Cubic Odyssey Review

Cubic Odyssey looked like if a combination of No Man's Sky and Minecraft had a baby, and as someone who enjoys both of those titles? Well, I had to try it out. Developed by Atypical Games and published by Gaijin Network Ltd, this has been Atypical Games’ newest release since Infinite Tanks in 2017. However, it’s also Atypical Games’ first one that hasn’t been published in-house. So, while I’ve never played an Atypical Games title before, I thought that Cubic Odyssey looked interesting enough to try out.

Upon starting Cubic Odyssey, you’re given the option to choose between two modes, Survival and Creative, with the Survival mode offering you a chance to follow the main questline. However, Creative doesn’t have this, and you can also opt out of the main questline in Survival to focus on other things. You can create and customise your character, and can choose between four different classes: Miner, Crafter, Pilot, and Knight.

Now, the overall goal of Cubic Odyssey is to deal with the Red Darkness, and the Queen has sent all of her knights away to go and find a way to defeat this menace. I’m not particularly sure of the danger of the Red Darkness; however, it’s all but certain that it managed to destroy the capital. So, it’s up to you (and your friends, if you have any who are also playing it) to go out and destroy it.

Your plane crashes on a planet that has some enemies in the form of pirates and one dinosaur, and they’re easy to beat… well, the pirates are; the dinosaur ends up looping around and then running away from you after being shot at a few times. It was a vaguely strange experience, however, as it was still early on in the game, I didn’t think much of it. It’s a lot like any other game in the crafting genre; you’re looking for resources, and mining is… well, it’s a bit of a pain. You have an Extractor, which you shoot at the resources and it will add them to the inventory.

If your inventory’s full, then don’t worry, because you can go back to your base and chuck anything you might need later into a wooden chest. You can adjust your base to make it a little more difficult for pirates to get in, but I find that it’s more frustrating to mine at night. Also, if the game registers that your player is going somewhere dark, it’ll turn on the flashlight automatically, which I did find a bit annoying, considering I could still see fine. Having to toggle it on and off when I didn’t need it wasn’t exactly a fun experience, but it’s one that I could mostly get to grips with.

A lot of the ore is pretty spread out, although your little AI robot buddy, QB, can help out. He can scan for any ores of the tier you look for, which is fine. However, I found that you had to go pretty deep to find what you were looking for. Admittedly, I was getting a little bit bored at the beginning of the game, but I thought, I’ll push through. This is mostly because the environment doesn’t really have any dangers at night. There are a few alien creatures, like plants attacking you, but it takes too long to actually fight them. Shooting them does only a small amount of damage, and armour doesn’t really help you in the long run. Plus, there are only a few tiers of armour for you to get, so once you max it out, you’re kind of out of luck.

I found that the mining aspect doesn’t shine through, as the materials are all spread out so much. Harder to find ores can be found higher up, and the cave systems aren’t so much that as they are small coves of darkness. A lot of the ore is very spread out, and you’ll need to scan for it. After all, if you just keep using your Extractor, it’ll run out of batteries and you’ll need to craft more of these to be able to do anything. So, it turns into quite a repetitive game, especially when you haven’t unlocked Speeders or your ship yet.

Crafting requires specific tools, however, it limits you based on how the story wants you to progress. Many of them have a level block in the way, and so you need to keep crafting much of the same things, or mine a lot, or find your sparse amount of enemies, just to ensure that you can level up. It’s surprisingly grindy, and if you’re trying to progress in the main questline, it felt even more so. There’s nothing stopping you from going further than what the quest suggests, as you can craft things like upgraded weapons and such, but eventually, Cubic Odyssey will pull you back into the direction of the plot.

In terms of weapons, you have a gun and a shock stick. I found the latter much handier, if not because I thought I could just beat things around with a stick. However, I quickly found that my plan to hunker down for the night would be foiled because… well, not many pirates attack your base? So, I ended up going out mining anyway. Considering the tutorial suggested that I would need to hunker down to protect it, I was expecting waves of enemies attacking, so I’d need to install turrets. You can install turrets, but I questioned the point considering only one pirate ever attacked me in one night. It was rare for any more than that, and it just felt underwhelming.

There are other events that can happen at night. For example, there are meteor showers, and thunder and lightning. So, I ended up going out to look for the meteors since I was promised good loot and danger. At this point, I was yearning for more of a challenge, and I was relieved to find that at least there was some, but the problem is that time actually passes quite slowly. I ended up going out of my way to deliberately find some. However, upon finding the Meteors, there weren’t any enemies around them, and the real danger seemed to stem from going out at that point. The ground shakes and you can hear the explosions, but overall, it seems to be down to sheer luck on if you’re just hit by a meteor or not.

On that note, the batteries are used for everything, including piloting your ship. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a pain in the neck. The lifespan of a battery isn’t long, and they can just be irritating to have to keep going back to craft them. It just felt very… inefficient. I wanted to enjoy flying around in my ship and using my jetpack, but I had to be careful so as not to lose fuel so quickly. With how much you’re using your batteries, it means you have to keep getting materials. But also, if your Extractor runs out first, it will take even longer to get the necessary materials. After all, we hadn’t even reached a nearby settlement yet, nor had we repaired the ship at this point. But we had fixed our Speeder, which meant we could travel to a nearby Settlement, so long as you remembered to build a Travel Port before you left, so that way, you could just teleport back-and-forth from your base.

