Cube World

An online multiplayer sandbox role-playing game, Cube World is about crafting and exploration. An enormous world filled with classic enemies and beautiful sights awaits you and your fellow adventurers as you take on a mission to reach the farthest corners and lowest depths.

Nothing New

This game is essentially a bunch of tropes from several other games that were mashed together in a very non-complimentary way. There is no real story as it’s a sandbox RPG so the premise is to explore for exploration's sake, an idea that is profoundly poignant. The concept of there being no greater cause to travel and fight, other than your own desire to, is what this genre of game was born from.

The problem with that is that when one encounters many of the gameplay issues that are prevalent within this title, there is little to keep our patience intact and our focus strong. It's what makes Minecraft a success; the game was simple in its premise. You mine and you craft and outside of that, there was very little room for mistakes. Notch created a relatively airtight game which allowed the player and their imagination run wild. Cube World does not do that.

Cutting Corners

This game has a fair deal of issues that destroyed my willingness to play it any further. Here are a few: Collecting artefacts gives you such an insignificant buff to a stat that it’s meaningless. Some dungeons only unlock after you finish a different dungeon but the game doesn't tell you that so it’s an enormous waste of time. Weapon crafting is also pointless as you can spend time crafting a rare sword or bow just to have one given to you shortly after. The biggest kicker is that most of your gear is region locked, which means when you travel into a new zone you lose a lot of what you worked so hard to gain. It's an exploration game that punishes you for exploring. That's no bueno. A game like this needs progression further than a 1% boost to torchlight distance every 2 hours.

A Cube Game

Picking on the gameplay issues aside, the game actually looks quite nice. For the most part the sprites are cute and the world is colourful, rich and joy-inducing. Even looking at the map in the corner of your screen is prettier than a lot of other full games. The towns are bustling and the Non Player Characters are friendly and it gives a fantastic illusion of life and activity that it easily could have skipped but the game would have suffered and I'm glad they didn't. In the moments in between, when you aren’t fighting monsters or dungeon delving the game is beautiful and diverse and no amount of bad gameplay can take that away.

A Well Rounded Sound

The music is a strong point in this. If you close your eyes and listen it sounds like it could have come from a AAA developer. It fits the mood and genre so well that it is a massive improvement from the alpha where there was no music. However, it did not stand out in any particular way after doing its simple job of setting the mood.

Pros

• A pretty and colourful world.
• Great traversal mechanics.

Cons

• Doesn't try anything new.
• Awful progression system.
• Poor development choices.