience, and the puzzles are not exciting enough to do the job on their own. Hence, even if the graphics are nice and some of the ideas have merit, a lot more work is needed to make it worth your time.