Isles of Cubes

Entertaining puzzle game, also well suited for in between. The increasing complexity of the game mechanics over the course of the game is explained very well with short and often amusing tutorial instructions.

Fun little logic puzzle game where you convert tiles into different types to gain resources and grow your villages into cities. Sort of looks like a city builder like Islanders or HomeWind, but more a pure puzzle game of managing resources to gain more before you run out of materials or people. Not so challenging you tear your hair out, but also not too easy (by island 4 of 6 it starts getting much trickier), and there's also a (admittedly shallow) meta-game of building your town: you can upgrade your ship to go on expeditions to get bonus resources to help build your main town, where you can (after a couple upgrades) buy cards to makes levels easier or blueprints to solve levels for you outright if you are completely stuck. There is also an undo if you make mistakes, and the game has short tutorials with every new building it introduces, so no surprises. Some reviews mention problems building villages, but the game clearly tells you that villages require a water source (maybe it didn't before). I don't know why the game has so few reviews, seems like a game many people would enjoy. Would get a higher rating from me if there was a bit more to the meta-game of building your town, but it's a perfectly fine puzzle game. 8/10

[h1]Very entertaining, looking forward to the official release![/h1] I came to this game with little to no expectations and it pleasantly surprised me! Its tutorial helped me get the gist of how to play it and it hooked me right in. I do have a few [b]suggestions[/b] for you on how to make this game even better: - It would be nice to let the user know in a more obvious way where they can potentially build a village. As it stands, I sometimes had to "wing it" and guess in which corner it is allowed to build one (especially if I have to remove a forest first). - It would be nice to know what I am trying to achieve (some sort of a "quest" on my home island). As I explore the islands, all I see on the home island is a possibility to upgrade a few things but no clear objective so far. It would motivate me to play more if I knew there were some cool upgrades or rewards awaiting me if I completed a certain quest.

Don't let the rather simple map graphics fool you. This game is great! Everything is explained well, there's a good distribution of new features during progress and there's just a lot to to. Although the goal is to get three stars on every level (not using cards, no blueprints, no undo) you can make level completion easier. You earn gold by completing levels. With that gold, you can do a lot. You can for example buy ships to send on expeditions to get resources, buy constructions on the home island to for example make your own help cards which you can use to complete a level you're a bit stuck with (for example have extra wood). You can also buy contracts which provide you of extra resources and there's a little random puzzle island with a limited set of puzzles but which you can have reset faster by buying the necessity . You get also gold by completing those. The puzzles are really fun to do. I haven't had a single moment of disappointment, boredom or frustration... And it runs very well on the deck. So, yeah, great!

Isles of Cubes is one of the few puzzle games that I enjoyed playing. A blend of puzzle and city building. Somewhat overlooked at only 11 reviews. In a typical level, you need to get gold by building a village. A village requires wood stone and food. These need to be produced with limited workers and tiles. If you get very stuck, you can buy Blueprints for 12 gold, which will show you one solution. Blueprints are imperfect though, as they only tell you what to build and not if you have to collect a resource that's on the ground for example. Another thing that wasn't explained at all, was that a building also collects resources that fall onto it. Also, note that the harbor doesn't reveal map, only the watchtower does. So if you build a harbor before the watchtower, you'll only see some dust animations because the land has been made "accessible", but the area remains black. It will look and feel like a bug. The game does have some real bugs, or rather exploits. For example, it's possible to earn exponential amounts of gold using the gold multiplier card. Very useful for those last achievements, as you only get 1 new quest per hour. There are 6 islands in total, unlocked one by one. For each new island you get a new building which keeps the game interesting. The guild is perhaps the most useful, as it increases the production of connected buildings. Note that a building only produces a resource when it is built, so you usually need to build the guild beforehand if possible. Guilds don't stack.

The main puzzle mechanics are solid, though the game sometimes refuses to let me build a village on a particular square even though I have the relevant resources. I hasn't prevented me from solving a puzzle but it's annoying that there seems to be a hidden rule about this, or maybe it's a bug, or maybe I found a solution the game designer didn't expect. I'm not so sure about what is going on outside the individual puzzles - the cards, extra resources, home island. This is early access so I guess that isn't fleshed out yet but I just wonder if the game even needs most of that extra stuff. But the main gameplay is good, the tutorial is good enough (I've seen much worse on more expensive games) and it's mostly pretty clear what is going on with the UI. I'm sure I'll have more to say once I've played a bit more bit I wanted to drop the developer some love, the game deserves a wider audience and I hope another positive review will help that along. The game didn't crash once and there were no glitches apart from the annoying village thing. It's all basically what you see in the gallery and description, so if that looks appealing give it a go.

A nice puzzle game with simple mechanics. That said, it is quite deep and although easy at the start, further down the line it becomes real hard and thus quite a nice challenge. For those who like challenges and do not mind repeating things until you solved it, this is for you.

Great puzzle game. Took me 5 hours to get to the last level the developers have created thus far!

This game is nice! It does have great potential!