Giveaway of the Day - CubeDrift

The giveaway period for yesterdays game has been extended for an extra three hours
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Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of potential cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain why your reasons for the feedback you post. Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment. Thank you.

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Installation

The game downloads to a 6.69Mb zip file that unpacks to a read me with the terms and conditions plus a set up and separate activation module. Click on the activation module to register the game then install it using the set up file. This is one of those games that isn’t free standing, which means re-installing the operating system will leave the game unregistered.

The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed during the installation wizard. The C drive may be different depending upon if you have more than one hard drive installed and whether your OS is installed to the C drive or a different one like mine (which is the F drive):

C:\Program Files\CubeDrift (32 bit OS)

Don’t forget to activate the game using the activation module within the 24 hour period which ends on Monday 16th January 2012 at 8pm GMT (3am Eastern Time or Midnight on the 15th January 2012, Pacific Time). The game creates a shortcut on the desktop and in the Start/Programs menu and also installs an uninstall shortcut in the Start/Programs menu. During the installation wizard you can also install a shortcut to the quick launch bar if you wish. That is unchecked by default. The game starts in windowed mode, but you are asked at the first start up whether you want to play the game in full screen.

Main Menu

Introduction

Cube Drift has been given away three times previously; way back in January 2007 only a month after the start of the game give away project where it received a positive 89% of votes out of 150 votes (just over 5.7 Thousand downloads) with 43 comments, which you can see HERE The game was also given away later that year in September 2007 where it again received a positive 89% out of 176 votes (just over eight thousand downloads) with 60 comments. You can read those HERE and finally it was also given away last July (2011), where it received a positive 70% out of 318 votes (approx 10 thousand downloads) with 82 comments which you can read HERE . Just to put things in perspective, last july’s downloads compared to the number of comments made equates to 0.82% and of those about 50% were constructive (0.41% of those downloading the game)

C:\Program Files (x86)\CubeDrift (64 bit OS)

The developer introduces the game with the following blurb:

Mind-blowing logic game, inspired by Sokoban with challenging puzzles and neat graphics with a completely new and remarkable game mechanics that you will love.

Are you tired of pointless games for brainless people? Dive into the logical world of Cube Drift and solve hundreds of challenging and original levels! Cube Drift is a very addictive game.

CubeDrift does not only bring you joy and fun, but also improves your logical thinking and combinatorial skills. Increase your IQ painlessly!

You can also boost your creativity with the included Level Editor. You may not only download and play level packs from other players, but also create them and share them on our website. CubeDrift has support for color-blind players.

Reference accessed HERE on the 8th July 2011

Options Menu

Features:

• 100 original and exciting levels
• 6 level themes
• Beautiful long soundtrack
• Great level editor
• Downloadable levels (not sure where you can access these any longer)
• Player community
• Color blind mode for color blind players

Level Editor

The Game

When first started the game opens up in a window and asks if you would like to switch to full screen. When you start the game play a help window will appear which shows you how to move the blocks (see the last image below). Game play is very simple, you have to move colored blocks to their respective colored dots by placing your mouse pointer over the block. You can make the block move in one of four directions Up, down, left and right by placing the mouse pointer to the edge of the block you want to move. atch out for the black holes.

The block moves in the direction of the arrow

An arrow appears showing you which direction the block will move to. The game starts off very easy, but as you progress through the levels the level designs become more and more devious. You will also find six different themes, most of which I’ve captured images of and uploaded them to my photobucket account which you can see as a slide show below (see the images section) You get 100 levels plus a levels editor to create your own levels. The levels editor is accessible from the main menu (Launch Editor).

The developer used to run a forum for this game where users could post links to their own levels, but this has over the last four years disappeared. (I’ll set up a thread in the game discussion thread later where you can post and share any levels you create; however you’ll have to upload the levels to your own ftp account. There are free upload sites such as Filefront which gives you unlimited space for uploading files, but you do have to make sure the files are downloaded occasionally otherwise the owners will clear your account.

In Game Level

The options menu enables you to toggle off/on the sound and music but there is no slider controls to adjust the volume. There’s also an animations and fade toggle for those with older or slower computers, but bear in mind this game is already several years old; most computers should easily cope with the games graphics now. You’ll also find a full screen/windowed toggle and a color blind mode as well.

There doesn’t appear to be a save function, but you can select any level you wish to play even those that you’ve not played before so the lack of a save function isn’t really an issue that I initially though it was. You can also skip levels from the in game menu (to the left of the playing arena) and there’s a reset button to start a level from scratch again or a move back one move button just in case you make a mistake. The game is controlled by the mouse, but you can use various keyboard shortcuts such as R for reset, U for undo the last move, L brings up the level selection screen or S for select a level. The latter button scrolls through the levels as opposed to bringing up the selection screen (as in the L key) and most of the keys require you to have started a level before you can use the shortcuts.

In Game Level

Images:

You can see a slideshow of about 30 images HERE. Using the level selection function (keyboard key – L) I’ve taken images of most of the different themes. you wont find any solutions to the games in my images, all but one show the beginning of the level, though I have posted some level walkthroughs in the video section below

Video:

You can see walkthrough video’s for all of the levels for this game. I’ve only posted several link, but you’ll find the rest to the right of the videos when you follow any one of the links below:

You can find Cube Drift Video’s HERE (level 26), HERE (level 30), HERE (level 37), HERE (level 45), HERE (level 54), HERE (level 93), and HERE (level 99).

