It's hip to be square!
First of all thanks to Xbox for the code.
How do you sum this one up? It's not easy, because there's no broad sweeping storyline here, no sandbox exploring and discovering, because this is a straight forward (on the surface anyway) puzzle game.
It looks simple, but it soon becomes apparent that like Mystery Castle, it's trickier than it looks.
Your job is to guide a cube from one end of a maze to another, so it comes to rest on the square with a keyhole icon on it. Once you make contact with it, the door to the next area is unlocked, simple right? No.
As you can see the cube has multicoloured sides, and as you progress through the mazes you'll soon come to grips with the mechanics and notice that the mini mazes are on split levels.
Where the level splits there will be a coloured square, so what does that mean? It means that to get to the raised level you have to match colour to colour, so if the tile is red, match the red side of the control cube to the red and voila, the section raises like an elevator. If however, you miss match, it will either not move at all, or if there is room enough it will then sink. If it sinks, then you can rewind and try again, or restart the level from scratch.
With rising and sinking platforms, more than one exit point and in time, limited moves and time limits, you'll soon find that this game will get it's hooks into you or leaving you with a slight headache!
Learning Curve.
It's all quite intuitive at the start and remains so, but as the time limits, and move restrictions are applied, you soon discover that this seemingly simple puzzler becomes anything but! It's a gentle curve though, it won't suddenly club you over the head, but it lends itself to that idea of giving it one more try.
Music
It can be best described as a minimalistic soundtrack that kind of reminded me of the music in the classic Thomas was Alone (which I reviewed back in the day) and brought back fond memories of that title.
K.I.S.S.
Keep it simple, stupid, sums up the game's gameplay control wise if not in the brain exercise department. Look, this is not going to be an epic length review in fact we are nearly at the end now!
To sum up, it's engaging, challenging and will appeal, entertain and frustrate in relatively equal measures.
I liked it, though it may not be to everyone's taste. If you enjoyed Thomas was Alone, Knytt Underground then I feel this will appeal to you, as I liked those titles, I liked it. I didn't love it, but I do like it and will happily play it again.