Intelligent Qube

"Think you're smart? This game will hand you your, uh, controller"

Ah, Intelligent Qube, how to describe thee? Well, to start off, imagine what Tetris would be like if you were standing underneath the falling blocks, scrambling to get out of the way while you dropped them into place. That gives you some idea of the marriage of tense action and puzzle solving that you will find in this game.

Intelligent Qube puts human intelligence to the test as you race to clear puzzles formed of rows of giant cubes rolling endlessly towards you on top of a narrow platform suspended in space. Oddly enough, there is a story to it, but I won't tell you what it is, since you have to finish the game to discover it. Now, the thoughtful reader may be wondering how a cube can roll, especially when pressed up against other cubes, but don't worry about it. They just do, okay?

Each puzzle consists of a flat grid of cubes (or ‘Qubes') in grey, black and green. You ‘capture' cubes, removing them from the grid, by placing marks on the ground, then activating those marks as the desired cube rolls onto it. The goal in each puzzle is to capture all grey and green cubes, but leaving the black ones (the Forbidden Qubes) intact. To assist in this goal, green cubes (Advantage Qubes) leave a green mark when captured, which you can then activate and ‘bomb' the area around it, capturing any cubes on or in contact with the original green mark. Now, while you're doing all of this, remember that the entire puzzle is moving towards you square by square. So you may thing you have created a useful Advantage Zone with a green mark, but you have to watch out for any black cubes that may roll into that space to avoid capturing them by mistake. When you've got 2 or more Advantage Zones going at the same time, this can start to get complicated.

And did I mention that you have limited space behind you? As the puzzles roll forward, they move closer and closer to the edge of the platform. If you don't clear a path through the puzzle for yourself, you'll get pushed off the edge and dropped into the abyss, or crushed under the gigantic cubes themselves. You can extend the length of the platform by clearing puzzles perfectly, adding one row to the platform each time, or you can lose rows and shorten the amount of space you have to maneuver in by accidentally capturing Forbidden Qubes, or by letting too many uncaptured cubes fall off the edge of the platform.

Did I also mention that the puzzles get bigger and bigger with each passing wave?

Now, I realize that I'm just giving a lot of gameplay information, but I wanted to provide some sense of the steadily increasing complexity and hazard of the game. The blocks just keep on coming, wave after wave, always threatening to squash you or force you off the edge of the platform. And if this pressure wasn't enough, the puzzles get pretty damn hard as you progress, too. At least the game provides a smooth learning curve, starting with painfully easy puzzles at the start that gradually increase in size and complexity. As a beginner player, you would be lucky to reach the seventh stage, and even if you did you'd be spending your time just trying to carve a path to get through a puzzle to avoid getting killed, not solve the entire thing. Over time, however, with practice and thought, you will begin to spot the patterns in the arrangements of cubes and be able to clear the higher-level puzzles in entirety, given enough space on the platform to do so, which you might not have if you're not fast enough. So the game contains enough complexity to keep you trying for a long time to come, while also giving you the opportunity to gradually improve your skills.

Even once you're able to clear most of the puzzles, all solutions are not created equally. For each puzzle, you are also given a ‘Typical Rotation Number', the number of turns (each time the puzzle rolls forward one space, it counts as one turn) you ought to be able to complete the puzzle in. It is analogous to ‘par' in golf. You are rewarded with more points if you are able to match, or better yet beat, this number. These points count towards your final “I.Q.” score given at the end of the game. So even once you know you can get through all 9 stages of the game, you will be hounded by the knowledge that you could do even better next time.

All of this points to lots and lots of replay value. Indeed, fans of the game play it for years, and the fun hardly diminishes. Each of the 16 puzzle size groups has around 200 possible puzzles in it (more if you count their left-right reversals as well, as the game will randomly flip the puzzles in this way), and you might see only 4 of them in a single game, making for lots and lots of variety each time you play. Add to this 5 different difficulty levels (which basically amounts to the speed that the puzzles roll forward), a 2-player challenge, and the ability to create custom puzzles. If you like it at all, this game can stay with you for a long time to come.

Visually, the game could be more impressive. The background that the platform sits against is jet black, and the entire game is made up of, well, cubes. To add a bit of variety, the color of the normal cubes changes each stage, and there are 5 sets of colors to choose from in the options menu as well. More than this might distract from the core gameplay, however, so maybe we should count our blessings (though there are re-makes of the game that include psychedelic backgrounds). As for sound effects, there's basically only the cubes rolling and slamming down each turn, capturing a square (kind of a swooshing sound), and the pitter patter of your character's feet as you move around the board. The musical score, on the other hand, is sweeping and majestic, and is one of the longest single tracks I've ever heard in a video game (in terms of time before the track loops back to the start). It is recorded by a philharmonic orchestra and has many movements. The song changes when you're performing badly, too, to a more distressing worried tune, just to add to the pressure of trying to dig yourself out of a hole.

It is worth noting that there are some major differences in the different regional versions of the game. The North American release is the most bare-bones, having only the basic arcade mode and 3 playable characters. Other releases have added different play modes (e.g. ‘Survival') and up to a dozen unlockable characters, and (I believe) additional musical scores. Still, even the basic game has held my and others' interest for a long time, so if you can get a hold of one of the more fleshed-out versions, consider those things as icing on the cake.

Sitting somewhere between a pure puzzler and an action game, Intelligent Qube delivers thrills and challenge galore, and is worth adding to any collection, despite a limited (but excellent) musical score and basic (but effective) graphics. To sum up, I'll leave you with a quote from the back of the game case: “You'll need a quick mind and even quicker thumbs - if you fail, you die. No pressure.”

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/25/05