JUICE CUBES GUIDE

Juice Cubes is born of a collaboration between Rovio Stars, the publishing arm of Rovio Entertainment and Pocket Playlab, the makers of another cube-themed game, Lost Cubes. It’s set among a series of small islands inhabited by things like sentient hermit crabs, pirates, and giant octopi, and these nautical natives all have one thing in common—they have problems. In their fancifully fluid world, those problems are solved by clearing levels using an easy-to-learn match-three technique, and who better to do that than you?

As explained before, Juice Cubes employs a match-three method wherein you connect static icons by drawing lines through them. The nine-by-nine board is covered with apples, strawberries, bananas, and coconuts and these can be connected vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. As “match-three” implies, matches require three or more of the same icon; matched icons burst, allowing the remaining ones to cascade toward the bottom of the screen.

 Diferrent from other games in the genre, in Juice Cubes there’s no such thing as automatic matching, so cascades do nothing but rearrange the board. This makes for slightly different gameplay, but also eliminates the possibility of achieving the explosive random combo-chains achievable in games like Bejeweled and Candy Crush.

Structurally, Juice Cubes borrows from Candy Crush Saga. The level select screen, for instance, takes the form of a gradually unfolding map, while every failed attempt to complete a level will cost you a 'life'.

Juice Cubes attempts to make up for that with cute graphics, fun-and-sun sound, and sparkling power-ups. The artwork here is simple but vibrant, and the steel-drum-like music evokes days spent lounging under a palm tree with sand in your toes. Power-ups or fruit bombs add life to the rather straight-forward matching mechanic and are generated by making matches of four or more. Different fruit bomb varieties come from directing your matches side-to-side, up-and-down, or diagonally.

Vertical/horizontal matches create fruit bombs that, when activated, take out whole rows of fruits. The direction of the blast is determined by the direction of your finger-swipe). While diagonal matches create fruit bombs that detonate a three-by-three area of the board. The most powerful fruit bomb is made by matching eight or more icons: activating that one zaps all instances of one type of fruit. These fruity eruptions do make things more fun, especially when different ones are matched together.

These cocktails of fruit and high explosives soon establish themselves as the surest path to a three-star rating for any given level, and encourage you to plan your matches so as to create explosive opportunities.

 Along with fruit bombs, Juice Cubes features additional unlockable power-ups that allow you to cheat a little by strategically taking out one particular fruit or swapping two adjacent fruits. These however, cost. Although it’s typical for power-ups to unlock the longer you play, many games allow you to “try before you buy.” Rovio Stars makes the self-interested, but perhaps unwise choice not to do this, and makes you shell out in-game gold from the get-go.

You can earn gold, but it so rarely happens that you really have no choice but to purchase it. Gold packs range from $1.99 for 15 to $99.99 for 1,200 (for perspective, 5 extra moves or one power-up cheat costs 9 gold). You’ll also have to pay if you want to unlock new areas of the map.

Juice Cubes includes:
✮Match 3 or more cubes to create crazy combos and banana blast. It's just the right balance of difficulty
✮Connect to Facebook and compete against your friends
✮Over 600 fresh, fruity, and free levels with wonderful artwork, animation, and graphics
✮Even more cute and crazy characters than ever before

 Each section of Juice Cubes‘ map contains ten levels, and you can play roughly 40 before being disallowed from moving on—and the next thing is you have to start bugging people for map pieces. If you prefer to maintain your friendships, you can avoid cluttering people’s Facebook feeds by spending $1.99 to unlock new sections. The thing is Juice Cubes‘ gameplay evolves so slowly, you might think twice before doing either.

 Juice Cubes begins to feel repetitive pretty quickly because of its very limited goals. You’re given a set number of moves or a set time frame, and you’re asked to do one of a handful of things: score a certain number of points, make plastic beach pails fall off the bottom of the board, or remove spaces covered with sand. Eventhough, as you progress, both your goals and the board layouts change, the changes are so minimal, and the game’s difficulty ramps up so slowly, there’s not much sense of challenge within the levels or sense of accomplishment upon completing them. This makes for a slow, monotonous ride, and cute graphics just can’t make up for that.

Of course, these can be quickly fill by spending some real-world cash, or by simply pestering your Facebook friends for more.

Juice Cubes is a decent little game that ultimately fails to plant much of a stake in the already over-populated match-three territory. It’s cute, buoyant, and aside from being stingy with its power-ups, doesn’t do anything particularly wrong; the thing is, its repetitive, too-easy gameplay simply fails to give us any reason to leave our first Crush.

Download Juice Cubes here