Q.U.B.E. (+Director's Cut)

Tetris is simple, it just keeps on
going faster.

Puzzle games aren’t usually the kind where much is to be said: There’s a concept, then there’s a couple dozen levels based around this concept, usually with progression and an increasing difficulty level… This is achieved usually by changing the number of variables, or by combining multiple puzzle mechanics together, to force the player to juggle their brain cells and make connections between the elements, in order to figure out the solution.

Q.U.B.E., like most puzzle games, is simple enough that I could just talk about it in a Steam Pack – and after playing it for a while, it IS simple enough to be discussed there. However, the original has been removed from Steam, replaced by the Director’s Cut, which adds a lot of new elements. So I figured it would be good to talk about both games in the same article.

It's voxellic!
...That didn't make sense.

These two games – if we can even call them two different games – follow the idea of a puzzle game to a T. I felt it was fairer to discuss the first Q.U.B.E., and then talk about its Director’s Cut. Speaking of, I like Director’s Cuts. In movies, they sometimes add scenes that were missing from the theatrical release for time. Those scenes would sometimes explain things that were poorly explained in the original – but it can also lead to scenes being made longer for no good reason. A Director’s Cut of a video game takes that concept and rolls with it. They take the original game and improve on it, adding plot details (whenever necessary), new modes and gameplay aspects. Sometimes, even new levels or secrets!

Whoa... what did I do last night... All I remember is a 40-ounce,
a feather boa, a ticket to dog races and a crowbar...
And goddamn Despacito in my head for some reason.

Q.U.B.E. stands for Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion. You are a character in first-person view, with only your arms showing, covered in a weird suit with white dots on your hand and fingers that often change color. You fall down into this weird place made almost entirely out of white cubes. Featureless walls, aside from the cubes. There’s a few black cubes here and there to mark your progression… and then you find colored cubes.

Oooh, we're gettiing into the first part! How ominous.

I like trampolines, but these are way strong.
They can and will send you into the walls sometimes.

The concept: You have the power to interact with these colored cubes. You can left-click on the mouse to extract one from the ground or walls, or right-click to send the blocks back where they were. Things start off easy: Just red ones, which are pulled out once when you click on them, though they can be extracted for up to three cubes in the same direction. Easy so far. Then you see blue cubes, which become springs when they’re lowered into the walls or ground. You can of course move around by yourself, and use these springboards to make your way around. Then you see yellow cubes, which are always set in a line. Clicking one will extrude it to the maximum length of three, then the one(s) next to it will be extruded to the length of 2, then the one next to that one will be extruded to the length of 1 (basically, it makes a staircase). So far so good? Good! Now make your way around by taking all three into consideration!

Colors working in harmony. Somewhat.

So the green cube jumps upwards with the blue cube, then the
red cube pushes it to the right, then if I fail I can just start
over with the orange arrow cube.

Too hard for you? You can try as often as you want, you can sometimes even press a button to reset the room’s configuration if you need to. Too easy for you? Here, have green blocks that cannot be interacted with, but can be pushed around by red and yellow blocks, and catapulted into the air by the blue springs! Not enough? Have green spheres that must be brought to green areas, passing through puzzles on the way. Still not enough? Here, have sections that can rotate thanks to purple cubes with arrows on them! Still not enough? Here, have transparent color blocks, and here, have a grey ball that goes through these transparent blocks and changes its color to match the one it went through! Oh, and now you have to match the ball’s color with the area it has to be sent to! Still not enough? How about color combinations now? Make green, purple or orange out of the red, blue and yellow! Oh, and later, what about a rolling blue ball that must be led towards a certain path in order to unlock the next areas?

Okay, I was fine having these cubes all over the place,
getting all cubical in these puzzles with some sort of
cubism vibe... They had to ruin it with spheres!

Ack! Enough! Uncle, I say! Uncle!

No, it's not enough! We need color combinations now!
We gotta keep getting into harder puzzles!

These magnets are magical! I was sure I was surrounded
by plastic!

Guess what: We’re not even halfway through! The gameplay elements just pile on, making things more and more complex! You don’t just need smarts now, you also need a sense of timing, since the rotating areas have to be activated at rather precise moments. How about solving these puzzles in the dark now, with switches that light up only one color for blocks at a time? Yep!

Still not enough? How about magnets, rays of light, and green blocks that are moved by said magnets, having to take the cubes into those rays of light to open the door to the next area? Yep!

We have to control this ball's movements by stopping it with
red blocks. What a puzzle!

The place is in shambles. Apparently, solving its puzzles
is destroying it. I have no idea how that works.

With Sector 5 behind us, we step into the elevator bringing us to Sector 6, but things go haywire and we fall down to the bottom, finding ourselves in a room filled with debris! Geez, good thing I have contractual puzzle platformer protagonist immortality, or that fall would have killed me. (I mean, in some puzzle games, nothing can kill the protagonist. The only barrier to progress is your ability – or lack thereof – at solving the puzzles presented to you. Shame you’re not an action hero thrown on the battlefield, or that invincibility would have been useful.)

Well that's a huge station. That's what was about to crash
into the Earth? And somehw, picking it apart only lightly
saved us all? Huh.

We keep adding more and more elements, up to the very end, where you have shining blocks and you have to give them the right color in order to activate that color's effect, to find the right sequence and reach the exit. After struggling through the final rooms, we beat the final puzzle. The unknown protagonist then finds an open spaceship, gets into the cockpit, and drives out of the blocky palace… to reveal that we were in a giant cubic ship IN SPAAAAAAAAACE! And so the protagonist drives off towards Earth. And thus, we get the credits, as this was the end of the game! Not so bad, huh?

