Storm in a Teacup

ARGH!

AARGH!!

AAARRRGH!!!

Just looking at this game angers me. Okay, so that last picture wasn’t from the game on Steam, but instead iOS, where the game began its humble life. Ported straight out of the Apple App Store we have Storm in a Teacup, a cheap as hell (£2.99) downloadable title on Steam that is as cold and lifeless as Steve Jobs (NB: The views expressed within this review are not necessarily the views of the management). That’s right, this game may look cutesy as fuck, but that’s just a clever ruse. Storm in a Teacup may be one of the worst 2D platformers I have ever played.

But why is this? Well, for many reasons. The controls are so floaty that precise platforming is nearly impossible. A lot of the time the game requires precision, but of course it isn’t possible and so you will find yourself dying due to the controls as opposed to your own incompetence.

This is not, however, to say that the game is at all difficult or challenging. Levels would end before you even realise you started them as it mostly consists of just going to the left to the finish zone. There’s very little to do within the levels, though the game does try and throw into it as many tropes of 2D gaming as possible, such as puzzles (which are too simple to actually call puzzles) and even Space Invaders seems to make a cameo for a nice little 20 second level.

Actually, on the strand of thought regarding level length this game is stupidly short. The game’s 40 levels took me roughly an hour, probably less if I have bothered to pay attention most of the time. I found myself browsing other websites just so as not to play the game, so I would come back to it 10 minutes later and finish the level in less than a minute. Sure, the game has other challenge levels or bonus levels, but these are about as easy as the levels in the game itself, so really have no place being in another set. They are purely there to make it seem like the game has more content than it already does.

In doing so we find that the game is actually one massive copy and paste job. There are probably only about 10 levels in the game, the other 30 being the other 10 just with a spike or two dotted around. On top of that the challenge levels are just some of the normal levels with a few more spikes and enemies, which adds no real challenge. The game just exudes an aura of laziness.

And then we have the tone of the game. Remember earlier how I said it was soulless, despite looking so cutesy? Well, the cutesy look makes the game look fun, but as you play it you realise this is just a façade. The 30 second audio loop this game has sounds fun at first, but as the game continues you realise it is the only music in the entire game, which burns into your brain, removing all of your sensibilities and making you hate life and want to make the game physical, just so you can punch it. Plus it’s just annoying.

The game also makes you want to love it using subliminal messaging, with the words "I ♥ Storm" slapped onto the levels just about everywhere. And if the game wasn’t saccharine enough it has you collect blocks of sugar along the way. What do these do? Don’t know, it seems pretty inconsequential.

If you can’t tell, this game is simply awful. Everything about it is bad. At first it seems fun, but as it goes on you feel yourself slowly dying. An hour of this game (the whole game) slowly depletes your life force until you are a shallow husk of a person. The boat levels were okay, though...

Q.U.B.E.

Platform Reviewed: PC

Q.U.B.E. (or Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion) is an independent First Person puzzle game in which you must complete tasks within a testing facility. You do this by using a pair of gloves in order to move blocks to achieve your goals.

Sooner or later I’d have to mention Portal, so I may as get it done with now. The game looks and feels a lot like Portal. Now, some may call the game out on this, calling it a rip-off and the likes, but I do not. Personally, it feels more like the gaming is proudly showing its influences. I’m fine with it. I don’t really want to talk about the game in comparison with Portal. I want to look at the game on its own merits, so let’s speak no more of Portal.

The mechanics of this game work extremely well. You use your power gloves to extrude block from the walls. You do this in order to create platforms, move coloured balls into their respective pits or to make light shine on a sensor. The entire game uses these mechanics in increasingly complex ways to create a very effective, though slightly too sharp, difficulty curve. I have heard reports of some of the game’s physics being a bit screwy at times, however I never came across these and the entirety of the game worked perfectly on a physics level.

In regards to the difficulty curve I have to commend this game: no in-game tutorial. You get to grips with the controls and the world through experimentation and simply looking around you and it’s fun. It’s interesting. It’s engaging. You feel intelligent for figuring things out. If the game pummelled me with text boxes and such at the beginning of the game I feel I’d be thrown out of the experience, as I found myself to be getting quite engrossed in the game itself. It does well to introduce all of the new blocks and mechanics to you throughout. When you discover how to use each mechanic to its fullest it’s rewarding.

Sadly, some of the mechanics of this game aren’t quite up to scratch. The magnet puzzles. Oh, the magnet puzzles. It’s at this point when the difficulty curve goes from a bit steep to simply asymptotic. Q.U.B.E. touts them as the hardest in the game and they are, but this seems to be because they mostly revolve around blind luck. I spent ages attempting one puzzle, not sure how to do it when suddenly it seemed to solve itself.

Also, these magnet puzzles are hampered by a fair delay on use of the gloves, making precision a key issue in the game. Whilst I do think the puzzles worked extremely well they did often take a lot longer than expected as there seemed to be a noticeable delay between clicking and the gloves working. This resulted in me clicking manically until the gloves finally worked, but all too late.

There also seems to be some attempt at narrative in the game. The game takes away from the normal test chambers and goes into the deep underbelly of the facility (like some other games that I promised not to mention later on). Whilst one might expect to find out that something has gone on down here we aren’t really left with much. I wouldn’t have minded if this game was devoid of narrative, as it’s a pretty fun puzzle game, but the way in which it attempts it slightly makes me wonder what plans they had.

The narrative also runs into a wall when the ending comes around. The ending seems to linger for a while, waiting for you to have the eureka moment and figure out what the entire game was all about. But there is no eureka moment. All I ever thought was “Wow, I’m enjoying these puzzles.” The semblance of a plot that went nowhere took away from this slightly, which is disheartening as I was really enjoying the game and its evolving mechanics.

 

Despite this criticism, I loved this game. It was extremely fun and challenging. It didn’t frustrate too often, but when it did it was usually the frustration you would attribute to any regular puzzle game (except for the magnet puzzles, of course). There’s a lot of room for improvement and the game could be a bit longer (the game was about 3 hours long), but it was still a genuinely enjoyable game. It might not be entirely original, but it still does what it sets out to do with enough competence for you to put this issue aside.