XBLIG Review: Puzzle Cubicle
“Frustratingly Opaque.”
An XboxHornet review by Xavier “Mercedes” Marchena.
Son of a b*tch, this game is difficult; in a really frustrating way at that. Your goal is to rearrange all the tiles like a jig-saw puzzle. What makes it frustrating is this: Imagine doing a jig-saw puzzle with an abstract picture of just lines and with pieces that don’t exactly fit by design. I became angry when I solved a puzzle in Puzzle Cubicle and the pieces did not even remotely looked like they would have been pieced together.
Try to make sense of this. I dare you.
I’m an artsy kind of guy. I like my pictures to make sense. The game became artificially harder because of this oversight. How much more work would it have been to create tile sets that make sense when you put them together? I swear if they paid as much attention to the art assets as they did the music, this game would have been baller. Oh yea. The music is probably the only thing that kept me playing as long as I did. It’s that good.
It's a damn shame showing you a picture of this hot mess won't let you experience the game's music.
I’ll be the first to tell you how much I love puzzle games. Every great puzzle game, indie to AAA has these things that make them a joy to play. A good tutorial or a great learning curve where it introduces the game mechanics little by little. This game’s tutorial is a joke. It gives you the least amount of information as possible and then dumps you into the game. It took me longer figuring out what to do than completing the first puzzle.
Another thing is getting the player to become “in the zone”. To do that, your game needs to look simple on the outside yet deep and complex in the meaty bits. I’ve already harped on this. This game looks as complex as the tangled cables behind your computer and it makes your brain hurt trying to figure it out. One other thing high on my list is quality music and artwork. Well, ½ out of 3 ain’t bad.
Game Score: 4/10.
Download a free demo of the game here.
Leave a Reply
