The Cub Review (a passerby)
Pros
+ Interesting environment
+ Nice soundtrack
Cons
- Uninspired platforming
- Game length is way too short to merit the price
- No puzzling required, contrary to the tag
- Uninteresting story that doesn't really make sense
More of a platformer demo than an actual game
As a fan of platformers, Cub intrigued me with its pleasant visuals and intriguing post-apocalyptic Jungle Book setting. But as I played the game, I realised there wasn't really anything unique about the game at all.
Platforming is extremely generic with basic run, jump, dash, crawl, and grab controls—controls that remain the same throughout the game. The only real challenges of this game were annoying trial and error aspects, as you're sometime faced with split second decisions whether or not to jump, only to find out that jumping causes you to land into spikes. Or finding out that turning in the wrong direction while holding a parachute causes it to disappear.
It might be that this was added to artificially inflate game time, because I completed the entire game in 70 mins without even trying. In fact, I actually took my time exploring every nook and cranny to locate collectibles, so imagine my surprise when the achievement for finishing the game showed up at the 70th minute mark.
As for being "story-rich"? Yeah, I'm afraid that's not even close to accurate, because there's barely any story to speak of. The story is told primarily in the form of collectibles, but cursory glances of these collectibles tells me that it's just another generic story about capitalism and greed ruining the planet. I also could not understand why the humans returning from Mars saw a human child as an "it" rather than another human—it really made no sense.
I suppose Cub isn't a bad game per se, but it just offers so incredibly little in both quantity and quality that I pretty much felt bored from beginning to end, and mainly completed the game for completion's sake. For reference, Guacamelee! is a 10 year old platformer that's priced the same, but superior to this one in every single way.
Feel free to give this game a play if you're looking for a very simplistic platformer to pass the time, but IMO, this is really just a $5 demo masquerading as a full fledged platformer.