[b]cubeka[/b] is a unique take on pen & paper word games and offers challenge after challenge. the 2.5-minute video on the store page describes how it works and there's an in-game tutorial as well, but I'll try to explain it briefly. it's easier to understand if you look at a few screenshots first, and I inserted a few of my own down below to illustrate a few things.
[b]almost the entire screen can be drawn on[/b], they're not kidding with the pen & paper thing. on the right is the complete english alphabet, all capitals, drawn on graph paper, each letter on a 11x6 grid. on the left is the word to figure out, one per level, and above it are the clues. [b]each row represents a letter and you have to look at the lines between them to see if certain parts from a certain viewpoint (left, top, right, bottom) overlap or not.[/b]
for example, if the first letter is P and the left clue between letters 1 and 2 is empty, it means these two letters completely match from the left, so you can draw that on the second grid and immediately discard letters like C, Q, V, etc. because their left side is not a completely straight vertical line, like in letter P.
next, look at the top. let's say it says 3 empty squares followed by a 3-square black line. this means from the top the 2nd letter also starts with a 3-square straight line, but the other 3 is anything but a curve. can be straight, can be nothing, but can't be a curve, otherwise that part would match the first letter as well. so you can discard B, D and R, for instance, as their top view would be identical to the letter P.
then you do the same with the right and bottom clues and work your way through the connections between the rest of the letters until you figure out the word. [b]the way a puzzle is solved is by typing the letters in the input boxes above the grids[/b], technically no need to mark anything on the grid, it's just there to help you figure stuff out.
and while it's shown in the tutorial, it's easy to overlook, so I'll mention it here as well: [b]tilt your head to the left to interpret the left clue correctly![/b] all the others are logical from left to right or top to bottom, but left works like this. it still makes sense if you think about it, just not something you'd necessarily expect.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1992326295
there will often be several choices for a letter, as some of them look very similar (C, G and O, or B, D and P), but you can still work with them exactly because they're almost identical, and [b]use your vocabulary to decide if certain letters can be there or not[/b]. random example, but Q is rarely followed by anything but U, so even if you only have the middle part of the left side of the letter following Q and it's a 5-square straight line, you can forget about most of the letters.
since the first patch, released a day after the game came out, letters on the first few levels are all numbered, just like in the tutorial, which later changes to every 5th letter because [b]words can be up to 14 letters long[/b] and it's hard to keep track, though you can mark anything any way you want.
speaking of, [b]my preferred way of marking[/b] (which surprised even the developer) is not numbering the letters, but [b]the lines between them[/b]. it makes more sense to me because that's where the information is, the connections between letters, not the individual letters themselves. so at the beginning of every level I do something like this, though I wish the game did it for me instead:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1995035637
there are [b]94 levels[/b] in the game. the [u]30 easy[/u] ones have words between 3 and 14 letters and [b]always provide a starting letter[/b], while the [u]30 intermediate[/u] levels are also between 3 and 14 letters, but they [b]do away with starting letters[/b]. that's where I gave up, my brain can't handle such things.
the [u]30 hard[/u] levels start with 3-letter words too, going up to 14, still without a starting letter, and [b]only some of the clues instead of a full set[/b]. maybe left is complete but none of the others are there, or only bits and pieces are available from all four directions, which is insane and leaves me without a word to describe the [u]4 impossible[/u] levels with even fewer clues. insane squared?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1997529814
as you can see, [b]the game is really, really (REALLY!) difficult[/b] and won't be everybody's cup of preferred beverage. you'll need a few levels to get used to how things work, but even after that I wouldn't call easy levels easy, though you can often figure out the words on any difficulty without solving the whole thing, because at its core it's still a word game.
[b]cubeka[/b] is very much a pen & paper experience, doesn't provide too many quality of life features, technically you could print screenshots of the levels and solve them on paper, which may be a pro for some, a con for others. I like my creaure comforts and I'm really lazy, so [b]I'd prefer if the game was more like a computer game[/b], but of course it still works as a puzzler.
the [b]complete lack of audio[/b] was a surprise at first, but wasn't an issue as I would've turned it off eventually anyway, and who needs constant and annoying pencil and eraser scratching sounds? there's a definite upside already, compared to playing on paper.
windowed mode and resolution options are available and the window is resizable, that's all you really need, though [b]more highlighting, selection and letter-hiding options would be nice[/b], marking every 5th letter is simply not enough for me, I still have to number everything because it makes thinking easier. and two pet peeves of mine are hopefully gonna get addressed at some point, though neither are dealbreakers in this particular case.
first of all, [b]more than one puzzle should be available to solve at any time[/b], so if you get stuck on one, there's still others to try. if you're familiar with [i]regedit[/i], you can edit the game's registry entry and unlock the next level or all at once, this is why it's not a huge deal, and others might just persevere until the current one's finished and move on.
the other thing: [b]saving mid-level progress would be very important[/b], as always, but again, if you figure out a few letters and have to quit, next time just type those letters again and continue, it's not like you have to meticulously recreate every letter on graph paper.
even the way the game works now, it's [b]definitely recommended if you're into word games, a certain kind of perspective manipulation or just extremely difficult puzzlers[/b], but I hope it evolves into a more user-friendly experience eventually, because things can get a bit tedious when you're solving longer words.
