Cube Runner is an action game written by Andy Qua.

The Game

Avoid the colored blocks at all costs. Because! They’re blocks!

As an older game in the iPhone’s ever-expanding library, Cube Runner is one among a wave of many that use the phone’s tilt functionality, a feature undoubtedly included with games in mind. Nowadays, “tilt games” are far from ubiquitous, and this fact would lead one to assume that customers have gotten over the idea of rocking their devices back and forth to play. Cube Runner, however, is far from gimmicky and is a solid example of a good tilt game.

Basically, you are in control of a ship or an airplane or something else that an arrow might represent. Yes, the game’s graphics are simplistic enough that your in-game avatar is all but an arrow. Your task is to guide this arrow ship through a zone of obstacles, which happen to all be squares. Your ship/arrow/aircraft moves at a constant rate while your tilting turns you left and right, allowing you to weave back and forth through the squares. Each “level pack” consists of a semi-organized placement of squares along the “track,” and the game ships with three: easy, medium, and hard.

Seems like I have crashed into a wall and disintegrated. Oh well.

There is an intended learning curve to the game, especially to someone new to the idea of tilt games. A new player will undoubtedly die at least the first few times through, and the fact that you have to repeat from the beginning every time can be a source of frustration. The controls are fair, but rely on the often imprecise accelerometer. As such, it’s hard to say whether anyone can adjust to the gameplay.

Graphics

“Minimalist” and “industrial” are putting it one way, but I prefer to call it lazy. The graphics consist of box, box, box, box box, box, and your space ship. Or rather, your triangle. Meanwhile, I appreciate that the game maintains a high frame rate, but boxes spawn into your view way too close. While this particular flaw might be a design decision to keep the difficulty up, would it really have hurt to add a few textures here and there?

Sound

The game has one musical track that plays for the duration of your current life, with no sound effects to distract you other than the one when you crash into a box and die (how would there be any? you’re just navigating through textureless squares, after all). I’m a fan of music in games, especially music that befits the game, and so I actually like the track in Cube Runner, if only for its techno influences that match the game’s visual style.

Conclusion

Cube Runner is a fun little game, and while I wouldn’t quite call it addictive, gamers will surely feel the need to fine tune their tilt skills a bit more every time. I would probably like to see a game with a higher budget with Cube Runner’s gameplay, but for the very reasonable price of $0, I don’t think you can go wrong. If there’s one feature that I would have included, it would have been online leaderboards – I need to show people how far I made it on Hard!

Score

MustTap Score: Iron Tap

It's technically solid, but what comes out is pretty plain.

Bottom Line
Cube Runner is a nice and simple tilt game with which to pass the time on train rides, but gamers expecting anything more should look elsewhere.

Screenshots