Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Dec 9, 2021

  If you're looking through reviews trying to figure out what to expect and the length of the game, I'll give you a TL;DR. An atmospheric Lovecraft walking sim with approximately three hours of play time. The game is beautiful across all aspects. That's where I want to start, I need you to know this isn't a stock plug and play title. As you start to explore from the very start, everything around you, graphically, instrumentally, all the tiny details of sound as you walk through the outdoor locations, it all shows the love that went into this game from its development team. The story is easy to follow and gives you chills as you explore and piece together the happenings. The ambiance and dark surroundings set the tone rather than relying on cheap jump scares as other horror titles do. The story is all given through abandoned diary and journal pages that are easily discovered. You don't have to waste time digging for secrets to discover the narrative. You'll have very minimal puzzles to worry about and the ones that you do stumble upon are very straight forward and easily solved. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad thing. It keeps you immersed in the world rather than drawing frustration and attention elsewhere. If you love horror, Lovecraft and want a chill scary game (those are an odd mix of categories, yeah?) this is the one for you. Coming in at around 3 hours, its easily completed in one sitting. If you prefer to have shorter spurts to your gaming, it is split into bite sized chapters that you can do in smaller doses if that's what you need.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 2, 2023

  Speed up the character's movement to outrun all monsters: --------------------------------------------------------- Open the game's installation folder : D:\Games\steamapps\common\The Alien Cube\ and edit the file called game.cryproject Change the SpeedScale value to 0.75 : { "name": "pl_movement.speedScale", "value": "0.75" }, Save and exit. This speeds up the characters running speed by 50% to outrun the monsters and speed the game movement up. ------------------ Activate all 8 secrets so they can be seen from the 'Secrets' option on the main menu: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Open the games folder location: D:\Games\steamapps\common\The Alien Cube\user\ and edit the file called settings.xml Change the Secrets value to "8" Save and exit. Load the game and click on the 'Secrets' option from the main menu to view all the secrets.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 10, 2023

  I'm not sure why this game has so many positive reviews. There are a number of issues that hurt the enjoyment, and this is most definitely not worth the $19.99 that I paid for it. If you're going to purchase this game, wait for a steep sale. It's very long winded and most of the 4 hours it took me to finish it felt very unnecessary. The story is mostly told through notes. These notes and certain aspects of the game should've been condensed, but it just felt stuffed with a whole lot of nothing, when I feel that better time could've been spent on other more important aspects like your scares and animating certain scenes. It is a walking sim and the puzzles were easy. I would describe it as the bones of a good game, but it wasn't fleshed out. The scares are your standard jumps and creep factor, and while some of them were good, mostly okay, after a while they got to be very predictable. The chases were easy. I tried to get a look at monsters multiple times but my character wouldn't move to see around walls and such. This is what I mean by animating certain scenes. I'd say the highlights of the game were chapter 1 and the end of chapter 8, and one scene I believe in chapter 7. Lots of great horror imagery. In terms of functionality, the space key is weird. You don't jump on pressing the button, you jump after the space key is released. This isn't the worst thing, so I'm not too upset about it. It's just weird. Chapter 6 is buggy (Note: there are 8 Chapters). I got into Chapter 6 to a black screen, but when moving my mouse, I could hear my character's feet shifting. That's how I knew I was in there, but the screen wasn't loading. I ended up closing out the game and reopening and it let me see the chapter. I died on this chapter and upon loading into it, one of the houses bugged out again. Throughout the chapter, I could also see the gridlines in certain areas of the map, only on this chapter. Overall, it's really not the worst game I've ever played, but it is the worst game I've ever played for $20. The story was fine, just shorten it and highlight other aspects. Other than chapter 6, the game was very functional and the graphics looked superb. The bones are there.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 2, 2022

  I really appreciate the work for this game and also the design and the attempt to create a lovecraftian atmosphere but tbh I felt partially bored and annoyed of the game. The main critic point I would say is the missing of a real story... it feels just very flat. No real idea or twist. Another thing is that you never have any real interaction with the world besides some small puzzels. It feels more like running through an empty world. Also the chasing enemies fail to scare and destroy the creepy atmosphere in my opinion. Nice attempt and great design but the whole story and lovecraftian atmosphere should be much more subtle and slowly increase to a real insane plot. Not: BOOOOM here are all the different realities and monster and great ancients at once... Anzwaz thanks for the game :)
• gamedeal user

  Oct 31, 2021

  The Alien Cube is one of those titles that saddens me to not recommend. That one person made it is amazing, and I did enjoy that it didn't overstay it's welcome and managed to offer some genuine scares here and there. I believe the developer of the game personally understands Lovecraftian horror, but I don't think the game understands it all that well. At least, I think it gets the concepts of vagueness in the storytelling confused with the fear of the unknown and illogical. It felt more like going from one place to another without any real thought to what was behind the curtain that was so maddening to the character's psyche. Another issue is that the one puzzle I came across was just a guessing game because the visual hints didn't pair up with the answer; the logic represented had nothing to do with the solution. Finally, the ending is quite abrupt and will definitely polarize many. I didn't like it, as I didn't feel like it made sense to all that was happening up to that point. $20 isn't pricey by any means, but when you take into account that it will give you about 3-5 hours at the most, and for a game that doesn't reach beyond the competition, then it becomes more of an issue. If this were cheaper, perhaps $10 or $15, I'd consider recommending it, but as it is, you could probably get a scarier, better-made game for the same price, or even cheaper.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 15, 2022

