CUBE-e 2

My first reaction to CUBE-e 2 was the same one I get whenever a sub-five-dollar title lands in my queue: figure out fast what the one thing it does well is, because it almost certainly does only one thing. Here, that one thing is local split-screen robot combat on a single machine, and if you squint, it actually delivers on that narrow promise. You play as a robot stranded on the planet Mallar after a station crash, with hunter-bots bearing down on you in waves. The solo loop is a survival-style affair: shoot incoming enemies, grab boosters to extend your run, and dodge the saw traps scattered across the platforms. It is short, it is simple, and it does not pretend otherwise. The two-player PvP side is where the design intent becomes clearer. You and a friend share one keyboard or two controllers and race to five kills across a platforming arena built around the same saw-trap hazards. The first-to-five format means rounds resolve in a few minutes, which is either a feature or a problem depending on your patience. There are no loadouts, no weapon choices, no unlocks. You shoot, you jump, you try not to touch the saws. Time-to-kill feels instant at close range, which makes positioning on the platforms the only real skill expression available. Do not expect any movement tech depth here: there is no air-strafing, no slide cancel, no momentum system worth learning. What you see in the first five minutes is everything the game has mechanically. The hand-drawn art style is genuinely charming for the budget tier, and the robot designs read clearly at a glance, which matters in a two-player scrum where visual clarity is the bare minimum requirement. Performance is not a concern - this will run on anything from the last decade. That said, the complete absence of online play is the headline caveat. There is Remote Play Together support, which technically lets you play over Steam with a friend, but anyone expecting a ranked mode or matchmaking is going to bail immediately. This is couch software, full stop. For a shooter specialist, the practical question is always the same: does the core feel good enough to keep pulling triggers? Here, barely. The shooting is functional but gives no feedback worth writing home about. Weapon balance is a non-issue because there is effectively one weapon. Netcode is irrelevant because there is no net. The review sample on Steam sits at ten votes with a 90 percent positive rate, which tells me the people buying this knew exactly what it was and graded on a curve that I professionally cannot apply. If you have a younger sibling, a partner who does not game seriously, or just want fifteen minutes of throwaway local PvP filler, CUBE-e 2 occupies that slot without embarrassing itself. Anyone looking for a real arena shooter to sink hours into should look several price tiers up.

Fred · Scout Team

Shooters

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