Cubicity: Slide puzzle

when it first came out, [b]cubicity: slide puzzle[/b] was full of mobile shenanigans, but based on feedback the developers quickly 'de-mobilized' it during launch week. it needed a few more patches to fix smaller issues and add some quality of life stuff like volume sliders, windowed mode, unlimited undo, etc., but now it's one of my favorite wall-to-wall sliding puzzlers. graphics are not really important in the grand scheme of things, even less so in puzzlers, but the diorama-like presentation of forests and cute animals immediately won me over, and I found small things like moving animals in the backround hours into the game. gotta admire the attention to detail. to be fair, scenery can get in the way sometimes, but you can rotate the levels (even with the mouse wheel now, thanks to yours truly, who asked for it), so it's not really an issue. audio-wise it's less appealing, I had to turn off the music pretty fast and wasn't a fan of the sound effects either, plus I have an especia...

Like the game. Graphics looks really nice and the game itself is challenging enough. It has minor flaws, but it doesn't affect the experience. Glad that developer is working on updates and introduces new features all the time :)

Good quality puzzle. Relaxing atmosphere. Pleasant music and cute animals :) Sometimes it is very hard to get 3 stars without special items.

While there is a lot to like here, such as the outstanding visual style, cute characters, and the primary puzzle mechanics, I'm not sure if I should actually recommend this game. The problem is the 'power-ups' (aka cheats?): the ice cubes, bombs, and especially the teleports. They seem needed to solve some levels (at least for 3 stars completion), but because they are widely available (5 of each / level) they are completely overpowered. Why would you try to solve a level without them, when you can use them? It removes the incentive to actually solve the puzzles the hard way. It breaks the game. Shame. The achievements "use 'cheat X' 100 times" are completely stupid as well. This feels like a port of a mobile game, where the aforementioned power-ups are an IAP. I can't recommend that.

the game is fun and all but my issue is that i am unable to get the 'next time' achievement. i did two levels with 2 stars, on purpose, and then came back and got the 3rd star but i did not get the achievement still. am i doing something wrong or is there a certain time period i need to come back after or is it after a set number of levels maybe?

A cool short puzzle game. Don't believe the reviews that say it's impossible to have 3 star completion without power-ups - I completed all levels with 3 stars and 95% of them with "perfect" (it's an extra challenge, so basically 4 stars, idk), all without power-ups. It's definitely possible.

I don't think the devs did enough play testing to figure out the least number of moves for each level. The 3 star move limit should represent the solution with the least number of moves, making the puzzle to figure out this most efficient solution. However, most of my initial solutions have been a couple moves below the 3-star limit. So, while there is a puzzle element of figuring out my initial solution, there could be even more puzzling by forcing me to figure out the most efficient solution. Still recommend on sale tho.