Designed by Dmitry Sovetov, Cuber is a short but cute and enjoyable physics puzzle that will test your construction skills to the limit.
All you must do is keep the smiling little green ball from falling off the screen. To do this, construct something from the available materials and then let the little ball drop. You are limited only by your imagination and your budget. Yes, just like in the real world, you have a budget, and each of the available building materials (blocks, plates, and iron bars to hold them all together) has a particular cost. And similarly, each material, especially the iron bar, has a certain amount of weight it can take before breaking. So build wisely.
As the levels progress, the difficulty grows exponentially. Soon it will not be enough to keep the happy little ball from falling to its death. Red zones appear in some levels that the ball should never touch. Green zones pop up where the ball has to end up to complete the level. And the real fun begins when the green zones appear above your little smiley face and you need to have a good grasp of levers and pulleys to move the little guy upwards against gravity.
With a lovely, zen-like music playing in the background, Cuber is an almost meditative experience. However, if it begins to bother you, Cuber has thoughtfully supplied a mute button. Is it fun to play? Most definitely. Is it frustrating? It can be, and extremely so. When you begin to construct some intricate, towering machine and think, yeah, it's perfect, only to watch it shatter under the weight, well, that can be a little annoying. And some of the very highest levels require a lot of imagination and ability to predict movement and stress loads, balance and strength. Still, Cuber is a great example of casual gameplay. If you walk away you can pick up at the level you left off without having to work your way back up. A handy feature if you want to play in extremely small blocks of time, or if you want to walk away before frustration drives you mad.
So sit back, relax, fire up Cuber and see how good you really are at physics. And fun.
On level 3, I do exactly what the solution shows, and everything just breaks as soon as the ball lands... Anyone else having that problem?
Am I correct in thinking this is very similar to Armadillo Run?
I'm having the same problem with Level 3.
I'm not sure what the problem you're having is. When i use the suggested solution for three it works just fine.
And yes This game did remind me a lot of armadillo run.
Uh so, why does the plate tool only give you plates of one size? Not long enough to fill the gap on level 2. Solution shows a longer plate but dragging doesn't help.
Nevermind, I guess you click once to start and once after you drag it. So unintuitive!
hmm...
Somethings wrong with the physics as its not deterministic. Had me baffled on level 4. The bars kept breaking. I checked my idea with the solutions and it was identical. Only after two reloads of the game it worked. Then I tried to pass the level again just to check, and it didn't work again.
But I'll be back to this game as it seems interesting :)
For level three, if you delete the boxes and move them closer in the dame formation to the anchor, it works. I had the same problem of it snapping every time.
Very unpolished game. The control scheme, the poor beginning progression, and the blatant glitches are enough to ruin the "meditative experience."
I'm having the same issue on level 4. My solution is identical to the recommended one, and the construction shatters as soon as the ball hits it. I tried adding cross struts to various points, but all I was able to do was change WHERE the thing breaks. I even tried only connecting the center box; same thing. I suggest that the physical stress limits written into the program are poorly chosen.
Very upsetting accompaniment to one's lunch.
I'm having issues with Level 14. It tells me "Construction Failed" while the ball is settling. Then, it changes to "Construction Successful," but neither the "Edit" or "Next" buttons are responsive.
For level 4, the result seems to partially depend upon which order you hook up the boxes to the anchor.
Go left-to-right and it will work fine...sometimes. Hook up in any other order and it will always break.
Yes, complete and utter PROGRAMMING FAIL.
Same thing happened to me on level 4.
See, this is why in Fantastic Contraption, all the surfaces act spongy. Too much rigidity and anything with a joint will shatter.
Montgomery - layer order is an issue inherent to physics games. But it's true that there are ways to make the effect more subtle.
Can anybody tell me what the hack is "CONTRUCTION" which is successfull at the end of each level.
Game is poor, i agree((
Has anyone mentioned the awful color scheme for the menus? Light gray on white? I didn't even realize there was a score until I looked at the screen from a different angle.
The control scheme is annoying; every action is done with the mouse except for deselecting a tool.
The mouseover for the plate says it costs $50, but it actually costs $40.
Could be a much better game with a little more attention to detail.
I don't think it's *that* bad. However, the flaws are significant enough to make it not work. Firstly is the put-things-through-each-other-explosion - it shouldn't permit that build in the first place. The most irritating one, for me, is that it fails you if any of the pieces fall off the screen, not just the ball.
thanks for the review. i really enjoyed this, almost could have been as good as redstar falls or something like that but, as others have said, it was definitely glitchy in places.
Guys, if you are stuck on level 4 I found a way around it that seemed to work. Here it is:
click on the center of a box with the bar tool, THEN click on the anchor point. Then continue to do so with the other boxes.
When you press start, it seems to hold up.
Some of the solutions provided don't actually work. :-(
Nice idea per se, nothing new or original but not beaten to death either, but the pointless extra clicking because only about every other click registers is the ultimate punishment for anyone with RSI. The picky positioning of the clicks, not being able to tell which tool is selected in the first place and the solutions working or failing at random don't help much.
All that pales in the face of the fact that I rated it three stars by accident, though.
Same bug as JIGuest, with the game deciding I _did_ solve the puzzle afterall, but not letting me go onto the next level. Pretty sloppy work, but otherwise a fun, solid game.
Level 12, after getting stuck on it, it doesn't work in their solutions either... :-o
This game is full of glitches. On level 3 I pressed start and the ball won't fall, then nothing else worked and I had to reload. And now I just had a metal bar that won't stop following my cursor and stick to the anchor thingy. Fix them, and I might come back.
I'll make a deal with you, JIG reviewers.
Stop posting games with such ridiculously unplayable or bug-ridden mechanics, OR at least explain how to get around same in your review... and I'll stop leaving such snarky comments about it, deal?
Can't resize plates (or anything else, for that matter), at all. No amount of clicking, dragging, praying, or arbitrary messing about reveals how it is done. If it's that difficult to figure out, why isn't it in the review (or described in-game, for that matter, but one is a JIG thing and one is for the developer, of course)?.
Doesn't work, (could not and) did not play.
What on earth is the point of having a solutions page, if the solutions themselves don't work?
Look at the solution for #12, it falls off the bottom of the page.
What gives?
I wish the start button wasn't right next to the reset button.
This game is good in theory but has too many bugs...phantom tools that don't reset after you choose them. Also, having to go back to the start menu if all your tools fall to the bottom is a pain in the rear.
i beat level 4 but the damn game won't stop ticking cause there's a little back and forth momentum that just won't go away.
Stuck on level 8. I can't seem to come up with a decent strategy to pass. Any suggestions?
Uh-Oh!
This is a cheat!
Do not cheat and don't look the spoiler if you don't want to cheat!
Somebody left a handy dandy screen designing tool! Zoom in with firefox 3.5 a couple of times to get it.
Discovered because I forgot my glasses today :D
Got stuck on level 16.
On void levels (so far two) try to balance plates on between dots or the edges...
something like this
------- -------o o or |o o
------- |
then connect each end of the plates
Hmm, not keen. Way too many glitches. It's a pity, because the basic game concept is excellent in the vein of Fantastic Contraption; but the glitching interface and the way links randomly disconnect is just a recipe for frustration. (I don't think the iron bars falling off is anything as deliberate as breaking under weight: I think it's just glitchy connections, because I usually see it when I try to build triangles for rigidity.)
You can resize plates
but level 8 is hard
I don't get level 5
Update