Year: 2022
Platform: PlayStation 4
Genre: Puzzle
Review Date: 8/9/25
Rating: ***

"Q.U.B.E." is a puzzle game that involves manipulating cubes to make progress through a large alien structure that looks like it's made up of cubes. The silent protagonist wakes up in the structure with amnesia, wearing a pair of gloves that allow him to manipulate certain cubes. The first voice he hears is a woman on the International Space Station telling him that he's in space, inside a giant cube that will destroy the Earth in two hours, and that he's been trained to destroy it, if he can remember how. Shortly after, he hears another voice that's more aggressive and crazy, saying that the woman is lying and that he's really just a lab rat in an underground research lab on Earth. So who do you believe? Ultimately it doesn't matter, because the only way to make progress is to solve the puzzles, which goes against the crazy guy's wishes. And you really don't have a choice, unless you choose not to play the game at all.

The game starts out fun and easy, but the difficulty ramps up quickly as more complicated tools are introduced. The puzzles in the second half of the game are diabolical and downright infuriating, which required several trips to the Internet for help because I suck so bad at puzzles. Collectible cubes are even more insidious, and sometimes they're physically impossible to pull off without the precision of a mouse. (which doesn't help if you're playing with a standard game controller) Another gameplay problem is that you can't always see the entire playing field, so you don't know where your pieces are and when you should turn switches on and off when they're moving around. And sometimes your hands are literally in the way of your vision.

Speaking of which, the protagonist is just a pair of disembodied hands and has no body or feet. Not having any visible feet makes lining up on cubes difficult and annoying. Another perspective issue is that it feels like the camera is set at waist level, despite the placement of the hands. It's weird and disorienting.

Presentation-wise, the sterile cube environments are abstract and attractive, and the ambient music is appropriately moody. About halfway through the game, you fall deeper into the heart of the cube, which is broken and dirty, and that's when the aesthetic really becomes interesting. The writing is a bit cringy and some of the exposition is questionable, but the voice acting is consistently good. The game was clearly inspired by "Portal" (2007) and the purpose of the crazy voice is to plant doubt in the player's head to make them think they're being manipulated by a cruel GLaDOS type character, but it doesn't quite work. While the ending sort of clears up who that character is, it doesn't explain his relationship to the cube. Is he a prisoner of the cube, or is he the cube itself? His final cries of madness actually evoke some pity for his cursed soul.

The tenth anniversary edition also includes a new "Sector 8" bonus level that contains more puzzles, cubes, and points to collect, but it's even harder than the main game. After playing that for a few minutes I said "Hell, no" and put it away. The main game can be finished in about ten hours, and that was enough mental abuse for me. It's like one of those day-long technical interviews at Microsoft or Google where they ask you to solve a bunch of logic puzzles, except that the fate of the world isn't at stake.