Promising and with enormous potential, Cube World offers an endless world of exploration, limited only by the player’s own willingness to indulge in its endlessly grand adventure. For eight years, Picroma e.K., an indie software development studio, solely consisting of the couple Wolfram «Wollay» and Sarah «Pixxie» von Funck, has committed to the development of this long-awaited title, last publicly released as an alpha in 2013. The game received great praise from both consumers and critics alike, endeared by the boxy world of unbarred travels, randomly generated landscapes, emergent encounters, and an otherwise charming virtual world, inspired by titles like Minecraft, World of Warcraft, and a line of 90’s J-RPGs.


The old Cube World launcher

Then, after some minor patch updates to the alpha build, Picroma went silent. The game was removed from Picroma’s on-line store, and it subsequently became a cult game, with a dormant but virile presence among some smaller on-line communities. If one had not purchased the game from Picroma’s on-line store in 2013, the only ways to acquire the game lied outside the realm of legality.

Only very recently, at a point where most considered the project either dead and vapourware, or stuck in perpetual development, was Cube World's release officially announced. Being among the lucky few who purchased the game six years ago, I had the opportunity to beta-test the game, a fresh chance of delving back into Cube World’s endless voxel realms of exploration and adventure.

Welcomed by the start screen, I created a new character—a rogue frogman—and played around with the controls, which with few exceptions, had largely remained the same over Cube World’s six years, with the exceptions of I, the hotkey for opening your inventory, being rebound to B, and X, the hotkey for accessing your skill tree, being discarded. I then began searching for the closest village, and while scouring for this village, I encountered my first adversaries, and with them, my first issues: a herd of bunnies. Believing I needed experience points to level up for my dungeon-delving, I proceeded to attack some bunnies, who promptly killed me. After re-spawning, I managed to kill a creature, which to my surprise only dropped some gold coins, and no experience points. Enemy creatures were surprisingly hard to kill, especially those with coloured names—in fact, I couldn’t even damage the creatures with purple or yellow names, the most powerful enemies, unlike most other RPGs, including the Alpha builds of Cube World itself—though this is not a major issue, it introduces some problems in balance, volition, and emergent gameplay. In addition to these relatively minor issues, I realised to my slight disappointment that the experience system had been discarded at some point in development, and with it the skill tree, and was replaced with a gear-oriented progression system. This is one of several changes that have occurred during development, this one in particular was introduced relatively late in development.


Jiraya, my ninja Frogman

I found a village, and was told by a denizen that he had spotted a hang-glider atop a rock some kilometres to the south-west. Another villager mentioned a Divine Harp hidden in a lake, yet another urged me to save a kidnapped gnome. For ten-or-so hours, I completely immersed myself within the rolling cube hills I spawned in, defeating monsters, hang-gliding from tall mountains, vanquishing nefarious wizards, triumphing in arenas, and uncovering ancient vaults, sealed by golden doors and protected by undead champions, conquering the artefacts they protected—all whilst accompanied by Wollay’s wonderful compositions. Before I knew it, there was nothing more to see or do within my area, and triumphantly, I began preparing to traverse into the neighbouring savannah, intent on exploring it, too, to the fullest.

However, after these ten hours of a grand adventure, unlike any I’ve had for six years, it
suddenly ended the very moment I crossed the border; I was thrown off my horse, and unable to sail through the rivers or glide through the sky; when attacked by an enemy, my once-powerful gear was void, and I realised that not a single weapon or tool I had claimed in the erstwhile province really meant anything in the new and unknown land I had stepped into. With this newfound knowledge, my appetite for adventure was bitterly quenched—nothing I had done was consequential. The ten hours I had spent in the previous province meant nothing, leave my gold coins and the boons I gained from the artefacts I collected, all of which were largely useless. I had not progressed at all, and my frogman ninja was as weak as ever. Here, I had to start over, and so I did. I ultimately managed to conquer the savannah too, but my victories did not feel as poignant or fulfilling as they did in the preceding province, every conquest felt pyrrhic and hollow, and I had little motivation to explore the next neighbouring region, if I would have to cede my progression every time I crossed the borders. I might as well just have created a new character.

To say I was disappointed is a bit of an understatement. Now, I get this system, I think, and many things have changed over the six years that have passed since the last public build. Instead of an exploration RPG, a boxy world of unbarred travels, Cube World has rather become more akin to a roguelite or roguelike-like (which is both an interesting and respectable genre of video-games in itself), where each biome is a self-contained exploration RPG, or game-cycle. Cube World tries to incorporate both of these «fuzzy» genres into a sort of union, with interesting ideas on both progression and game-cycles, but it ultimately fails to satisfyingly achieve either of these genres on a greater scale. It executes its nominal genre, exploration RPG, with flying colours within the first game-cycle, but it grows stale after the first, and almost unbearably boring after the second. Exploration becomes secondary to foraging for gear, which not only is randomly acquired, but also feels transient and inconsequential, if it's all to be rendered useless the moment one explores too much for the game's liking. Collecting gear is an aimless grind and serves ultimately only a larger, also aimless, and not very rewarding grind of conquering the regions. This grind obscures and takes primacy over exploration and adventure, the nominal purpose of the genre, barring entry to other biomes by stripping you naked, imploring one to either stay within one's home region, or practically begin a new game altogether.

