Rubik’s Cube revisited

August 16, 2006 on 2:11 pm | In Game Development, Game Reviews, This blog |

When researching my recent post calling for a new puzzle game format, I took a fresh look at dozens of famous games from Tetris to Zuma — but I think the Rubik’s Cube may still be the king of all puzzles.

One minute I was examining Rubik’s Cube from the casual game developer’s point of view, and the next I was carried back to my school days, when this remarkable puzzle was launched and more than 100 million copies sold in just two years.

Back then, I was a teenage student in Britain, not running a company in Australia. I had only been on this planet a decade and a half and had so much to learn. Yet somehow I managed to get my personal best time for the Rubik’s Cube under 25 seconds.

The secret to the success of Rubik’s Cube is that it was the ultimate challenge. It seemed almost impossible, but it wasn’t. People talked about the millions of permutations — the endless variety of patterns that could be formed on the six sides simultaneously. But one of the secrets to solving the Rubik’s Cube is to focus on the fact that it’s built from just 27 pieces. Sometimes it’s the simplest concept that creates the most complex and challenging casual games, but that sort of magic is very hard to recreate.

I certainly couldn’t beat 25 seconds at the moment, but I’m tempted to dust off my old Rubik’s Cube and start practicing again. There’s a whole community that never forgot the Rubik’s Cube, and I feel like it’s time for a revival.

The Little Gamer