If you clear one of these cubes he will lose a row of the stage, and a perfect score isn’t possible.Ĭlearing all cubes, normal and advantage while avoiding forbidden ones will land the player a perfect bonus, announced by an awesome “Perfect!” by an announcer, and you will gain a row of cubes to the end of the stage. Forbidden cubes, are displayed in black and must be avoided.Cleverly using these cubes is key to solving the stage, but the player must make sure not to clear forbidden cubes. When you clear one of the advantage cubes, the tile will turn green and activating it the player can clear up to nine cubes at max. Advantage cubes, marked in green will provide significant help to the player.Normal cubes, they are the same color as the stage cubes you move around on and should be cleared.When the player clears the blocks in the set, new ones will rise and this will happen 3 times, for a total amount of 4 blocks rising per level. Anywhere between 1 or 4 set of rows will come at the player.Īt the beginning of the game, 3 rows of length 4 cubes(12 cubes) will come at the player. At the beginning of each stage, the player will be against the stage that has about 23-30 rows. The player has infinite continues, but players score will be reset. The game consists of 9 stages (eight plus the final stage). In case you run out of space or is “rolled over” by the cubes the game will end. If a forbidden cube is cleared the player will use the last row of cubes behind him. The player can also use “advantage cubes”, which can clear up to nine cubes. The game is simple, the player is put up against cubes, and must clear them by marking a place on the ground and activate the marker when cube rolls on it, and avoid “forbidden cubes”. There’s pretty much no way I could do this without panicking.Puzzle or logic games were always in short supply on consoles, original ones even less, but on PS1 Intelligent Qube or “Kurushi” as it was known in Europe, hits all the right places.ĭeveloped by G-Artists and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, Intelligent Qube is definitely a unique and original game. Since I more or less stymied around stage 4 during my playthrough, I decided to look into what the game’s final stage looks like… and I’m now both impressed and terrified. I suppose that’s why IQ’s soundtrack doesn’t quite give off that typical “game music” vibe. I suspected it was Hitoshi Sakimoto at first – it has a bit of an orchestral FF Tactics/Tactics Ogre vibe to it – but the composer is actually Takayuki Hattori, who actually does a lot of anime and live-action drama music, according to his Wikipedia entry. Readers who were watching the stream I played IQ on can probably remember me making remarks about the music’s quality and wondering who the composer was. Intelligent Qube’s soundtrack goes a distinctly different route, featuring big, bombastic orchestral pieces. Usually when you think of puzzle game music, you think of boppy, catchy tunes that keep you alert while you’re figuring out a solution. What I did really enjoy about the game, however, was its soundtrack, which took me completely by surprise. (That, and I keep getting smooshed.) I can certainly see the appeal, but it’s not for me. Spatial puzzles have never been a strong suit of mine, and keeping track of the positions of multiple cubes and panels and such just kind of overwhelms me after a bit. It’s undeniably a clever, well-designed action/puzzle game, but it just didn’t click with me. But every mistake you make is your own fault: the game is harsh, yet fair. In fact, it’s extremely unforgiving, to the point where even minor mistakes made early on can come back and bite you in the ass later on, and a small slip-up can incur severe penalties. That isn’t to say that Intelligent Qube is easy. It’s a very interesting game: its rules are somewhat complicated to explain but easy to grasp once you actually start playing. One of the games I drew (out of the four matches I played “officially”) was Intelligent Qube (“Kurushi” 1 in Europe for whatever odd reason), a PSOne title that I’d heard of but hadn’t played before. I plan to write a more detailed post about the event shortly, but for now I can say that it’s something I highly encourage people interested in exploring a wide variety of games to participate in. Over the last month I participated in the SpeedRunsLive Mystery Game tournament, which just wrapped up this weekend and proved to be an exceptionally fun experience.
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