Developer: Gamezaur
Price: $3/£3
Size: 110.1MB
Version: 1.0
Platform: iPhone & iPad
Update! Suzy Cube hasn’t been updated at all since we originally reviewed it. Not even a bug fix or device localisation. It’s a game that’s been frozen in aspic for almost two years, so we’re intrigued to see how it’s dated.
How does it play today? The answer is, very well indeed! Despite the passage of time and the lack of updates, there have been very few 3D platformers released on mobile since Suzy Cube first hit the App Store. While it feels dated, then, that’s only within its original context of a deliberately naive game that evokes the golden age of 3D platformers in the late ’90s. It still does so rather well.
Revised rating: Still one of the few 3D platformers on the App Store. ★★★★
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Our original review, written in July 2018, is presented in its entirety below.
Update! There was one particularly chunky update three months after Perspecto’s release that added a stack of new levels and a couple of fresh block types. Since then, it’s been all about the bug fixes and new device optimisation.
How does it play today? Playing Perspecto in 2020, it feels as sparse yet satisfying as ever. We’d still like a little more pizzazz from a presentational perspective, but the core concept and tactile controls have a timeless quality. Oh, and we found that it is possible to skip levels. Whether that was added as a later update, or was always part of the package, we’re not so sure. But we’re glad it’s there either way!
Revised rating: Timeless spatial puzzling. ★★★★
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Our original review, written in June 2018, is presented in its entirety below.
You could probably have guessed it from the name, but Perspecto is yet another iOS puzzler that concerns itself with how you look at the world.
Each level gives you a jumble of 3D blocks, which need to be manipulated to match a preset 2D thumbnail. You have two main tools at your disposal in order to help you with that.
Make the larger 3D model look like the smaller 2D thumbnail
One of these is the ability to physically touch and drag certain blocks around the three-dimensional playing field. The other is the ability to drag the entire cluster of blocks around in 45-degree increments in any direction. Or, in other words, to change your perspective.
Perspecto takes considerable glee in playing with this shift in viewpoint. Boxes turn into long lines, which turn into large L-shapes, all depending on the angle you view them from.
Touch and drag away from the blocks to change your perspective
The game keeps things fresh across its 90 levels by introducing a series of different block types. There are blocks that can move freely, those that slide until stopped, and those that follow the laws of gravity.
There’s nothing to write home about here from a visual perspective. There’s no real style or panache to the chunky 3D graphics, while the background is a rather generic star field. Nor is the music particularly memorable – a rather subdued electronica burble fulfilling the role of aural wallpaper.
It’s an extremely simple-looking game
In its favor, this simple approach makes the game’s visual tricks a little easier to parse. While your brain might complain at the logical disconnect between 2D and 3D patterns, it remains remarkably easy to decode the language of each conundrum within seconds. It’s like a Rubik’s Cube in its tactile simplicity.
As that suggests, the controls are pretty sharp too. You touch and drag on marked blocks to move them, and touch and drag outside of the playing field to change your perspective. Simple.
These blocks are free-sliding
If we were to level one complaint at Perspecto, it’s that the game’s level layout doesn’t get into the spirit of things. It would have been nice if we could have some measure of choice over the order in which we tackled its conundrums – particularly when you get impossibly stuck on a level and could really do with trying something else. As it is, you need to plough through the stages in a strictly linear fashion.
Other than this, and a general sense of familiarity with the game’s premise (if not strictly its execution), there’s little wrong with Perspecto. It’s an extremely competent, gently taxing perspective puzzler that forces you to look at things from a slightly different angle.