I was drawn to Cube Boy initially because its spooky setting and the cube-shaped main character reminded me of Gregory Horror Show. I love that PS2 game, and then the cartoon series when I bought all the DVDs after playing it. Whilst Cube Boy is monochrome, bloodless, and far less creepy or spooky, it does strive for the same type of comedic, children-friendly horror that Gregory Horror Show imbued. It turns out my initial attraction was a good omen!
Cube Boy is a short, 2-3 hour point-and-click adventure. You can move Cube Boy throughout various 2.5D locations as you try to unlock the basement of a house you’ve been gifted to see what weird creature is hidden inside. This requires you to find six keys, and the keys are scattered behind various puzzles in different locations on the property. Movement is simple. Click where you’d like Cube Boy to go, and he’ll move there. Right-click interacts with an item, but in an unfortunate gameplay issue, the detection radius of interactivity seems to be more like a doughnut rather than a circle. If you stand in front of an item, you can’t interact with it. You’ll learn to stand off to the side of things in Cube Boy very quickly.
Puzzles are varied. Some of pattern based like assembling a floating passage by working out the order to put tiles back in place. Others are more observational, or require the house clock to be changed to a specific time to trigger an event to occur. These are all quite satisfying, as is a spot of Mahjong. There is one slider puzzle, which is a personal kryptonite, but even I managed to beat it eventually. Puzzles are rarely repeated, although a few are interconnected. If you do get stuck, each room in the house has a puzzle hint that gives you a clue about how to solve something. Some of these hints need to be taken very literally whenever there is text involved. Most hints are diagrams, which unusually, are easier to understand. I got stuck three times in the game, and each one was down to me fundamentally misunderstanding how I could interact with something. Read those hints and take them literally. It’ll save you the good 40 minutes of head-scratching that I had!
Tonally, there’s plenty of comedic nods throughout the story, artwork, music, and interactions. This feels like a monochrome Scooby-Doo-level spooky title. The puzzles take more brainpower to solve, but it’s definitely an approachable evening of entertainment where families with kids over 8 years old could play together. Its release is excellently timed for some Halloween shenanigans, and that’s when I’d recommend playing it. Cube Boy doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it is enjoyable to play and solve.
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