To be concise, the very game discourages you to explore anything outside one's home region, which to an extent defeats its own adventurous and exploratory design goals.


A deactivated item. Gear loses its stats when brought outside the region it was found in (credits to u/Tiln14 on Reddit)

Secondly, this gatekeeping system of rendering the player’s gear useless—dubbed
«region lock» by the Cube World community—is also a detriment to the role-playing part of the game’s nominal genre; it not only disempowers, but also emerses the player out of the very role and experience it has guided the player into from character creation. It feels like a sudden cop-out and shift from an otherwise smooth design, almost like a bruised vinyl record repeating itself. The very design of the game-cycle guides the player into a sort of jadedness and distance from the game.

Both of these problems emerges from the execution of the introduced roguelite elements in Cube World. The basic problem lies not within the structure of this genre’s influence on the game, but rather the scale on which it does so. Its introduction is a clever way to solve the problem of progression within a procedurally generated RPG, but it is implemented way too harshly, and the elements of permanent character progression (ie. artefacts) that is so integral to combat-oriented RPGs (something which Cube World undeniably is) is far too subdued to even be thought of rewarding. In roguelikes and its derived genres, reaching a fail-state—ie., most often death—is usually the point where one would have to reset and start another character. Being forced to restart is a punishment, but it keeps the game interesting and limits endless direct progression. Though, even then there is an element of long-term progression in most roguelikes; new characters with other abilities, slight buffs, and the likes of that. In Cube World, this is represented by the artefacts—however, as stated above, these buffs are not only slight, but negligible, and largely useless. Cube World even fails to uphold the internal logic of roguelikes, as players should not be punished for progressing to the next dungeon stage (ie., a win-state), but rather for dying (as mentioned, reaching a fail-state).


An exaggerated graph describing player power progression in Cube World (credits to u/Jonesxlr on Reddit)

On paper, utilising a roguelite-inspired system to limit unhindered progression and never-ending grinds is a clever idea, but Cube World does not manage to satisfyingly do this. In all practicality, the Alpha builds managed to better distill a progression system, despite all it’s shortcomings and grindiness. Cube World tries to take the best of both RPGs and roguelites, but both fails to commit to and to execute either of them. The game yearns for a sort of horizontal progression, or really, any sense of permanency in progression at all—be it skill trees or new abilities; permanently obtained hang-gliders, boats and reins; more notable artefact effects; or permanent changes or progressions within a region. Currently, all progress is negligible, which induces a feeling of nakedness not only upon the player, but also upon the game-world itself; it’s demotivating. This is not just a major issue, it’s enough to kill interest in the game.

Credits where credits are due, I really think level progression by collecting artefacts is a real stroke of game design genius, honest to God. It would have elegantly solved most of the progress-related issues, had it not been for the fact that player levels are unbearingly negligible. It is a shame that this ingenious progression system is undermined by the games aversion to player power progression.

There is no way around it, Cube World has, as of writing, a broken progression system. It's arbitrarily punishing, it steals agency from the player and feels disempowering; it saps away the vigour and impact of the game, game-cycle by game-cycle, rendering the extended experience dreary and loathsome. It’s simply bad game design.

All this being said, I still like Cube World; I want to like it. It’s a game that is hard to dislike. I had immense fun for 10-or-so hours, albeit with some frustrations considering the jagged and somewhat uneven power progression. The original soundtrack in Cube World is an absolute joy to listen to, the randomly generated terrain and passage, villages, castles and ruins, are indisputably beautiful, and Cube World is, in general, a masterclass in video-game æsthetics, even surpassing its inspirations and contemporaries (such as Minecraft and Trove). While the game is a slight bit lacking in content as of currently, this lack is not important, and will surely be introduced in coming updates; this game definitely has more content than its alpha precursor. Not to mention, that the game is much more enjoyable when played with friends; it’s a perfect game for co-op multiplayer.

If Cube World one day manages to satisfyingly address (or at least manage) the problems of progression within a procedurally generated world, limited only by the player, it would be nothing short of a masterpiece. Sadly, it is not. And that’s why, despite my delight, and despite that I wish I could, I can't recommend this game. Not until these problems are mended or managed in some way.

Promising and with enormous potential, Cube World offers an endless world of exploration, limited only by the player’s own willingness to indulge in its endlessly grand adventure. But the adventure it offers is vain and inconsequential, and its promises are strained by hollow sense of meaninglessness. Enjoyability is transient, but still indisputable. Hopefully, I will be able to pick it up again someday.

Cube World is a charming wellspring of dormant potential.



Due to Steam's 8,000 character limit on reviews, it was posted here as a faux Guide. The review page itself can be found here.