Electric Nightmares

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Have You Played... Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube?

Cool as a cubecumber

If Minecraft had been a chilled out puzzle platformer instead of a chilled out survival-esque sandbox, it would probably look a lot like Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube. Accompanied by the same kind of easy-going, zen-like tunes as its voxel cousin, Qbeh-1 delights in the simple pleasures of collecting a bunch of blocks and using them to create makeshift bridges and steps in order to reach your next goal.

There's a gentle mysticism surrounding Qbeh. Where did these dozens of floating islands come from, and why does each one end with a thin portal of light that transports you to yet another floating island of ancient, block-filled structures with a worrying number of holes and bottomless drops? Is this some kind of eternal, block-based torment devised by its strange, owl-like resurrection totems? What do these owls have against blocks, anyway? Are they sad because their measly talons are too short and squat to grasp these mighty, gravity-defying cubes? Is that why they've employed you to go around risking your life as some kind of celestial janitor to put them all back in their place?

Nobody knows, and likely never will, for that is the mystery of the Atlas Cube. Probably. The last level is so darned hard that you need the patience of a saint to make it across its awkward, pixel-perfect death leaps and severe lack of checkpoint totems, so I guess we'll just have to accept the truth will be forever lost with no hope of recovery whatsoever.

Despite this, though, I still very much enjoyed my time as Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube's block tidy-upper, especially when it came to fetching its zero-gravity purple blocks and space hopping across its huge sky pits. That was great. Admittedly, I wouldn't recommend tackling it with a keyboard due to the nature of some of its trickier jumping sections, but provided you've got a controller to hand, this laidback puzzler is perfect Sunday afternoon fodder for when you just want to sit back, dispense with the outside world for a while and mess around sticking some blocks together.

Need more convincing? Here it is in action:

Cover image for YouTube video

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Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube

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About the Author
Katharine Castle avatar

Katharine Castle

Editor-in-chief

Katharine is RPS' editor-in-chief, which means she's now to blame for all this. After joining the team in 2017, she spent four years in the RPS hardware mines. Now she leads the RPS editorial team and plays pretty much anything she can get her hands on. She's very partial to JRPGs and the fetching of quests, but also loves strategy and turn-based tactics games and will never say no to a good Metroidvania.

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