Not all wargames require fastidious checking of rulebooks, thousands of intricately painted miniatures and your own personal tape measure. Some just need some dice and a strong flicking finger...
The annual UK Games Expo in Birmingham always turns up a few hidden gems, and I recall a couple of years ago stumbling across one that seemed to be the utter hotness over the whole weekend, then quietly and quickly sank without a trace soon after. The game was as ghetto as they come, a white cardboard box stuffed with fistfuls of dice, all of which had been hand labelled so they were often ever-so-slightly wonky. Yet this little game called Kingbrick had totally charmed the visitors to the show, so much so that it was lauded as one of the best games there... So why did it disappear?
Well, it turns out that Kingbrick was The Little Game That Could. It's taken a few years, but the game has returned with a very swish makeover, a dash of quality and a brand new name. Kingbrick is dead - long live Cube Quest! At its heart, the game is nigh on exactly the same as those handmade originals from way back, but now - thanks to some clever decisions and a bit of time and money, it has blossomed and bloomed into something that is really rather lovely.
The game boils down to being able to master one single skill - flicking. While dexterity games are often sneers at for appealing only to children, Cube Quest offers enough entertainment for even the most hard hearted of adult gamers. It's very easy to get sucked into the world and put too much thought into what you must do to claim victory...
As you may well have worked out, the game is built around cubes - twenty five on each side, as a matter of fact, split into different types with a range of powers and abilities. The most important of these is the singular King, and the main object is to remove the opposing one from the play area. This is done by flicking your own cubes at the other player's set up in an attempt to smash theirs off the included playmat. Once a cube of either side is out of play, it's removed and your task gets trickier - if you're defending, you have less stuff to protect the King, but if you're attacking your options become quickly limited.
Any of your cubes that end up on the other side showing a normal face are great - you get to use them again on a future turn, a prime candidate for leading the attack and committing regicide. However, most of your forces also show "shadow" sides, and should these land face up there's trouble on the horizon. The cube is picked up and rolled off the mat; if a shadow face appears, it's permanently removed from play but a regular face allows you to place it back in your castle on your own side of the mat.
Before play even begins, decisions must be made. Both players have 40 points to spend on drafting cubes into their army - Grunts, being the cheapest cubes, will invariably make up the majority of your side, but you also have the option to pick up Strikers (less shadow faces, great for attacking), Healers (cant attack but can be traded in for six points worth of new forces) and even Freezers (which sit atop enemy cubes, preventing them from being used).
Considering Cube Quest is a simple game about flicking stuff at other stuff, there's a surprising amount of strategy involved in the whole process. Do you invest in lots of cheap forces to build up a barrier around your King, or spend heavily on a small but versatile army? Really, you should be aiming for a spot somewhere between the two, but no matter what you end up purchasing you're dead in the water if you can't flick. Because of this, I honestly can't recommend it for very young kids - to get the very best from Cube Quest you need a certain level of dexterity that even some grown ups may struggle with. However, if you're up for a speedy and entertaining blast - for it is a blast, you'll end up with little plastic cubes all over the floor - it's well worth checking out.
I'll happily admit that there are plenty of kids games out there that I still enjoy playing - Cube Quest amongst them. What stuff from your childhood do you still like getting to the table?
The annual UK Games Expo in Birmingham always turns up a few hidden gems, and I recall a couple of years ago stumbling across one that seemed to be the utter hotness over the whole weekend, then quietly and quickly sank without a trace soon after. The game was as ghetto as they come, a white cardboard box stuffed with fistfuls of dice, all of which had been hand labelled so they were often ever-so-slightly wonky. Yet this little game called Kingbrick had totally charmed the visitors to the show, so much so that it was lauded as one of the best games there... So why did it disappear?
Well, it turns out that Kingbrick was The Little Game That Could. It's taken a few years, but the game has returned with a very swish makeover, a dash of quality and a brand new name. Kingbrick is dead - long live Cube Quest! At its heart, the game is nigh on exactly the same as those handmade originals from way back, but now - thanks to some clever decisions and a bit of time and money, it has blossomed and bloomed into something that is really rather lovely.
The game boils down to being able to master one single skill - flicking. While dexterity games are often sneers at for appealing only to children, Cube Quest offers enough entertainment for even the most hard hearted of adult gamers. It's very easy to get sucked into the world and put too much thought into what you must do to claim victory...
As you may well have worked out, the game is built around cubes - twenty five on each side, as a matter of fact, split into different types with a range of powers and abilities. The most important of these is the singular King, and the main object is to remove the opposing one from the play area. This is done by flicking your own cubes at the other player's set up in an attempt to smash theirs off the included playmat. Once a cube of either side is out of play, it's removed and your task gets trickier - if you're defending, you have less stuff to protect the King, but if you're attacking your options become quickly limited.
Any of your cubes that end up on the other side showing a normal face are great - you get to use them again on a future turn, a prime candidate for leading the attack and committing regicide. However, most of your forces also show "shadow" sides, and should these land face up there's trouble on the horizon. The cube is picked up and rolled off the mat; if a shadow face appears, it's permanently removed from play but a regular face allows you to place it back in your castle on your own side of the mat.
Before play even begins, decisions must be made. Both players have 40 points to spend on drafting cubes into their army - Grunts, being the cheapest cubes, will invariably make up the majority of your side, but you also have the option to pick up Strikers (less shadow faces, great for attacking), Healers (cant attack but can be traded in for six points worth of new forces) and even Freezers (which sit atop enemy cubes, preventing them from being used).
Considering Cube Quest is a simple game about flicking stuff at other stuff, there's a surprising amount of strategy involved in the whole process. Do you invest in lots of cheap forces to build up a barrier around your King, or spend heavily on a small but versatile army? Really, you should be aiming for a spot somewhere between the two, but no matter what you end up purchasing you're dead in the water if you can't flick. Because of this, I honestly can't recommend it for very young kids - to get the very best from Cube Quest you need a certain level of dexterity that even some grown ups may struggle with. However, if you're up for a speedy and entertaining blast - for it is a blast, you'll end up with little plastic cubes all over the floor - it's well worth checking out.
I'll happily admit that there are plenty of kids games out there that I still enjoy playing - Cube Quest amongst them. What stuff from your childhood do you still like getting to the table?
