when it first came out, [b]cubicity: slide puzzle[/b] was full of mobile shenanigans, but based on feedback the developers quickly 'de-mobilized' it during launch week. it needed a few more patches to fix smaller issues and add some quality of life stuff like volume sliders, windowed mode, unlimited undo, etc., but now it's one of my favorite wall-to-wall sliding puzzlers.
graphics are not really important in the grand scheme of things, even less so in puzzlers, but the diorama-like presentation of forests and cute animals immediately won me over, and I found small things like moving animals in the backround hours into the game. gotta admire the attention to detail. to be fair, scenery can get in the way sometimes, but you can rotate the levels (even with the mouse wheel now, thanks to yours truly, who asked for it), so it's not really an issue.
audio-wise it's less appealing, I had to turn off the music pretty fast and wasn't a fan of the sound effects either, plus I have an especially low tolerance for gibberish. I'm fine with no voiceovers, but then don't make any sound either, no matter if you're a human, animal, robot or typewriter. no hard feelings though, not many puzzlers have a soundtrack I can listen to for long, let alone all the way to the end.
as in any wall-to-wall movement game, your goal is to guide your characters to their destination, and based on the number of moves, you get a star rating. simply completing a level with zero stars won't unlock the next one, which actually doesn't happen often in other games, and you can go beyond 3 stars by completing the levels in even fewer moves, as many as the developers needed, but it's possible to do even better than them sometimes, which I can illustrate with a handy screenshot (I don't often get a chance to show off):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1732976849
star requirements are displayed on-screen while playing, another welcome thing, and you can even hide certain parts of the ui. gotta say again, for a mobile game it has some pretty good features other games could learn from. there are also 3 tools (bombs, teleports and ice blocks), a remnant from the mobile version. every level can be completed with 3 stars without them, but if you get stuck, using them can help you finish a tougher one.
most of the time you're guiding an entire horde of characters, up to 8 or 9, but luckily not at the same time. still, it can take dozens of moves to complete some levels and with this many creatures, it's not that easy to streamline your solution. you unlock new characters as you go through the game, and after all the animals, various humans are next, with two more packs (cars and fantasy people) probably coming later with the promised extra levels.
the difference is only cosmetic, but I found it really cool that upon restarting a level the game randomly picks from the unlocked characters. again, attention to detail, though I sometimes restarted on purpose because some animals look kinda similar, as cute as they are. and if you only have, say, 3 human characters unlocked and want to play a level with more than 3 units, the game automatically picks another pack.
there's no keyboard support, but seeing as you control your guys separately, it wouldn't be very comfortable to switch between them with the number keys, etc. I also found it a bit heavy on resources. I played on ancient hardware, so it's not something to worry about, but puzzlers usually get along with firefox hogging all the available memory, of which I don't have much either, admittedly. or maybe it's just jealousy, since the main character in the game is a fox too.
game mechanics include elevators, guiding arrows and teleports, the latter of which is maybe the only thing I have a problem with, but not a huge one. on some levels they are numbered, so you know which goes where, but on most they're not and you have to try them all. colors help somewhat, but some lead to dead ends, some can be an entrance to one and an exit to another at the same time. I guess it's part of the puzzle to figure out which to use, but then why are some still marked? either way, it's not a big deal.
the game came out with 95 levels, but more are on the way with new mechanics, like lasers and push blocks. there was talk of releasing a level editor as well, not sure if it's gonna happen, but even with the current amount of content it's worth full price. it's cute, it's fun, it can be challenging, it's whole-heartedly recommended. there's a demo on the store page as well, if you want to try it first.
