Das Cube

Das Cube is a cool game. Don't be surprised the next time Apple decides to run a fresh iPod touch commercial if Das Cube is one of the many games featured in the montage. That said, like many things that are cool, it's a little shallow.

The game plays in portrait mode and gives the impression of peering into a bottomless abyss with random 3D shapes rising up to meet the screen. Shapes arrive in coloured pairs and the aim is to make them to collide, which causes them to disappear.

You do this by flicking a little silver ball around the screen, which sends anything it connects with careening off in the opposite direction, hopefully into a matching shape.

You get multipliers for busting shapes in quick succession and if the screen gets too full, you get three screen-clearing explosions, activated by shaking your handset. As soon as the screen gets too full, it’s Game Over.

That’s all there is to Das Cube. The appeal lies in having to act quickly to collision sequences that are often beyond the scope of human cognition to predict. This lends a smattering of the arbitrary to the proceedings, but the game is so heavily steeped in pleasing audio-visual feedback, that it's hard not to be mildly enchanted.

Das Cube is lathered in explosive effects that manage to appear chaotic without obscuring the gameplay. Better yet are the sound effects, which sport knowingly retro whips, whirs, and bleeps that will charm any veteran gamer.

One of the odd things about Das Cube is it's Brutal mode, which is actually much easier and more fun to play than Easy mode. For some reason, the former just flows better with the abundance of 3D shapes often helping to bash others into more favourable positions from which to manoeuvre them with your silver ball.

That’s not really a failing. What is, however, is that there just isn’t much to do in Das Cube. You can tweet your high scores, but this game is badly in need of some extra modes or even just a simple online leaderboard.

That’s nothing an update or two can’t fix though and while Das Cube may not have the depth or complexity of a dodecahedron, it’s certainly as cool as an ice cube and well worth a look.