  THE GAME IS SIMPLY NOT SCARY I honestly feel terrible that I am writing a negative review for a game that clearly had so much effort put into it. The graphics are ASTOUNDING, and the storyline is like a winding staircase that never ends, (in other words its amazing). The game overall is great with so much potential and purpose, but it simply isn't as scary as I was expecting. Alongside this, the game only took me three hours to beat, and I completed it within the course of a single day. yes, there are some surprising jumpscares that get you when you least expect it, but in my opinion this game cannot be considered "horror" because the only thing that makes this game remotely close to the genre it claims to be, is the omninous atmosphere it keeps the whole way through. The monsters are not scary at all, and you don't hide from them or even really fight them: usually they just chase you for a short amount of time and you barely even see them face to face since they just appear out of nowhere. Since the game is so short, I don't believe it is worth 20$, more like 10$ or 15$, but with all the effort that was put into this short game, I guess it makes since. My opinion might not be worth too much, and even if I don't love the game I want everyone to know that making a game like this takes TALENT, expecially from an indie game developer. Keep it up, because there will be haters out there in the world (like me), but keep working on games because this game has SO MUCH potential and your other games will only get better from here!
• gamedeal user

  Sep 13, 2023

  A good exploratory horror game, but the full price would only be worth it if it contained all the DLC. There are no achievements or even cards. The graphics are good although in some moments there is a drastic drop in fps. 7/10 my rating, to be taken at a strong discount.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 19, 2021

  It s a good walking simulator in a Lovecraftian world. This is not a survival horror.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 10, 2022

  This game is really good looking however having problems with wild drops in frame rate and motion sickness, so I can't give a full review. The game developer wrote that many of the graphic effects like lens flare, grain, head bob, motion blur, etc are "coded in the game" so you can't change them to alleviate these issues. Shame really because I like Lovecraftian games and without these issues it could be an interesting game. I hope I get a refund otherwise i'm stuck with another dud. If the developer can make changes I've outlined, I may well try it again.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 31, 2022

  8/10 Short, punchy, meaningful, and saturated with adroitly-crafted cosmic horror ephemera! The Alien Cube deftly manages one of the more difficult challenges in interactive fiction: establishing the themes of cosmic horror without succumbing to self-parody or winking at the camera to belabor its Lovecraftian roots. It clearly has much love for the source material without devolving into cringe-inducing pastiche nonsense, placing it far beyond submental schlock like Magrunner: Dark Pulse--a game that bravely asks the question, "What if a bad Portal clone, but constantly whispers the actual fucking name Cthulhu in the player's ear ad nauseum?" By pleasant contrast, TAC establishes cosmic horror themes such as alienation, isolation, existential dread, powerlessness, and insanity by never fully tipping its hand or slipping into such facile sycophancy, instead opting to weave the familiar motifs together within the gameplay and narrative. All the venerable classics of the subgenre appear: esoteric cults, alien landscapes, transfer of family trauma, incomprehensible architecture, and old-fashioned disgusting gross-out factor. The game patterns the inevitability of the protagonist's descent into madness as the locations shift from the mundane to the mythical, and occasionally back again--just enough to give the player and the character hope that things aren't as bad as they seem (They are worse.). The dangers players face also range equally widely. Lovecraft distinguished terror from horror, the latter being the slow anticipation of danger or oblivion in contrast to the former, which he characterized more as mortal fear of immediate danger. The Alien Cube manifests both by pacing itself admirably, punctuating its exploration of bloodstained temples, arcane science labs, and hidden crevasses with taught chase scenes and threatening occult traps. Every location additionally features the ever-present risk of perfectly banal natural danger, such as cliffs, sharp objects, and often the threat of predators: the player is as likely to die of hypothermia or a long fall as they are of being sacrificed to unnameable outer horrors. Don't expect the tightest controls this side of a Mega Man or Half Life, but do expect to navigate with care. The puzzles don't stretch the feeble human mind to a breaking point, but make the player feel practical and clever (if occasionally underestimated). If one doesn't seem to make sense, it will be equally impenetrable to the protagonist, so both will be dealing with Forces Beyond Their Comprehension. If the player encounters a locked door down one path, chances are the switch they hit down another will open it. Thankfully TAC seldom features any simplistic "put square block into square hole in the same room" affairs as players have seen in so many lazy Resident Evil derivatives. Any player wanting to experience the crushing dread of gazing into the illimitably dark expanse between the stars and witnessing the darkness gazing back may find The Alien Cube an artful work of horror and clearly competent labor of love. Strongly recommend!