Music:

The music is okay; a 50 minute track, reminiscent of early ‘Tangerine Dream’. Very mellow in places. Nice….. someone must have been jamming on fruity loops, lol. The music tracks are saved as a .pak file, one that I’m not familiar with. It may be possible to change the file extension of your favourite music if you wish to change the music, but I suspect you’ll need to find the correct file type first. You can find the music files via the following path:

C:\Program Files\CubeDrift\data\music

Problems:

1) … The game doesn’t appear to have any save function. I played 8 levels then closed the game down to check whether the game would save but it didn’t. I had to start from the beginning again. You may have to play a specific number of levels before it will save (Much like the ricochet games where you have to play ten levels at a time, but I didn’t have time to replay this game so if anyone does play past level 10 please let us know whether it saved. That said you can select any level from the level selection screen (keyboard shortcut L or mouse click on level select)

2) … You may be asked to turn off your Data Execution Prevention for this game to run. You can create an exception so that the game will run without having to turn DEP off. Please bear in mind only one person out of nearly 4000 downloads has mentioned getting a DEP warning, so it may be a false positive. that said it’s always better to be prepared than to take chances.

If you are not sure how to create an exception read THIS article, which tells you how to do it.

In game Help screen – opens when game first starts

Conclusion

It really is a great puzzle game, although an earlier version called Brix I used to play was much more colorful, however it didn’t have the advantage of a levels editor, which is always a big plus for me when buying arcade games.(You can now download a full version of Brix for free from several abandonware sites – I’ve also posted it in the free games synopsis over in the forums HERE or you can download it
HERE)

Graphics …7
Sound … 8
Game play … 8
Re-playability … 8

Total … 31 out of 40 that’s a score of 7.75 out of 10 The graphics are excellent, especially considering this game is quite old now, the sound is decent enough with an original music track. It’s mellow enough not to become too intrusive when you are playing. The game play is standard puzzle fare, but I like this sort of puzzle hence a higher than average score (okay a little bias creeping in there, lol) plus another decent score for re-playability. I gave it 8 because of the levels editor. The save problem should have knocked this down a little, but for me it’s not a great problem becasue you can select any level you want from the select level button (mouse click or keyboard L).

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Problems installing, activating and running today’s game:

If you have difficulty downloading or activating the game you can try again later or do one of the following – for example once downloaded when you click on the dual activation and set up file you may get the message “Failed to connect. Please try again later” Check to see if your internet explorer isn’t offline (thanks to MrSnoozles/Mike and GMMan for that fix). If the previous suggestion doesn’t work go check out previous comments from the last several weeks and look for comments from GMMan and Mike. They have also posted their possible fixes for this problem.

Mike suggests that you check to see if Internet Explorer is offline (even if you use firefox). If it is make sure that it’s online thn try again. I’ve always tried re-booting my modem and/or router with some success, though Mike has said that doing that does nothing. Still, it’s worth a try if all else fails.

If you are getting the black screen problem right click on the games executable and select properties then click on the compatibility mode and select the disable visual themes. This should fix the problem, if not try disabling the display scaling on higher dpi settings and disabling the desktop composition.

Other fixes include changing your screen resolution, installing the latest direct X (remember that XP uses DX 9 or earlier only, Vista uses DX 10 or before and Win 7 DX11 or before). Also try updating your graphics drivers. The main two chip manufacturers are NVIDIA and ATI both of which offer driver downloads for free. Just go to the respective manufactures home page and you’ll find a link to the driver download page. To find out which graphic card or graphics chip your computer uses type in Dxdiag in the search field (Vista or Win 7) or the run command (XP); this opens up the DirectX diagnostics panel. click on the display tab and look to the left panel. You should easily see what graphics card or chip you are using. (This is required information when selecting the correct download from the developers site).

If you are having problems unzipping the game giveaways zip file, for example getting a message saying the file is invalid try using a different file archiver such as 7-Zip, J-Zip, CAM UnZip, Hamster Free Zip Archiver, GZip, B Zip2, peazip, ZipUnzip, FreeRAR Extract Frog, RAR File Open Knife, ALZip, The Extractor, RarZilla Free Unrar

Okay, that should be enough. there are actually many more free versions available. also there are other commercial titles such as the well-known WinRAR, Stuffit, WinAce, NXPowerlite and Corel Winzip Pro, but IMO 7-Zip is probably one of the better freebies. I did purchase a copy of Stuffit when it was on sale a few years ago, but didn’t like the interface for some reason, so hardly ever use it.

If you are posting requests for help late in the day I would suggest posting in the main giveaway forums in the game Game Discussion . If you’ve installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn’t guaranteed. It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them as well.

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If you are looking for something else other than a puzzle game check out the game discussion forums and the free games synopsis. We’ve posted a couple of thousand free games over the last three years, some of which are fantastic. All of the major game distributors such as Steam, Direct 2 Drive (soon to combine with another site), Impulse and GOG all have some sales with savings as good as 75% in some cases. For example this weekend you can get 75% off the Dead space franchise. The first game (Dead Space) costs less than a cheap arcade game at only $5/£2.50 or you can get EDGE, the award winning retro-styled platform game for 50% off, or Nation Red a top down zombie shooter for only £2 (75% off) plus other deals. Tjhere’s a new 24hr deal later today (replacing Edge). You can check out all of the main distributors deals via the Didematic Site

Really nc game. . . . With 7mb package, its an gd game. . . . To pass ur time its gd, bt not gd 4 dose who just open deir pc’s 4 games!!! Graphics r admirable. . . .