Square slaughter.
As its oxymoronic title aptly sums up, Happy Cube Death Arena follows the exploits of an enthusiastic little cube as he jumps quite merrily over rolling death traps.
Simply by tapping once to jump, twice to double jump and three times to do a Mario-style body slam, your goal is to prevent the googley-eyed cube from being eviscerated by spikes, rolling pins or mysterious beams of energy for as long as possible.
Failing to protect your cube results in his smiling little face exploding in a massive blue splatter across the screen, which is either horrifying or gleeful, depending on how sadistic you are.
As you begin to survive for longer periods, the game throws more and more Prince of Persia traps at you in quick succession, meaning that timing your jumps and landings becomes crucial for stopping your chipper friend from being disembowelled.
However, bucking the usual trend of the endless platformer, traversing a number of traps in a row grants you extra lives, which allow the cube a second chance if hit. It does a lot to offset a few potentially cheap deaths, and only makes your next high score seem that much more attainable.
Given the speed with which the challenge ramps up, the extra lives are invaluable, and prevent the game from being too annoying to lose yourself in. Unlike a certain endless platformer released this week by Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen, the game’s trickiness doesn’t deter you from having just one more go, even if it is just to watch Mr Cube be gruesomely obliterated once more.
My favourite thing about Happy Cube Death Arena, aside from deliberately failing at it, is the way it’s presented. The blue protagonist, dancing in time with the upbeat music while heading inevitably towards death in a Saw-like, blood-strewn abattoir, is funny and embraces the kind of idiotic whimsy that’s only really acceptable in mobile gaming.
Happy Cube Death Arena is pretty good if only for the square-based schandenfreude. Perhaps this could be the start of a new series in which 3D shapes die horribly. If so take prisms next, the smug bastards.
Happy Cube Death Arena is out now on iOS. Developer: Tiny Titan Studios. Website
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