riddle me this shatman, what do you get when you combine intelligent systems(fire emblem, advance wars, paper mario), saru brunei(a defunct company that had like 4 games planned but none released but a handprint left on this), and atlus(etrian odyssey, Oh My God!, Karate Kid NES, and that one relatively unknown franchise that i think is about jesus or something, who cares)
as a publisher
with the thumbs up by nintendo

you get.. ...

THAT!...

I GUESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!................

cubivore is immensely fascinating to me as a game because its position as a video game feels like something id play in the twilight years of Roblox before the economy would crash and tix would get axed, but robust (ENOUGH) to feel like it wouldnt Exactly fit in with roblox games. I mean this in a complimentary way ofc,
This game has you going through a variation of a reincarnation mechanic where after your character eats and eats and eats to be top of the food chain and wind up having a huge animal orgy to create a sort of Junior Offspring type fucker to carry on as with a bit more capacity to DO shit

the bulk of this game aint around the environments really but the silly nature documentary esque writing, some of the scoreee and even the weight and feel it is trying to tough it out against enemies thatre bigger than you anD OH. MY. GOD. there's a lot of fuckers thatre gonna be bigger than you out here.... you cant even technically SEE the last bit of content this game has to offer unless you get atleast 100 diff transformations/combinations in this game otherwise unless you lock-in and channel ur inner apex predator i guess...
My saves got fucked up for this though! so even though id already gone through numerous cycles, I feel as though thats close enough. if u dont? thats okay, because i think of 800 games ive played before this i think i can forgive myself for going off a technicality for a game that ultimately got really frustrating by the end and taking a pretty good bit to actually get all my shit in gear for again.. and again.... aaaaaaaaaaaaand again

final thoughts: its a pretty cool survival strategy game COMPLETELY diff from anything atlus OR intsys has ever done really, uhhh its gonna cost u and arm and maybe your kidney to get this shit complete in box, definitely a white whale thing to collect and im sure as shit not gonna be up on those seas hunting it but I enjoyed it ENOUGH to tell you to get up on Dolphin and enjoy it if any of this sounds like your thing :) later bitch

maluco, interessante e meio q estranhamente fofo.

uma experiência bem única. eu adoro a escrita desse jogo, seus gráficos e até do gameplay truncado e esquisitinho. ele tinha tudo a seu favor pra se tornar uma das minhas coisas favoritas.

o problema é q eventualmente Cubivore se torna um tanto q chato. bem chato. o combate as vezes se estende demais, por longas sessões de grinding pra conseguir novas mutações. o gás da ótima escrita meio q some, já q vc tbm vai ver bem menos dela na segunda metade do jogo.

eu talvez até me esforçasse pra terminar ele, mas quando eu descobri q eu precisava de 100 mutações pra ver o final, e eu tinha apenas 56, n tinha como eu continuar. seriam múltiplas horas de puro grinding, e o combate desse jogo n se sustenta sozinho pra isso.

mas assim, mesmo reclamando muito, amei Cubivore. acho q vale a pena jogar nem q seja só um pouquinho, pela estética bem única e a escrita divertida dos diálogos internos da sua criaturinha, por mais q n durem tanto quanto deviam.

I must admit that despite its foibles, I am fascinated by Cubivore. I don’t really know what brought this on, considering that it’s a mostly forgotten about Gamecube exclusive (though interestingly, co-developed by Saru Brunei and Intelligent Systems, the latter responsible for Advance Wars and Paper Mario) that I only heard of when a guy I knew submitted a soundtrack sample from the game for a contest. It really stood out to me though, from the really quaint blocky environments and low-poly textures alongside its rather melancholic tunes and soothing ambience, to its core gameplay concept of devouring other panel monsters to evolve your protagonist and become the King of All Cubivores to restore Wilderness to the world. After finally finishing it, I’m honestly pretty impressed. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with a lot of the others here that the combat is extremely grueling, but I think that’s exactly what makes this game shine. It’s very barebones: the A button lets you both jump out of the way and pounce at enemies (depending on whether or not you’ve locked on to enemies by holding the left trigger, and letting this lock charge fully does more damage), and the B button lets you block but stops you in your tracks. Then, once you chip away all of the enemy’s health, you have to swing them around and tear off their limbs to eliminate them by furiously rotating the analog stick (which can take several tries because the timing is very tight). Combine this with the laborious task of dodging/fighting multiple enemies at once while carefully targeting the correct foes to snag the correct color upgrades from devouring foes, all while your enemies are trying to do the same to you, and you’ve got some absolutely brutal combat. It makes for these very tense moments, constantly rotating the camera due to the limited FOV and trying to read your opponent or get the jump on them while keeping an eye on your health, all so you also don’t get knocked down and devoured, and it absolutely sells its subtitle of “Survival of the Fittest.” At the same time, this further accentuates the game's contrast from any downtime spent wandering about these often peaceful and quiescent levels, really making you savor and appreciate your lingering moments of safety until you must once again, throw yourself into the breach.

