Battleworld, in the original Secret Wars comic books, was a patchwork planet that had been smushed together by a cosmic entity called The Beyonder. As it was built from chunks of other planets, wandering every couple miles was like entering a completely new biome. (It even contained a chunk of downtown Denver.)
In MMO shooter The Cube, which was announced today at Summer Game Fest, the titular Cube you fight across reminds me a bit of Battleworld—except it's like a giant Rubik's Cube, so its edges and rows rotate, creating new combinations of environments at every turn.
Also, The Cube is a new game from Mundfish, makers of Atomic Heart (Atomic Heart 2 was also announced during the show) so the reveal trailer is completely unhinged—a non-stop barrage of different sci-fi aesthetics crammed into every frame: leggy gold-plated androids, ogres wearing scuba masks, bird-face ruffians with baseball bats, snipers in space helmets, assassins in miniskirts... just as you'd expect from a multiplayer shooter taking place in the Atomic Heart universe.
"The CUBE is a multiplayer RPG-shooter that blends unique world-building, an intriguing narrative, and exciting quests into one game. A living world full of memorable characters, diverse biomes, and tons of enemies, including powerful bosses, awaits you," the game's Steam page reads.
In The Cube, players undertake expeditions to the bizarre anomaly (alone or as part of a cooperative, the Steam page says) to investigate the structure (shoot and stab and smash everything on it) and collect "punch cards" that can be used to "create or upgrade" equipment for their next run. "Every voyage to the Cube is not just a misson but a step into the unknown," says Mundfish.
There's no release date yet, or even a release year, but we'll let you know when we find out more.
