CUBEGRID Reviews

Hello , and thanks for releasing your game for us to play on steam! CUBEGRID is a fun 3D puzzle with 80 levels to complete. The game revolves round a small cube that interacts with various tiles on the floor and other obstacles as the game progresses. it is simple to learn but maintains a challenging yet achieve-able list of mechanics that gets harder as the game progresses. Each level is setup to be completed within the minimum amount of moves and although it is quite easy to complete every level (most of the time by accident), several play-throughs will be required to perfect each puzzle the game has to offer. The music and colour scheme of the game is very ambient and the player can easily lose an hour or two puzzling through each challenge seamlessly whilst relaxing in the evening. I do feel however as the levels progress, the developers could add a few more background tracks to give the player a more deeper feeling of progression, the final level might also provide some feedback or something significant to congratulate the payer for "beating the game" but instead are sent back to the first level as if nothing happened. For the most part, the movement and controls were very smooth however it had come to my attention that if I clicked to fast on my arrow keys then the movement wouldn't register and I would come to a halt. This is a very minor detail but it did break the pace of the game on the first play through. (This however might not be an issue on the second time round when I will attempt to reduce my moves per level to obtain three stars. All of the menus are clean and match the overall theme of the game. Overall, this is a very clean project and a lovely few hours of game play potentially for the price and definitely a worthwhile purchase for someone looking for a simple game to burn some time or relax in the evening. __Suggestions and opinions__ - After the player has the ability to purchase a 'skin' from the shop, notify them and let them change thus adding another layer to the first playthrough. I wasn't aware it was possible to purchase a skin until I had completed the game. - Make levels larger, I know this is the first iteration of the game, however the limited space to move means that the overall difficulty of the game is significantly reduced. I would say more than half of the levels I completed through sheer luck which kind of ruined my experience when it became such a recurring situation. - Add a better loop for the backing track so that the player doesn't hear the abrupt STOP and START of the music which breaks the immersion briefly. - Although It's very expensive to do so, this game would be a great mobile release! ___BUGS___ On many of the levels you can spam click the movement arrow key when entering a portal and jump into the areas of the map which are forbidden which allows you to cheat in a few locations. I have included a screenshots and posted it to the community hub that shows you one of the examples, in my play through I encountered this BUG around 6 times. It isn't game breaking but worth investigating. - Achievement for 3 stars on level 80 doesn't seem to work for me, I tried logging out and logging back in, open and close and it won't unlock even though I have finished the level with 3 stars. - I believe I have unlocked the alchemy bottle cube skin but it did not show the achievement either (however I can't confirm if the skins I have ARE in fact the alchemy bottle as they are not named. I tried again this morning to improve my stars and unlock some more of the achievements but since discovering they don't unlock, I won't be continuing this game for now until updates are made. Thanks!

[b]cubegrid[/b] is one of the many cube-rolling puzzlers, though actually good ones aren't that common. this isn't one of them either. and [b]it collects all sorts of data without an option to turn it off[/b]. it should be opt-in and off by default. [b]80 levels[/b] unlocked one by one with the usual fare of rolling around and changing colors to remove all the tiles, which is when levels end. there's a 3-star rating system based on moves ([b]star requirements aren't shown anywhere[/b]), as well as a few (very few) mechanics. tiles you step on are still in play, so you can keep changing their color by moving on and off them at the expense of the move number. there are buttons, teleporters, and while there's [b]no timer as such, there's a tile that resets after a certain number of moves[/b], can be annoying if you don't optimize your path. and that's it, nothing new after level 40. simply finishing the levels won't be an issue or take more than a couple hours, as there's no hard move limit, but getting 3 stars might take some doing. [b]completing the game simply loads level 1 again, very underwhelming.[/b] [b]controls aren't great, need both a mouse and the keyboard.[/b] there's partial controller support, whatever that means, but based on the rest it can't be great. wasd/arrows control the cube just fine, can hold to move more tiles, space closes blinding tutorial messages (the cube can still move in the background, major oversight) and moves on to the next level from the level complete screen. 'r' is silent and instant restart, works on the level complete screen as well but not mentioned anywhere because they didn't think to add hotkeys to a keyboard-driven game until I pointed it out. and esc still doesn't bring up the menu, clicking the button immediately leaves the level, potentially losing progress. [b]undo is available, but only for a single move and the hotkey ended up being 'e', right next to restart.[/b] I'm glad the developers listened and patched it in before release, but it should be unlimited and mapped to backspace or something more common and sensible. [b]music is good enough, most sound effects are annoying.[/b] graphics are what you'd expect from a basic mobile game, but it's really annoying that [b]levels don't fill the screen[/b]. menus are fine and there are icons on the side, so the game itself isn't 4:3, it just has colored bars on the sides. and on the final few levels [b]turquoise tiles and inaccessible gaps are hard to tell apart[/b]. settings include separate volume sliders and nothing else, and even those were only patched in because I mentioned them a few weeks before release. no windowed mode or resolution options, alt+enter only produces a non-resizable window. there's a level select screen at least, plus on-screen level numbers and a move counter. I'm not one for cosmetics but [b]cube customization with stars[/b] is pretty cool, there are many to choose from. [b]it's free on mobile[/b], so $4 would obviously be a horrible deal even if it worked properly, but as it is, [b]don't bother[/b].