The Last Cube Review

I’m always keen to check out new and interesting puzzle titles, and thanks to what we do here at the Tavern I’ve been fortunate enough to do just that many times over. The latest title in that line today is The Last Cube, and I found myself constantly impressed and surprised by how Improx Games kept things fresh and challenging.

The gist of The Last Cube is – as a good puzzler should be – easy to explain but far harder to put into practice. Levels are broken up into grids around which we move a 6-sided cube by ‘rolling’ it. What complicates matters are a collection of stickers that each area offers. Each of the 6 colour-coded areas brings a new type of sticker to the fray, each with their own particular ability they grant the cube. The first – a blue X – lets us rotate the cube horizontally, while others offer up such powers as teleportation, sliding, a duplicate cube, safely descending off a ledge, or being able to roll on the edge of the cube rather than a flat face. Each area is broken up into 3 stages, and subsequent areas add the new stickers rather than replace them, so as you can imagine the challenge ramps up by the time we get to the end of the game.

These powers can only be used when the sticker is on the top face of the cube, so manoeuvring it around to get in position can be tricky, while other puzzles need us to press a button with a specific sticker on a specific face. By the time we get further in we’ve got several stickers on each of the faces and so carefully planning which one is where is also a consideration.

It’s a fairly simple set-up to grasp, but in practice it strikes a fine balance between overwhelming and smartly paced. Even when I was royally stuck I never felt disheartened or frustrated as it was usually enough to simply roll around the arena and try some new positioning. One or two puzzles got me good and proper, but it just takes a little ‘outside the box’ thinking to see the solution. Moving the cube around is intuitive enough, and for floor-based switches the dev seen offer a guide option as we approach, showing us where to roll to have the right sticker in the right place. It’s not a instant win button, but more of a gentle nudge after we’ve done the hard work to get here so that we can move onto the next area.

There are various extra bonus missions to tackle as well as several collectibles on each stage, and a bigger stage challenge such as beat it in a set number of moves or sticker usage. The collectibles unlock lore entries but in all honesty I found my interest here lacking, mainly due to being so focused on the puzzle at hand and the simple pleasure in solving how to get to the next area/collectible.

My only real nit-pick with The Last Cube is to do with some odd performance on both Series S and X. On Series S, we can change between 1080p and 4K output, but setting it to the latter tanks the framerate to horrendous degrees. More egregious though is the Series X side of things. Both options are present (though the 4K mode is obviously better handled) but no matter the mode, I experienced horrendous stuttering every time I passed an area or collected an item. It only lasted for a few seconds, and again was only once a puzzle was solved, but it is still bizarre that it happened at all.

Conclusion

These slight performance hitches aside, I really enjoyed my time with The Last Cube. It offers a different spin on puzzle platformers that manages an excellent difficulty balance throughout, giving the old noggin a good workout without making things too hard despite the potential for doing so.