Upon reaching your first Settlement, you’re met with the first horror of Red Darkness, as it takes over a portal. Now, remember, I’ve not been struggling with the enemies: but, I did make armour and have just been going as the game suggested, but when the monster of Red Darkness attacked, I was killed. In one hit. From a distance. Thankfully, I then found out that I don’t really miss out on anything when I die; instead, I realised that everything was still in my Inventory, and upon taking the Travel Port back, I discovered that the creature of Red Darkness had already been killed by the NPCs. Naturally, I’m not sure if I’m annoyed or glad about that, considering it just felt unduly overpowered for no reason. It felt like the game was just giving me a get out of jail free card, and I would have liked more of a challenge.

Then, once the monster was destroyed, the best way to stop them was to build a barrier to stop the Red Darkness from emerging from the portal. I was expecting plenty of other monsters of Red Darkness to come out and try to kill me, but instead, I was just given a selection of blocks to stop the portal from being corrupted. Essentially, you need to build a wall, and it just… didn’t supply any challenge. I was disappointed, as so far, my experience with combat had been disappointing. If it didn’t feel like a grind, it was then me battling an overpowered enemy that I couldn’t face. The completion of requests didn’t seem to start with any kind of skill of what you’ve learned, but instead, it appeared to focus on the luck you had. If you were just following the main questline, you would have less chance of beating the Red Darkness your first time, which is frustrating for a game that has, in fact, been designed with children in mind. After all, it’s rated for ages seven and up, and that just… it doesn’t strike me as quite right.

Even before, fighting monsters outside of the dinosaurs and pirates, I’ve noticed my ranged weapons? Useless. Yeah, you can shoot but the monsters are faster than you, will flee, and you don’t really do any damage. But, if you go over to the monsters, they’re much stronger than you, and I think the pirates have just been idiots as they only attack one at a time, which meant I was lulled into a false sense of security. The combat doesn’t seem like it makes a lot of sense. Enemies that should be easy to defeat the first time you face them, as introductory foes, take too long to defeat. Your guns don’t do anything, and you can’t really get close enough with the shock stick to do any damage.

I’d been hoping for a little more excitement, and when I saw that at the Settlement I could finally do side-quests, I was even more excited... until I realised they required me to travel a distance to fight a creature, gather like 50 quartz or emeralds, find shells, or head into space and defeat pirates somewhere in the system. Now, you might be wondering what’s wrong with this, and it’s that you’ll find that you're limited by the number of side-quests you can take on at a time. Some of these side-quests appeared before I had even fixed my ship, and considering how the combat had been thus far with how randomly arranged the enemies were, I wasn’t a big fan. After all, my experience of the Red Darkness was that it could kill me in one hit, and other enemies were so fast that they could easily run away. I knew my weapons didn’t do much damage, and it just struck me as confusing.

I didn’t mind having gathering quests, or travelling to battle pirates or creatures, but even the game’s store page talks about the number of side-quests and open world for you to explore. It just felt so bare bones, especially when we consider that there’s an overall narrative taking place with the Red Darkness taking over. That, and the NPCs are all called Clerics, and they speak in a gibberish language, which is odd, considering QB doesn’t speak. I wouldn’t have even minded the absence of voice acting altogether, but they’d already voice acted the entire opening cinematic, and I thought that I would be getting something… well, deeper. It felt like I should be having an overall narrative to these side-quests, but they felt so bare.

Now, I need to talk about travel. I ended up purchasing a new Speeder because I enjoyed driving around. It was a hell of a lot quicker that way, but then it quickly felt like a waste of money. Once you fix or get a new ship, you can still fly around on the planet, so long as your batteries don’t run out. When flying, enemies don’t attack you on land, and I also noticed that in space, there isn’t a lot out there. You can go out and fly for ages, and the planets are so far away. There’s no skill to flying, and I was expecting numerous pirates to attack me upon getting into space. I thought that they would ambush me, but they all appear in set locations. Considering when I headed over to Bardwell 2, it took me a good chunk of time to just fly there normally. I thought that the side-quests would have made it more entertaining for me, but instead, I noticed that the game relied purely on the player to seek out everything. However, the narrative of Cubic Odyssey drags you away from these fun experiences, and it seemed to slow me down. At this point, I was regretting having the main questline turned on.

Overall, I don’t think Cubic Odyssey is for me. Yeah, you can kill some time, but the planets I explored were pretty lifeless. The crafting is nothing to shout home about, and you can’t really unlock new recipes. These are all hidden behind level barriers, so you just have to level up to get more things. However, I noticed that the level barrier will allow you to get upgrades for weapons and equipment you already have. If you, like me, wanted to decorate your base however you wanted, why couldn’t you do so? Admittedly, I wondered what was the point of having a base if you couldn’t design it however you want. It felt like it was just there to give you a respawn point when you died, and there’s not really any reason to stay and protect it, or hunker down from enemies. After all, what’s one pirate attack to a building you just used to craft?

Previously, I had mentioned there was a Multiplayer option, but due to having no friends playing Cubic Odyssey, I hadn’t checked it out yet. However, I did see a few of the Steam reviews and… well, other players have not been having a fun time. Overall, I can’t really judge the co-op mode, but I will say that as a single-player gamer, this wasn’t a fun experience, and it felt like a chore just to progress to get into space.

Truthfully, Cubic Odyssey felt like a very optimistic game, but I just don’t think it was ready for a full release. It made so many vast promises about its open world and its side-quests, that I came into it with high hopes. However, these were quickly dashed, and I felt like the story was its weakest point. I think I’d be forgiving if this was Early Access, but right now? Well, I think if you do want to check it out, I would wait for it to go on sale. Currently, the £20.99 price tag doesn’t seem worth it, especially for the amount that has been promised to players.