Demo Review 43: Aya And The Cubes Of Light

No story, we’re thrown right into the gameplay, with nearly nothing to explain the basics – and the physics – to us. Not even a story. Anyway, we follow Aya, whom I suppose to be a galactic soldier or something with experience in gravity shifts. She finds herself on these large constructions shaped like cubes, with platforms on four of the six sides (the top and bottom don’t count). Her goal? Make her way to the end of each level. When she walks on a platform and reaches a round portion, she will shift her gravity. See, she’s standing upright at the start of a level; when she reaches a round, she’ll walk on it and start walking on the wall. I don’t know quite how to explain it. Also, she can only change her current gravity when she’s walking on platforms, so when she jumps, her current gravity will affect the way she jumps, and she can only jump or fall on platforms that are in her current gravitational state.

In every level, there are balls of light to pick up; I suppose that picking them all up opens a lot of secrets. In every level, Aya needs to reach a portion of the level where there is an exit, but first she needs to unlock said exit by picking up an object; a key, I guess. And getting said object also requires using your brain to figure out which platforms to use to get to it. To use the key, you need to push the Wii remote forward and twist it; this makes a portal appears, an exit towards the next level. You can also look around a level by keeping A pushed and moving the Wii remote.

In the third – and last – level of the demo, you are introduced to levers, which you can pull by pressing Z and raising the Wii remote. This makes platforms appear or disappear. So yeah, ass you may have guessed by now, this is a puzzle platformer.

You can defeat the rare enemies by jumping on them, though that’s not simple as merely touching them in any other way leads to Aya losing a life, which brings her back to the start of the level. Nope, no checkpoints. Which means you have to go through the whole level again when this happens. Same if you miss a jump and end up in the depths of space; Aya gets teleported back on the level… to the very beginning of it. This, coupled with platforms which are often far from Aya, and the main character’s very limited jumping abilities (AND the fact that she jumps by lifting the Wii remote, like a certain bad game I reviewed over a year ago!), make this game rather annoying to go through.

Still, the idea is good, too bad that it is executed this way. Playing around with gravity isn’t all that new, though this game uses it in a unique manner that takes a bit getting used to (especially with the controls). All in all, this game suffers from too many issues for me to really enjoy it. But perhaps you might; maybe you could try the demo, and see for yourself if you like it. There are only three levels in it, though it shows that the final version has three worlds with about 30 levels.

Though, having a female protagonist is rather cool.