Following on from the success of the award-winning original indie game, the team at Toxic Games will be back soon for more physics-based puzzles in Q.U.B.E. 2. However, things have definitely changed since the 2011 indie game first arrived and you can see from the new trailer below that this is going to be one of the best looking games the genre has ever seen thanks to the power of the Unreal Engine and the dedication of the development team.
Sharp, super slick and beautifully crafted, it’s about as cutting edge as it gets where both indie gaming and puzzle adventures are concerned. The coolest scene in the trailer features a narrow section of open landscape with cube-based structures either side of you and a path leading up to a beautifully rendered tree.
There are elements of cel shading to the fauna growing throughout the game with some parallels to the style of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. The lighting effects are stunning as they flare around the tree and shimmer off the water either side of the path, reflecting on the shiny cubes that make up the walls.
As a puzzle-based adventure, there’s definitely going to be a lot more breathing space to appreciate the graphics in the game with no marauding zombies to face or bullets flying all around you. It’s looking set to be the gaming equivalent of zen-like tranquility, but with the darker opening scene of the trailer and the lost in space storyline, we’re expecting it to have moments of intensity.
The puzzles are looking pretty cool too, and with the genius of the Shrines in The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild there’s definitely a lot of love from gamers for puzzle adventures at the moment. Q.U.B.E. 2 should be a fair bit more complicated at times than the Rune-powered challenges of BOTW, giving us a lot to get the grey matter firing. Essentially, if Sherlock played computer games, it would be this one.
The story sees you playing as British archaeologist Amelia Cross, who has woken up to find herself on an alien planet following the successful completion of her mission. The trailer also introduces Commander Emma Sutcliffe, who sends out a distress call looking for survivors of the Petruvious Mission and she’ll essentially be your guiding partner similar to Nowak from the original Q.U.B.E. game.
There are no details about how the sequel follows on from the world-saving efforts of the unnamed protagonist from the previous title, but with talk of an origin planet in the trailer, you can probably join the potential dots a little. The previous puzzle adventure saw you waking up on an alien ship with a series of progressively difficult challenges to go through in a bid to stop it crashing into and destroying Earth. We suspect that the planet Amelia has woken up on is connected to the ship, but we’ll have to wait for the game’s release to find out how it’s all going to pan out.
The trailer also talks about them having been to the planet before and that their escape pods must have brought them back to the origin planet after they’d completed the mission. There are also hints at the same amnesia problem that plagued the hero from the previous game with Emma saying that Amelia probably doesn’t remember, so there’s the possibility of a similar trust dilemma to face once again.
An official release date hasn’t been confirmed for Q.U.B.E. 2 as of yet, but the game is expected in early 2018 following its announcement this month (August 2017). It’ll be available on PC, Xbox ONE and PS4 and it’s already shaping up to be one of the biggest indie games of 2018. If you missed the original the first time around, the Director’s Cut is currently available on the same platforms, so there’s plenty of time to catch up. It’s £6.99 on Steam and £7.99 on PlayStation and Xbox stores, so it’s a bargain for any fellow puzzle heads out there.
