Cube Smashers
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| Cube Smashers

Can there be any more boring a shape than the humble cube? While the triangle gets all the cool Greek philosophers talking and the dodecahedron manages to have a name that makes the speaker sound clever, the cube is as predictable and dull-looking as it is practical.

Cube Smashers manages to make cubes cool again by adding the magic ingredients of ‘smashing things up’ and ‘explosions’ to the mix. Lots of them.

Every cube on the board has a different colour on each of its six sides and your task is to match the exposed side with two or more similar cubes in a line to form a match.

Once a match is made, every connected colour of the same type explodes and the cubes above roll downwards, altering which side they land on as they go. You can rotate a cube in any direction but you can’t reverse it completely, meaning at least one colour is inaccessible at all times.

Cube your enthusiasm

Cube Smashers is one heck of a big game, weighing in at over a megabyte in size, but within seconds it’s obvious how much care and attention has gone into making it an enjoyable experience.

This is aptly demonstrated by one of the best tutorials for a mobile title I’ve seen in a long time.

Rather than throw you in the deep end and let you guess what’s going on, whenever a new concept appears on screen the game pauses and takes time to explain what it does. It sounds obvious but it’s a feature strangely absent from most other titles.

The graphics are clear and surprisingly exciting, even making a celebration out of the simple act of matching by sending showers of cube-bits blasting all over the screen. This euphoria is helped no end by some decent music and sound effects, which you can turn off or on separately to suit your mood.

Challenge The Cube

There are only two game modes, Timed and Challenge. Timed is the easiest to describe: matching colours gains valuable extra seconds on the clock. Challenge, however, is a much harder and more exciting beast.

During play, various objectives like ‘match 4 red blocks’ or ‘twist the board with a power up’ slowly make their way down a timeline at the top of the screen. If you fail to complete them before they disappear then a random cube is changed into a blank block, preventing you from matching.

It’s a great game of risk and reward as completing the objectives won’t score as much as stringing together combos, but you can’t leave them for too long or you’ll be overwhelmed.

There is a very strange leap in difficulty that will annoy most players, occurring far too suddenly around level 23. It’s telling, though, that despite hitting a brick wall at this point I still wanted to return to beat my high score or gain another achievement.

Even if you’re feeling burnt out on Bejeweled-style puzzlers, Cube Smashers manages to inject enough originality and quality to make it stand out from the crowd.

Cube Smashers

An explosive and original match three game that will keep you coming back for more
Score
Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).