Gotta go fast! Even if I'm not Sonic.

Before I move on to the Director’s Cut, I should probably mention that there’s DLC for this one: Something called “Against the Qlock”. Yes, that’s how it’s spelled. It’s mostly just a level pack with timed challenges, collectibles, new gameplay mechanics, that sort of thing. A large number of achievements for the original Q.U.B.E. are found inside this DLC, so if you chase achievements, you’ll probably find yourself having to fork over some more money. If you bought Q.U.B.E.: Director’s Cut from an online store such as Humble Bundle, you’ll have received the original Q.U.B.E for free. Keep in mind that these bonus levels revolve around beating the developer’s best time on any of these additional levels, or beating each level in a certain number of moves or less (and the achievements for them are mathematical formulas, for some reason.) These racing levels are more platform-based, the puzzle aspect isn’t quite as important – though part of the trick is to use the various power-ups in order to reach the end of the level either in the least moves or in the shortest time possible. Or both! This DLC adds 10 levels, by the way, but you don’t need to buy it since it’s already a part of the Director’s Cut (and since you will often receive the original along with it, do you even need the DLC for that one too? Seriously don’t buy that DLC for the first Q.U.B.E.).

Yeah, you don't need to buy the DLC... if it's included into
the Director's Cut, why bother?

Oh look, it's that thing with colors and rays of light again.

The wonderful aspect of the first Q.U.B.E. is that, as it was a student project during conception, it was meant to stay simple. No big story, no complex environment creation. The founders of Toxic Games made something somewhat simple in design, while still being challenging on its own (Some solutions are pretty tricky to find, especially by the end). The simplicity is one of its best elements. The Director’s Cut is also fairly simple… but it adds so much more.

What’s the plot of Q.U.B.E.: Director’s Cut? It follows the same beats as the original, as far as puzzles and platforming goes at least. Most of the story is told through a voice heard by the protagonist’s emitter. The voice is Commander Nowak, who has been monitoring this character we control. She’s been keeping track of him and his sudden amnesia upon falling into the giant Cube, but she lives in a space station in orbit so the communication with her is frequently cut off.

However, somewhere midway into the Cube, the transmission is taken over by a second guy with a British accent, who keeps saying that Nowak is lying. That she’s fabricating everything, and you’re actually in an underground lab, being tested for all eternity. There’s a bit of story around that second guy, called 919, and how he’s been going mad in space for years now, kept alive thanks to his suit (some technobabble about photosynthesis). It all comes together in the climax, during the last few puzzles, where Nowak finally gets to interact with 919 and we get this clash between two people who have very different takes on the situation.

That was a tough one... but I did it!

And since the main character suffers from amnesia, he can’t tell which one is true. Is it Nowak, who says you’re in space, breaking down that giant cube thing that might crash into the Earth soon? Or is it 919, who claims you’re being lied to, this is an experiment, and you’re held captive? You, as the player, just came into this story, so you honestly can’t tell! Nowak is the one we keep contact with the longest, so we’re tempted to believe her, but then 919 plants doubt in our mind… Guess we’ll have to see the ending?

So this is either the spaceship that will take me out of this
damn thing in space and back home, or a machine that will
hook my dreams and make me believe I am outside.
What the Hell am I supposed to believe?

It’s the same ending as the original – we flee into a shuttle, off towards Earth, and turn around to see the monstrous cubic structure. However, we have voice clips added to the story, with Commander Nowak handing communications over to the President, who congratulates the player on the successful dismantling of the invasive object. And we even get a few words from the main character’s wife! Seems Nowak was telling the truth all along.

Or maybe she wasn’t, if 919’s talk messed with your head enough.

I’ll admit I am not quite a fan of the path they took for the story, mostly because you’re left uncertain even after it has ended, and while the ending seems to give a clear answer, the clash between the two voices will make you question whether it’s real or not. But hey, that’s about it for the game. It still has the ten racing levels, and they’re insanely hard to beat, so you better get good.

A lot of variables to take into consideration.
Now if the two voices would stop arguing while I am
trying to find the solution...

I still like this game. It’s a good puzzle, and it’s a good platformer. The two elements have been combined multiple times, and for some reason most instances also involve blocks… but I still think this one is pretty unique. The difficulty progression is good, splitting the game in seven sectors, with the first one setting up the basics, while every subsequent sector adds a new special element to the game, a new puzzle mechanic, and you need to take everything into consideration. Literally; if a room has a green ball, a series of 3 yellow cubes, a blue cube and two red cubes, you will need them all. You just have to figure out how they all fit together towards the solution. Although that’s just normal fare in a puzzle game.

For a place all made of cubes, they sure managed to add
some trippy sections into it.

The game also has a few secrets to discover, such as this
secret area with a picture of the developers on a cube.

I do recommend this game. Although, if I had to make a choice, I would go for the Director’s Cut edition. I may not be a huge fan of the story, even if it’s interesting, but at least that one includes the 10 time trial levels packaged into it, no need to fetch the DLC. The story mode itself is quite challenging, with many puzzles leaving you to wonder “How do I get past this one??”, but it’s all in good fun in the end. The time trial levels are extremely hard, especially if you’re trying to get a Gold medal on each one of them, as they require timing and great precision, as much in the platforming as in clicking on the cubes needed to progress. Oh, and there's also a few secrets here and there to look for as you run and jump your way through the Story Mode. That includes two bonus puzzles.

Of course, some people will point out the game’s similarities with Portal, which I own and definitely need to play soon… but that’s gonna have to wait. Next week: Game Dev Tycoon!