If there is one thing that Cubor teaches us, it's that sometimes colored cubes just want to go home, and that sometimes only we can help them. A spiffy 3-D puzzle game by Devm-Games, Cubor lets players gently roll colorful blocks to respectively colored tiles, where like Prodigal Sons they will finally be welcomed. It's nice to help a poor, wayward Platonic solid; don't you hope they would do the same for you?
The mouse is all you need to accomplish this altruistic mission. Click on a cube, then click on one of the arrows that appear, to guide your six-sided charge to where it belongs. Clicking and dragging about the screen will rotate your perspective of the playing field, aiding you in your act of charity. Succeed by leading all the cubes into the soothing light of their home tiles, indicated by matching-colored sigils, and your philanthropic errand will be complete for another level.
Analysis: Schlepping cubes into their designated areas will be a familiar trope to veteran puzzlers, but Cubor adds a couple of twists to the formula. First, there are often several cubes you have to wrangle, so the solution is often as much about keeping cubes out of the way of each other as it is about figuring how to get them where they belong. Second, while some cubes are colored on all sides, many are colored on only one. Cubes move by rotating in the direction of travel, and as a cube is only truly home when the colored side is face-down, you must assess not only the means of delivery, but also the approach. Not every orientation will do, and part of the solving is in adjusting the cube's orientation so that it can arrive home properly.
The game's 3D graphics are striking, if a little jagged looking, and while the color palette is a bit bland and desaturated, the ease and agility in rotating the play field makes the appearance very slick. The bubbly electronica soundtrack matches the digital 3D look, and happily you can mute it should it become repetitive.
Sadly the game is quite short, at only fifteen levels, and while it is not super-easy, neither can it be called difficult. Likely it will take very little time to complete, which is fine for those puzzlers pressed for time. For those who want a little more, you can replay any level you have completed to improve your score and submit it in competition against Cubor players worldwide. And after all, there are always more sad, lost little cubes, waiting for someone to show them the way. It would be heartless to say no.
As the review says, too short. Otherwise GOOD!
Best of the kind since Bloxorz.
this reminds me a lot of a game from the mid 90s called EndorFun:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorfun
Flash keeps alerting me that mochiads.com wants to store information on my computer every time I beat a level. I keep denying the access, but makes me uneasy when something I don't know try's to access my machine. I'm rating the game poorly because of this.
[Flash stores data on your computer and it requires authorization to do so if you don't have enough space allocated for it. Denying access will just make it ask again every time it tries to remember your last level completed and your high scores (the game makes use of the Mochiads high score board system). Rating a game poorly for providing a high score feature and for remembering your progress is inappropriate. -Jay]
I kept denying it access because it says mochiads.com wants more space. If it said that the game needed more space, that would be fine. Otherwise I think it's natural to be suspicious when some other random domain asks for space.
I can understand your suspicions, however Mochiads is far from random when it comes to Flash games.
Mochi Media is a reputable company that provides a wide array of products and services to the Flash game development community.
Something tells me this game will have more levels added soon. Certainly it would be easy to make more.
New obstacles or functions would make the game more interesting too.
Very good start though and fun while it lasted.
I have found that for anything to work on the internet anymore the amount of space needed has increased. I have no problem with this and I have no problem with Mochi. While their "In your face" advertising is kind of annoying, it's not going away so people should just get used to it.
The issue I had with the game is the control scheme. While the click on the box and then click the arrows is different for this sort of game, I'd rather click the box and then use the arrow keys. Having to rotate the playing board in order to move a box got tedious very quickly. The necessity of lining up a specific side was interesting but was easily trumped by my frustrations with the controls.
Matthew, I had problems with the controls, too. In fact, I stopped playing after only a few levels because it took so darn long to navigate the cubes across the board.
This game would've been greatly improved by allowing us to move the cubes with the arrow keys, and shifting from cube to cube with the space bar (or similar) or the mouse.
The tedious controls made this game pretty much unplayable for me.
I'm with Matthew and Nerdypants. Actually the only reason I created this account was to moan about the control scheme!
Would be a lot less frustrating to be able to select the cubes with the number keys and then move them with arrow keys.
Good premise for the game and hopefully with a change of control scheme it could be a hit but until then I'm going to have to skip.
Yep.. needs arrow key controls. Other than that, pretty good.
Hmm... this looks suspiciously similar to a series of puzzles from the newest Legend of Zelda game, Spirit Tracks, for the DS. Not that I mind, I liked the puzzles wished for more. And to the people bemoaning the control scheme, it's a heck of a lot better than how you have to do it in Zelda, that's for sure. And in Zelda, they ALL only have one side that is allowed down.
I'm surprised that so many people had issues with the controls, because I had absolutely no problem with them. I'm not saying they are wrong; I'm just wondering why our experiences are so divergent.
Could it be a processor-speed thing? I could see the controls being very frustrating if the animations were lagging.
I quickly became annoyed with the navigation/controls. On a laptop without a separate mouse it was too much of a hassle to move around. I really liked the puzzles though, until I left at about the fourth level.
Let me use the arrow keys, and I will be back!
Weird, I didn't find any issues with the controls. I can imagine using the tracker pad on my laptop would be frustrating, but I have a separate mouse so no problems for me :) I agree it was too short, I finished it pretty sharpish. Good break from my assignment :D
@flytape8490: did you ever get to play the unmodified original Endorfun with subliminals?
-----
I like Cubor but I agree that the controls are frustrating. The final straw for me was the umpteenth board angle change (because of a 'touchy' touchpad) that hid available arrows.
just to clarify my previous post, some copies of Endorfun were distributed 'without' the subliminals.
Update