That said, Cubivore does suffer from one fundamental flaw: it doesn’t do quite enough to prod the player into constantly experimenting and unlocking as many mutations as possible. You see, Cubivore’s final stage and bosses require the player to unlock at least 100 different mutations to proceed onwards after completing the third stage… but to my knowledge, it never fully tells the player that this is required, and is rather vaguely hinted at instead. The issue here is that Cubivore’s circumstances never really necessitate such a high number of mutations outside of gate-locking the final stage: there are a ton of different mechanics and traits that would take a ton of time to list, so I will simply say instead that it’s quite straightforward for players to figure out exactly what specific mutations and color-types mesh best with them, and focus on unlocking and using those forms with classic bread-and-butter combat skills to clear the levels. The alternative is gobbling up every single enemy to grab as many different color combinations as possible, but this could result in losing a valuable mutation on hand if you don’t already have it saved as an EZ-mutation (which must be unlocked from mating or from a specific number of the unlocked mutation, namely during mutations number 20, 50, 80, and 100). Personally, I was met with the pretty abrupt lock after only snagging 60 mutations myself during my first run, and was then sent back to the title screen, where I could select each of the first three stages (Piggy, Grizzly, and Chicky), and essentially had to replay them until I hit 100 mutations, which was definitely not as interesting and sapped some of my goodwill. If you don’t want to be forced to replay these stages, then you have to clear and fight enemies in a very specific manner because levels are quite linear: you can’t go back to previous segments of each stage once you move onto the next segment, enemies will never respawn until you go back to the title screen, and there are no quick checkpoints in-between the individual segments of each stage (so you won’t be able to “devolve” your character to a form with less limbs once you’re inevitably forced to mate to take down larger enemies that require nothing less than a difference of “one limb”), meaning that you can only restart stages at the very beginning. As such, this either requires previous knowledge of all the enemy traits present within a stage + meticulous planning to hit as many forms as possible, or closely following a walkthrough. The structure is definitely a bit of an impediment as a result, and I think this could have been greatly alleviated with more quality-of-life features that wouldn’t force me to constantly restart to respawn enemies for additional traits, as well as firmer messaging that would let players know outright to shoot for 100 mutations.

Regardless, I’m glad I finally got the chance to clear Cubivore. There was a really visceral satisfaction to be found from getting to the final stage and destroying all the final bosses with my now overpowered character, all from grinding out more powerful mutations and thoroughly upgrading all my stats via all the different training areas and collecting powerups along the way. Despite how unfortunately grindy it became from needing to replay levels, I do have a soft spot for these wacky yet interesting and lovable titles that were made during this era. It’s absolutely emblematic of a time when first- and third-party developers alike were readily willing to run with crazy concepts and push them to their limits. While I can’t quite say it’s worth the 400+ dollars asked for online, it’s definitely a nice little diversion that’ll get a few kicks out of you if you’re looking for something unpolished but definitely memorable.

Tragically seems to be regarded as “the $500 gamecube game” and at this point ill literally find anyone who boils it down to just that. like seriously at least put the goddamn disc into the motherfucking gamecube and play it. Its nothing “special”?” but its an interesting, experimental mechanical driven game which I definitely think needs a lot of time to grow on you. Other than that its kind of a fascinating anomaly, and no not because its really rare and expensive, but do some research on this game and the developers, its kind of interesting.

