The Last Cube Reviews

I'm writing this review after 100%'ing the game, having enjoyed it quite a bit. As you can see from my playtime (19 hr) it has a decent amount of content, contrary to the negative review that complained of this. While there are technically 3 main levels for each sticker (18 total), this is kind of misleading. Each "level" is really just a themed area where a series of maybe 3-6 puzzles are set. So with the 6 bonus levels, there are probably about 100 puzzles which seems pretty standard. Each level also has a challenge (least steps, timer, sticker number limits, other level-specific rules) and some hidden relics to find. The puzzles are well-designed and challenging without being masochistic. Some little-mentioned positives that I appreciated: * Doesn't waste your time with tasks not relevant to an actual puzzle. E.g. it never forces you to backtrack for stickers you couldn't have known you would need. This would've been a cheap way to lengthen the game, but the stickers you need are always readily at hand. Groups of a certain type of sticker are also made available in situations where it's advantageous to tile your entire cube, which would be tedious if you only had one tile available. * When leaving a level, exiting the game, etc., it always tells you specifically how much of your progress you will keep/lose. * It's very easy to see at a glance which level relics/challenges you are still missing, from most locations in the hub. * Relics are not just counted, but numbered, so you can tell whether ones you missed are ahead of or behind the current relic. * Cube rolling speed is increased in the hub And here are my (minor) complaints: * I basically meet the recommended video card specs, and far exceed the others. Performance was fine, but my GPU fans were spinning like crazy the entire time I played this. * The game doesn't generally waste your time, but each level's challenge is only revealed after completing it the first time. So you have to play through at least twice to fully clear it, which felt like padding. Maybe they didn't want players getting frustrated by attempting it their first time through. * After failing a challenge, you can hold "R" to restart the level or from the last checkpoint. Why isn't this available all the time? This is particularly annoying with timed challenges, because you don't fail until you exceed the time. But sometimes you know early on that you're moving too slow. * Some sort of undo feature would've been nice, to handle the case where you accidentally pick up the wrong sticker or fall off a platform. * The menu was often pretty janky and would not respond to clicks (hitting enter or space on the keyboard with the option highlighted seemed to work). * The camera was kind of weird in a way that I can't pinpoint but have felt on other games before. It wasn't laggy and didn't negatively impact the game, but it felt like if I swung it slightly too fast, the camera would "jump" to a new position rather than glide through the space. Didn't feel great. * Manipulating the faces of the cube the way you want can be pretty fiddly even when it's not the focus of a puzzle - just due to the nature of a cube's geometry. There is a hotkey to relieve the tedium of this by showing you what moves are required to activate nearby buttons, which is appreciated, but I wonder if this could've been solved by having a different class of buttons that would activate if the proper sticker was present *anywhere* on your cube. Maybe they thought this would be too confusing; there are already two types of buttons - ones which activate permanently and ones that activate only while you are pressing them (or are timed). So this might've necessitated a total of 4 buttons instead of 2. * The beginning of a level often has a short introductory sequence, which was annoying to have to repeat if you had to restart a level. A checkpoint should've been set at the start of the first puzzle.