Velocibox Demo

Fast-paced arcade games can either be a hit or a miss, because there’s very little wiggle room in the genre. Hence, the games can feature the right mechanics and be a huge success, or they can be annoying and fall into obscurity in a matter of days. Providing the players with a challenge is certainly the right idea, but you must also make the challenge worth taking, otherwise no one bothers with it.

Velocibox has a few good ideas and it certainly looks inviting at a first glance, but this get rather displeasing once you make contact with the keyboard and start playing for a bit. As such, you quickly notice that not a lot of work went into the actual user experience, which means that the developers simply focused on making everything as difficult and as frustrating as possible.

While there’s nothing wrong with a high difficulty level, it’s only fun when you can do something about, because otherwise it’s just pointless stress, and no one plays video games to get even more annoyed. Hence, in this game you basically have to control a cube as it dashes through an obstacle-filled corridor. Besides steering, you also have the option to inverse gravity and ride on the walls, which is mandatory in some cases.

The game’s first mistake is the fact that it does not integrate a save function, or at least a checkpoint system to get you motivated. Hence, regardless of how many points you manage to gather and how far you travel, you are reverted to the beginning of the game once you crash. Naturally, there are two or three variations of the same stages, but that hardly makes up for the lack of a save function.

Visually, the game is not exactly bad and the sensation of speed is certainly conveyed in a convincing manner. On the other hand, beside a few basic shapes that have the purpose of slowing you down, there’s nothing else to see. Hence, the environment gets old after a few minutes, even if the color scheme changes a bit as you manage to get further.

In the end, Velocibox is just too unforgiven and empty to be worth the trouble. However, if frustration and stress sound like a good time for you and you do not mind the lack of a save function, then you are more than welcome hone your reflexes and improve your reaction time.