When I started streaming on Twitch, I never imagined that I'd be going back to any game enough to actually finish it on stream, but lo and behold, I finished Cubivore on stream! This is one of those games I never thought I'd actually ever play because the American version is SO hilariously expensive, but apparently the Japanese version is WAY less sought after and more common, because I picked up my copy for a little less than $10 USD at Book Off. It took me about 6.5 hours to beat the Japanese version with the good ending over the course of 3 streams (so 3 sessions over about a month).

​Cubivore is a game with a simple story but a very odd concept. The world of cube-shaped animals is peaceful and animals live with no worries until the day a group of mysterious, colorless animals come and begin eating everything in sight and taking all the color from the world. The world is on the brink of utter destruction until you, the player's animal, are mysteriously born from the sky one day. Outside of that, virtually all of the text in the game comes from the player avatar themself as they narrate from their perspective between stages. All the player avatar really cares about is eating, evolving, and mating, and the fate of the world is only sort of a tangential concern of theirs beyond their own quest for power XD. It's a very silly story that really doesn't take itself seriously at all, and the silly, almost childlike way the main character talks was thoroughly entertaining for me to translate for people watching the stream.

The gameplay loop of Cubivore is going through stages eating to get more powerful so you can battle the head animals of each stage to gain their special ability and move to the next stage. As you eat, you assimilate the colors of the cube animals you're eating. There are a variety of colors of animal with different intensities (strengths) and which combo of which colors will give you new evolutions, and you need to have had 100 unique evolutions in order to fight the final boss of the game. Different evolutions and different color types play a bit differently, and some quite differently, as they add little panels of locamotive body parts to your Cube with each evolution. Most are fairly straight-forward as you lock on to attack, charge up, and lunge for the kill, but some prioritize evasion or blocking instead of pursuit and offense, and some even configure the head in different directions (like sideways or even backwards) or use wider turning circles to make you fight very differently. You also collect love points to mate and grow another "limb" (another panel that makes up your body) and be able to get way more powerful forms. Those are all at pre-determined points in the story though, so it's not like you even could choose not to mate if you wanted to (although the scenes for them are pretty funny).

The controls, as one would expect of a Nintendo game, play quite well. The only real thing to get used to is the camera, which can take a LOT of getting used to as it very much feels like a game from the mid-90s in that regard. You even need to tap the C-stick one tap at a time to reposition the camera in 60 degree increments, like you're pressing C-buttons on an N64 controller. But outside of that, the game has a lot of cool ideas and other things that make it feel older. The way the game isn't super hard, but also doesn't really hold your hand is cool, but won't be for everyone. There are some evolutions that it will be very hard to get used to, but the game DOES, in a way, give you an idea of how to use them by the animals you eat to become that evolution fighting that way in the first place. It's a neat idea that you have to analyze the way your enemies fight because soon you too will be that enemy and will need to fight like they do.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. You'd definitely have to emulate it, as the price tag for the English version is utterly unjustifiable, but I ended up loving Cubivore a lot more than I ever thought I would. It takes a while to get into the swing of how the combat works, but once you do, getting new forms to mess about in is really fun and creates a neat risk-reward of getting new forms but also still being able to fight well enough to get more forms after that. It is absolutely a hidden gem on the Gamecube well worth emulating

Great game, file this one under "Weird Atlus Shit that gets Overlooked." Great musical score, interesting but simple gameplay. Not a lot for replayability but still a good time

I will say, you're gonna want to emulate this one. A copy on Ebay goes for $600, which is WILD to me.

#18 of top 50

Interesting game. Not sure what kind of genre it would fall under, considering I wouldn't say it's a survival game nor would I really say it's an action game. It's more of like a action puzzle collectathon with survival elements, I guess? There's a buttload of unskippable slow tutorial text that happens all the time even to explain things you already know for the millionth time, so that's kind of annoying. Its a game where you need to mutate into different forms by eating different colors of monsters in different stages, then beating bosses to get power ups. It is certainly more complicated to explain than it is to play, that's for sure. The final boss is an annoying damage sponge, so watch out. The camera is pretty unorthodox, the game doesn't even remotely know what to do when there are multiple enemies on screen. Despite all of its jank, I still had a good lot of fun with it, and you certainly will never play anything like it, so if you are into more unconventional stuff, this is definitely worth a shot. As with all "rare" aftermarket games, please don't spend hundreds of dollars on this.