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QUBE 10 years on: still a great puzzle game, and it’s about to get one heck of a glow-upQUBE: 10th Anniversary has been rebuilt from the ground up
QUBE: 10th Anniversary has been rebuilt from the ground up
Even with all those extra flourishes, though, the Director’s Cut was still the same QUBE puzzles from before, leading many to write off the update yet again as a slight improvement on the original, but nothing to get too excited about. Now, QUBE is getting a fancy10th Anniversary Editionthat rebuilds both versions of the game from the ground up, while also adding an entirely new sector that doubles the length of the game. And I’m telling you: please don’t write off QUBE for the third time in its life. It deserves better than that.
Q.U.B.E. 10th Anniversary | Comparison Trailer (First-Person Puzzle Adventure)Watch on YouTube
Q.U.B.E. 10th Anniversary | Comparison Trailer (First-Person Puzzle Adventure)
One of the early yellow block tutorial puzzles from the original QUBE.And here’s how it looks in QUBE: 10th Anniversary, with its revamped lighting and shiny surfaces.
One of the early yellow block tutorial puzzles from the original QUBE.
And here’s how it looks in QUBE: 10th Anniversary, with its revamped lighting and shiny surfaces.
Of course, just how much preserving this 10th Anniversary is doing when it looks so vastly different is also up for debate. As mentioned above, this collection gets you remastered versions of both the 2012 and 2014 Director’s Cut versions of QUBE, plus that all-new Sector 8, which unlocks once you’ve seen at least one of the end credits, and adds another 4-6 hours worth of additional puzzle solving to the mix. Sector 8 isn’t really part of the main story as such, but it is 100% next-level QUBE-ing. I’ve been playing an early preview of it recently and had the aid of some sneaky dev tools to jump around to different checkpoints, but even some of its very early puzzles had me scratching my head in complete, dumbfounded silence. It’s ultra difficult, and really does rely on having an absolutely sound understanding of every last QUBE principle in the game.
Everything from the lighting, design and positioning of the blocks has been given a new lease of life in QUBE: 10th Anniversary.
I will hold my hand up now and say I’m probably too stupid to really get the benefit of Sector 8. The dogged completionist in me that never likes to leave games unfinished will probably still keep plugging away at it here and there, but even if, like me, Sector 8 ends up being a complete non-starter for you, man alive, you can’t deny the rest of it has had a pretty incredible glow-up. Those flat, stark white walls now have a ridged, coarse texture to them, jutting out at odd heights and angles, and the colour, oh my, the colour. Entrances and archways are now slathered in an eye-catching orange and cool mint green, casting my mind back to the Victorian-style swimming pools I spent so much time in as a kid.
This newfound splash of colour doesn’t overshadow or detract from the key puzzle blocks either, as these have now been given an extra glossy, ray traced sheen that instantly makes them stand out from the surrounding sea of background tiles. They still retain their hard, angular edges, too, and pushing and pulling them out of these knobbly chamber walls with your magic gloves somehow feels more tactile than ever before, like you’re clicking together a slightly broken Rubix cube made out of Lego and hammering it back into shape.
This is how you first encounter the green cube in QUBE (2012).In QUBE 10th Anniversary, however, you’ve got to fetch that cube yourself.
This is how you first encounter the green cube in QUBE (2012).
In QUBE 10th Anniversary, however, you’ve got to fetch that cube yourself.
The 10th Anniversary edition is out on September 14th onSteam, but based on an early preview build I’ve been tinkering about, it’s almost like I’m playing a completely different game. Yes, the puzzles are pretty much identical versions of what came before, but many have received subtle shifts, tweaks and changes. Rotating puzzles now have horrible laser bins you’ll need to avoid, and heck, later levels now give you a choice of where to lay down certain colour blocks where they didn’t previously. I know this, as I’ve literally spent the last week playing all three versions of QUBE back to back, and let me tell you, the 10th Anniversary edition has more rug-pulls than you’d expect.
That’s kind of what’s so exciting about this particular QUBE outing. Despite having solved every puzzle twice over in the days preceding it, the 10th Anniversary edition sheds new light on almost every single one of them. And you know what? I almost prefer it without the Director’s Cut story mode now, too. It’s funny, playing the two of them in such close proximity and seeing all the elongated walking sections and long lift rides that have been added to make sure you’ve really got time to listen and absorb what’s being said over the radio to you, and in hindsight I could almost do without it, you know? Just let me get to those great puzzles.
Anyone else getting swimming pool vibes? You know, if you discount the lasers?
That said, I do also appreciate the developers including PixelPopper’s close-reading analysis of QUBE: Director’s Cut as well, which can be found in the 10th Anniversary extras section (as well asonline). I do enjoy long-reads like this from time to time and the author (who’s also a sometime commenter here at RPS - hello!) puts forward an interesting case about exactly what it was doing in response to Portal and its first-person puzzle contemporaries, and why it’s deserving of a more modern reappraisal.
Personally, I reckon this 10th Anniversary is a pretty great way to do just that, especially if you haven’t yet experienced QUBE in any shape or form before. Will a fresh lick of paint and some new bumpy surfaces help deflect some of those inevitable Portal comparisons going forward? Possibly, if you want to be cynical about such things. We’ll have to wait and see whether it’s been successful or not when it eventually comes out. But I do think there’s merit in recontextualising a game that’s been lost to time a little bit, and presenting it in such a way that really lights up the eyes as much as your mind. Here’s hoping that history’s a little kinder on QUBE in 2022. After all, they say third time’s a charm, right?
