QB Planets is a relaxed and casual puzzle game that is heavily inspired by the Rubik’s cube. Fun and simple to pick up and with a choose your own difficulty style of challenge, it is a brief but well put together game.
Each level sees you crash land on a planet with a need to escape. To do so you must collect three powerups and then make your way to the ship. Each level is a cube, mostly made up of 3×3 squares. Just like a Rubik’s cube, each face can rotated horizontally or vertically. This means that you have to rotate the cube to bring either the powerups and ship to you, or you to them. Either way works and part of the fun with QB Planets is that there are a variety of solutions.
Levels can be cleared at your own pace but you are awarded stars for additional challenges. These largely are completing the level within a time limit or with a limited number of twists. Some bring in the additional gameplay elements to the game though. Each world as its own spin on the game. There’s an ice world where if you walk over an ice lake, it cracks and you can’t walk back across. There’s a world with lava that spews out and can kill you and there’s another world with portals that let’s you jump across the planet. Some of these switches work better than others but they all require you to twist the world around to not just get to your collectables but avoid the issues. Often this means you’ll have to create your path and the twist the world to keep going.
Extra stars unlock additional skins for your character and spaceship and are the only bonuses to unlock by chasing the extra challenges. The game itself can be cleared within two hours too, so on launch it is a little short. The developer has said on their website more is to come in the future though. One other interesting extra coming post-launch is AR support. This is with a product called Tilt Five which brings digital board games to life in AR. I can see QB Planets working superbly in AR (or VR for that matter) because of the tactical way you have to twist and rotate the levels to get the solutions.
Whilst its a little short, QB Planets is a well put together and easy to grasp puzzle game. If the AR mode lands well and some more puzzles are added, this will shape up to a fine title.
Review copy provided by publisher.
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