Death's Door Prods

Darkstar’s CuBlocks Review

CuBlocks is a puzzle game by Stinky Badger Games. CuBlocks reminds me a little of Gyromancer in some ways, but with the goal of creating blocks. A bit of a change of pace from the the many games where the goal is to match 3 blocks in a row. So let’s dive into the blocks and get to the nitty gritty.

CuBlocks has both a single player and a multiplayer mode. The single player mode is relatively simple. You start with 3 lives and you must beat the level before the time runs out or you lose a life and have to start the level over again. To beat a level you will rotate a block of 4 blocks clockwise or counter-clockwise in an attempt to create a 2 by 2 block or larger of a single color. You will repeat this process multiple times and after you make a block it will commit the block after a few seconds giving you time to make the block larger before it is committed. Once it is committed the blocks that were made will vanish and the little blocks above will fall down to fill the gap. The game is persistently keeping the screen full of blocks as you remove them. To beat a level you must remove a set number of blocks within a time. Once you beat a level it moves you right into the next level.

The multiplayer mode is called Block Brawl and it pits your avatar against a local players avatar. Your goal is still to make blocks that will be committed after a time. Once the blocks are committed the player who removed the most blocks will take the offensive and their avatar will start beating up the other players. The match will continue going like this trading off which avatar is attacking based on who committed the most blocks the last time. The match ends once one of the two avatars runs out of life.

Their are two extra features I thought were worth noting for there novelty factor. There is a screensaver mode which fills the screen with the pretty colored blocks getting turned and removed like they would if you were actually playing the game. The other feature is called the Gallery. The gallery feature displays pictures of scenic views like a slide show screensaver. Now I know this isn’t really a gameplay aspect or anything, but I thought it was a nice extra feature.

As I said the gameplay is really easy to get a handle on, so there really isn’t any learning curve. Just practice to see the best blocks to rotate and keep going without stopping. Now I will admit there is a couple of things I didn’t really like about the game. The first is that in single player mode it just keeps going between levels and your goal and time left is on the right of the screen and I found it difficult to glance over at it to find out what level I was on and how many blocks I needed to reach the next level. The speed of the game really pushes you to just keep making blocks because the timer is relentless. The other thing I wasn’t exactly fond of is in multiplayer. I really think it would be a bit more fun if you punch or kick your opponent every time you make a block instead of having to wait to see who made the most.

In the end I still loved the multiplayer option of the game. I think that is really where the game shines. The single player although fun, just wasn’t as enthralling as the multiplayer.

Final Score: 3/5

– DarkstarMatryx

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