ZooCube

"Excellent puzzle game"

Zoocube is great. It's alittle weird, and a little hard to get used to for the first few minutes, but after that, you'll be loving it.

Zoocube in a nutshell is this, basically, in the center of the screen is a cube which you can rotate. Falling onto three of the siz sides of the cube are shapes (animals), if two of the same type land on top of each other on the cube, then they disappear. Sounds simple right? Well aren't all the best games?

Obviously it's a little more complicated than that, but not much. You can juggle the order of animals on your cube if there a re more than one on a side, and you also have bombs thats help you rid yourself of some animals if you aren't doing so well. If any side of the cube piles above 6 animals high, then you die.

Now then, on to the review.

Gameplay
Zoocube gameplay is great, in one player mode this is almost Tetris teritory. Almost. Multiplayer is also great, but I'd recommend a large TV to play it on. The shapes in multiplayer are extremely small. If you've not played the single player version much, and don't recognise the shapes, then you won't get far. Having said that, after a few goes my wife and I are now competent enough to play multiplayer with no problems. And multiplayer is fun too, more than I'd expected. The screen does get any smaller than it does in two player mode, so if you can play two player mode OK, then you can play four player mode happily too. 8/10

Graphics
Hmm. Well it is a puzzle game. You can't expect much. They're not bad, but they're not great. The backgrounds themselves are a bit below par, and the larger animal faces that you get are a bit odd looking, but I think this is more of a style choice than an actual problem with the graphics. The cube and that smaller animal shapes look great. 6/10

Sound
The sound effects are all very nice, and don't actually get annoying, which I was surprised about. I think it may be because you're too busy to be annoyed with the effects. The music is simple, and doesn't get in the way. Overall, just what you need in a puzzle game. Very good. 7/10

Overall
Overall I would recommend this game to other puzzle loving players. In fact I already have. It really is surprisingly good. The premise might not sound exciting, but then nor did Tetris did it? This game will take you a month of Sundays to complete, as it gets quick, very quick. 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/18/03, Updated 02/18/03