Box Puzzler Is Anything But Boring
Hello Time Wasters!
At first, the thought of playing a game called Cardboard Box Assembler brought only the word ‘boring’ to mind, yet I clicked on it anyway. Names can be deceiving, right? In this case it was at least. My first conception with the name was that I would be assembling boxes, but I hoped that with Adult Swim slapping their logo in the game’s intro, that I’d be wrong. Thankfully, I was.
Cardboard Box Assembler actually stands for the character you control throughout the game: a man who assembles cardboard boxes and, after what we assume is a long time, goes insane. His world then becomes a single block that the player must navigate through in order to find keys to open the door that will lead him out. It sounds easy, and in the first few levels it is, but it gets harder as each level increases in difficulty, either by adding new mechanics or just by adding a lot more twists and turns. The story continues to unfold after each level is completed, and it took an unexpected turn if you ask me. But you can find out what exactly happens by beating it yourself.
As for the mechanics of the game, as I said, you’re walking on a block: a normal six sided cube. However how you walk climb or fall from each side will change what’s up and what’s down. It can get a bit disorienting, as well as confusing (and in the later levels it REALLY does), but that’s where half the fun lies.
This game is an adventure certainly, but also a puzzle and meant to test your head. In this it succeeds. In later levels the mind twisting only deepens as they add mechanisms that let you control how your world flips, such as blocks that rotate the cube as a whole so that your left and right will become your up and down.
These things definitely added difficulty, but I still found that when adding more twists and turns, it made things more fun.
As mentioned, gameplay wise, this one is straight forward: traverse the world in specific ways to get the keys. And in early levels the way to solve them is pretty linear. There are also gems you can collect in order to unlock bonus levels, which is a nice little side thing since you’re already twisting the world all about and are bound to run into them offhandedly if nothing else.
With the mouse, you can also move your cube around in order to see the other sides, which lets you find out where keys are and also where the door is. This helps if you’re lost or just can’t make out the darkened square shapes on the other side of the cube behind you.
In the end it’s just a fun game to play with a nice upbeat accompaniment (even it does sound like elevator music). The cutscenes aren’t grand (except for the opening, which was surprisingly epic when you know it’s about a man with a cardboard box on his head) but they’re still well done.
Look into it if you have some time to waste. Cardboard Box Assembler earns 4.5 GiN Gems out of 5! And I bet you didn’t see that coming.