Survive Mr Cube is an isometric hack & slash title with some rouge-lite elements tossed in for good measure. We start off plucked away from our new spouse after downing some pills a strange man offered us. As is bound to happen in those cases, we awake in the middle of the woods and instead of finding that one of your kidneys has mysteriously vanished, you find a weapon and a strange portal. You also find that the woods are indeed a facade and that you are actually floating on a small hunk of rock through what appears to be outer space, so there is your incentive to enter said portal. Once inside you find that they did not give you a weapon for no reason, you will immediately be attacked by creatures of that dark realm.
The controls are rather simple and you’ll find yourself slaying scores of baddies in no time. You use the left analog stick to move and the right one to attack in whichever direction you choose. On top of that, you have a slot for another weapon, granted you find one, and are able to carry around four potions at any given time. Your first enemies you encounter will take only a few hits to go down, even with that crummy sword we were given. Not to mention that you slowly regenerate health, so even the foes that fling projectiles are of little threat. What will typically spell your defeat is not one single battle, but the constant wear and tear you’ll receive from the infinitely respawning hordes. Rare is the moment where you are not whacking something outside the head, with even previously explored areas cropping up a wide variety of nasty surprises as soon as you take your eye off it.
You may get a bit cocky from all that monster slaying and run around carelessly through the darkness. With how short your view distance is when exploring through the ‘fog of war’, it may seem obvious that it’s not the best of ideas as I soon found out during my first run. I blindly turned a corner and promptly got my cubed head bashed in by Captain America himself no less, who I can only assume perceived me as a communist and decided democracy was nonnegotiable. Yeah, that wasn’t a situation I was prepared for, to say the least, and it did spell the end for our hero that was seeking a way back to his wife. Luckily even with that wife now being a widow from that vicious shield beating I received, I was born anew as another character sporting a new look, different stats, and an entirely new weapon.
This random generation of characters to play as is easily one of the most unique features. It changes up the way you play with some cases ending up as a war-hammer wielding warrior and others using a fragile sharpshooter containing a musket, to name a few examples. Nothing you gain will carry over minus the gold you find in chests or by smacking it right out of monsters. Your only use for money is to pay the secretive looking merchant found in the starting area or after conquering a world. Whatever he gives you in exchange is completely random. It can be something useful like increasing your health regeneration, to a so common that its useless stamina potion. The more you buy from him, the costlier it gets, meaning you can’t keep trying for some good loot to start off with. His prices do return to normal once you die and change to a different character however.
Now let’s talk about Captain America again, shall we? There are other people roaming the various worlds, trying to escape the same as you, and they will immediately be hostile for reasons unknown. They are easily identifiable from a distance by the glowing red circle surrounding them and are essentially rare, randomized mini-bosses. You can usually avoid them completely if you have no reason to head that way, yet in doing so you’ll give up the chance for very valuable goodies. As was the case with Captain America, killing him will cause him to drop his shield, which you can then use yourself. Not all characters drop their weapons, though from my experience they always drop something quite valuable and worth your efforts. From machine-guns to magical wands, there is quite a variety of firepower or sharp objects to get your hands on.
Every weapon including guns will use up a chunk of your stamina meter, as to keep you from spamming them. There is no way to dodge, but keeping your distance after a quick flurry of attacks is key to your survival. The only way to increase your meter is by finding a special gem in rare golden chests or as a drop from a mini-boss. Same story with your health bar if you were unfortunate enough to land with a character possessing a low amount. This brings me to a rather glaring flaw Mr Cube has. That being that minus rolling a new character, things mostly stay the same all throughout. Both weapons and gems are rare, the way the game tries to incentivize you is via cold hard cash.
That’s all well and good if it wasn’t for it being near useless since as previously stated, the merchant gives you random things in exchange. It is only slightly useful when you start again with a new character and take a few spins at getting something worthwhile. Doing so between worlds while already being decently equipped is a complete waste. Given that it is your sole reward for both defeating foes and opening random chests, it really kills the sense that you are doing anything meaningful during a playthrough. You will not level up, there are no abilities or other variations aside from weapon differences, nor are there any kind of status effects. Combat is purely damage based, and the most strategy it offers is what four potions to lug around. Facing the endlessly respawning hordes will get old quickly as it carries neither the reward or enough gameplay factors at play to keep you interested.
What truly amplifies this flaw to near breaking point is how long a single playthrough lasts and in the way it accomplishes its length. Every world is split up into a grid of areas and in order to reach others, you need to find a portal. You can only see the zones that you’ve previously been to and have no way of knowing where the exit to fight the boss is. The actual level design in these areas are randomly generated and offer no guidance or structure to help you through these labyrinthine environments. It is all too common that you claw your way to the end of the grid over-world and find out it is a dead end, then have to make your way all the way back. The map they give you also leaves a lot to be desired, as the only way to know how many portals are left in a specific grid and where they connect to is by traveling there on foot. It can be quite the pain to find any inactivated portal and are still left hoping it will lead you to the correct path when you do find one, all while fighting endlessly respawning foes.
It is not as simple as walking through a portal or running past all the enemies to save time. They are guarded by a tower you will need to destroy before being able to use them, and simply rushing there will have a conga line of enemies at your heels that you will have to deal with eventually. Once you finally stumble into the boss room, you will face that world’s particularly enormous beastie and these battles are actually pretty fun. Defeating them will allow you to reach the next world, which switches up both the theme and the enemies types. There is a decent amount of enemy variation which is appreciated, though even that sadly does little to alleviate its base issues. You will still be stumbling about in an even larger confusing grid world, still fighting an endless amount of foes for no gain, and still have little incentive to explore since normal chests only carry gold & potions, as well as being far too common.
Survive Mr Cube has a lot of good ideas and can be pretty fun, but the issues it does have drag it down. The foundation is solid, it is just that the sheer scale of the adventure they wanted to make turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing. It’s not even possible to put the game down and pick it back up later as there is no save system, forcing you to either play it all in one go or always leave your console on. A much shorter, more difficult experience would have played better with the simple mechanics on offer here, and also to its unique feature of randomizing your character every playthrough. In its current state, you will have a blast for a while, which is then replaced with an ever-growing sense of boredom long before being anywhere near its end. There is a lot to love such as its lovely cartoon-like artstyle and humor, yet Mr. Cube’s is an adventure you may want to think twice about taking.
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