Giveaway of the Day - Exocubes

Exocubes is a 19.9Mb download that installs to about 27Mb. It received a positive 85% of 200 votes when it was given away a year last summer 07. I missed it the first time around because I was sunning myself in Turkey at the time. You can read the games intro below and the 48 comments that were made by the giveaway community by following the link:
http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/exocubes/#
Quote:

Dive into world of Exocubes to aid in the great escape! Manipulate magical cubes, ENERGIZE them with scanners, and BLAST the walls away! Looking for a way to escape from the seemingly endless barrage of rooms? Form combinations from magical cubes, ENERGIZE them with scanners, and BLAST the walls blocking your way to freedom! The world is populated with 49 different rooms, each with different hazards and challenges. Use the items present in the rooms to help you in dire times. Cubes can also turn nasty and make your life even harder. Gather up your wits, skill and survival instincts, you will need them in this great escape!

Reference: http://goodpremiumgames.com/game/980/Exocubes accessed 28th Nov 08

The Game:
The game starts with a grid of colored cubes that slowly move towards the bottom of the screen. If you allow these to reach the bottom the game ends. To stop this happening you must destroy the cubes before this happens, (ob). You can do this by creating a vertical or horizontal line of at least three or more cubes of the same color that must also be adjacent to the bottom of the grid. To do this you use the mouse to drag and drop cubes so that the same-colored ones are next to each other before a bar like scanner reads the cube configuration that you’ve created and destroys successfully aligned cubes. You can only move one block at a time by clicking on it with your mouse and dragging the block to where you want it to go, so you need to work really fast. This is not as simple as it seems because you can only move blocks vertically, that is up and down and not horizontally, (sideways), within a short space of time before the scanner bar moves. You have to complete a move between the times that the scanner bar moves for the move to be accepted.
There are two modes Arcade and classic, of which there are 49 levels in the former and nine in the latter (classic). The difference appears to be in the time it takes to destroy the wall at the bottom of the screen, which takes a lot more hits in the classic mode than it does in the arcade mode. Once the wall has been broken into sections they will start to move, making it harder to hit the wall pieces still surviving. Once the wall has been destroyed you are able to proceed to the next level (room). The options menu allows you to change the volume of sound effects and music as well as toggle to windowed mode and also toggle on or off the hints. The help menu contains fourteen pages each with an animated series of screens showing you the various effects achieved by some of the power ups that are available, which include color changers, bombs, one that slows the scanner down and lockers, plus a few others. Power ups are introduced gradually as you progress through the levels. You can also choose from five different custom cursors, and there are four different block sets, which initially are blanked out but are unlocked after level 5. There are no difficulty settings, but in the action mode the first 20 rooms are labeled beginners. I’m assuming later levels will be labeled differently, but I haven’t the time to play it out to past level 20 at the moment. While in game you can bring up the main menu by clicking on the link provided. This initially brings up the options menu with links to the help menu and main menu. When you first start the game you are asked if you wish to follow a tutorial, which takes you through the first few simple moves. In my opinion, it’s worth the effort as it makes clear the moves that are explained in the help menu. You can see all the help pages and the tutorial messages by following the link to my images below. It’s worth checking out the slideshow as the images are in a semblance of order, but there are nearly 80 images so it will take about four or five minutes to flick through the lot, though you can use the arrow key to zip through them much faster. Alternatively follow the link to the page with all of them on, though they are only thumbnails and are much harder to see.
Images:

All on one page:

http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Exocubes/?albumview=grid

As a slideshow:

http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Exocubes/?albumview=slideshow

Googled:

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=exocubes&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

System Requirements:

O.S……………………………………………Windows 98/Me/NT4.0/2000/XP;
CPU………………………………………….600MHz and above
System RAN………………………………..128MB
Graphics RAM…………………………………..32MB
Graphics Emulation………………………..DirectX 8 or greater or Open GL

Conclusion:
When I first installed and saw this game I wasn’t impressed, it looked like a Tetris clone, which we’ve seen plenty of over the last ten years or so, plus I posted several free versions over in the forums as part of the free weekday games project about a month ago. However it’s nothing like Tetris, so those of you (like myself), who overloaded on Tetris when it first came out on the original Game boy back in the early 90’s can breath a sigh of relief.

Overall I’d give this game a 6 out of 10; it’s challenging enough, especially when you’ve only got a little bit of the moving wall to destroy, but I found after several levels I became a little bored. The game is very colorful, but it lacks something; maybe some mini games that are all the rage in some genres of games at the moment. I do think when the blocks are almost at the wall there is no need for them to flash white, which obscures the colored blocks and makes it almost impossible to make correct matches at the most crucial time. There is a siren which should suffice. The music is rather dull as well, but you can easily turn off the volume and play something on your stereo, or alternatively go into the sound folder found in the games resource folder and exchange the appropriate ogg file. As it stands I regret buying the game (from Reflexive over a year ago), but hey, I’m mad anyway, lol. Thankfully, you can check it out and keep it for free if you think you’ll like it.

Other reviews worth reading:

http://www.zimbio.com/Razor+Sharp+Reviews+of+Various+Software+and+Web+Sites./articles/4/Exocubes (by SWAN an old member of the giveaway community who used to write excellent game reviews here)
http://www.reflexive.com/Exocubes.html

A different spin on match three gaming. Excellent music. A must have if you’re into this sort of game.