Note: I was unable to test the multiplayer features due to having received the review code prior to release.

I want to thank Gaijin Network Ltd for the review key to this title.

Crafting games are nothing new. Minecraft set the tone for countless imitators. As for games that allow exploring the universe, No Man's Sky is the current benchmark for doing so with a crafting system mated to it. Cubic Odyssey tries to blend these two game ideas together, with mixed if ambitious results.

Cubic Odyessy tells the story of a once properous peaceful galactic power devoted to building, until a parasitic substance called "Red Darkness" scourged their worlds, corrupting and destroying all in its path. A last ditch project was initiated, sending countless ships to the far corners of the galaxy. Those on these ships had as their mission to rebuild what they could and find a means to stop the Red Darkness.

With this story, you, after choosing your background, are thus forced to fend for yourself on a remote alien world. You have to repair your ship, set up a base, and most of all, survive. If you can do that, you can travel to other worlds as you continue the search for some way to combat the Red Darkness. Like in No Man's Sky, you will have to discover other civilized areas, trade and barter with friendlies for supplies, and defend yourself against hostile flora and fauna. It's a first-person exploration and survival kind of game, more or less.

On the Minecraft-inspired side, you will also need to do a lot of crafting. While you have a helper drone that can provide some basic starting gear, most of the means of survival you will need to build out of salvaged materials. Some are common, like wood and stone. Others are more exotic, like rare ores and biological materials from specific alien lifeforms.

And it's at this point that this game is going to be more difficult than it seems. Minecraft veterans would find this game much more complex. For example, a beginning Minecraft player knows all they need to do is punch down a tree, and with that, the rest of the game resources unlock from getting some wood. Cubic Odyssey uses a slightly more realistic approach. Wood is still a valuable starting resource, but it requires you to refine many basic items into others to build new things.

Wood, for example, needs to be refined into (char)coal, which is integral to many refining processes. You will need to build various crafting benches for different types of gear (as opposed to Minecraft where your starting bench could build almost everything on the same bench). Finally, unlike Minecraft, you do gain access to a map, but even then it only marks out basic objectives, and it's easy to get a bit lost since it doesn't keep track of many specific quests you may have. Overall, despite a very patient and mostly helpful starting tutorial, this game takes a bit longer to get into. You also need to remember tool use in this game requires spare batteries. While the resources to make the batteries are fairly cheap, you must keep some around to keep using almost all tools.

On the other hand, Cubic Odyssey does excel in making their generated worlds feel dynamic. There are friendly outposts, roving bands of space pirates, various peaceful and hostile flora and fauna, and various ruins and alien relics to discover, so each world is going to be an adventure.

Graphically, this title imitates the pixelized blocky look pioneered by Minecraft, albeit with far more fine details and a definite science fiction-like appearance. It's a very colorful world for sure, and outer space looks just as vibrant. Since you can explore both alien worlds and the stars, this is a very beautiful pixel-block art world for sure.

Sounds and music are generally minimalistic. Like in Minecraft, music is mostly absent and sounds are limited to your crafting or resource hunting, to give the player as few distractions as possible. There are a few ambient music tracks with an otherworldly feel that play at times to better sell the science fiction atmosphere. All the sounds and music sound crisp and distinct, and I can't really fault this game on those grounds.

This title supports a keyboard and mouse or any Steam-supported controller. I generally used the former due to my familiarity with Minecraft, and the stock setup is almost identical to all the keybinds from Minecraft and so many other games like it. There are some patient and mostly helpful tutorials to walk you through the basics, though it's worth noting they need some work. For example, if told to find certain specific things, not all of those things are marked on the game map, but rather their rough locations.

The stability is pretty decent, but I had a pretty good laptop on which to test this. I'd definitely recommend clearing the minimum requirements for the best experience. Also, the game developers very strongly recommend using an SSD drive for the best play experience to avoid load times. Cubic Odyssey runs natively on Microsoft Windows (64-bit only). While not yet rated for Steam Deck, I was able to get this running very well on both the Steam Deck and Linux via Steam Proton.

Morally, this title doesn't have too many issues.

Violence isn't too graphic. You will have to defend yourself against pixelated space pirates and hostile flora and fauna. This lacks blood and gore (though you can receive bones from fallen animals). You can attack friendly NPCs if you wish, though this is obviously not recommended.

There is no harsh language or sexual content of note. This setting is fairly hard on science fiction, so no occult or supernatural influence is noticeable. The Red Darkness clearly has a science fiction origin of indeterminate circumstances.

Morally, your objectives are to survive and create. Aside from the possibility of attacking friendly people, there are no moral issues of note with the game itself.

Overall, this is an ambitious title that is mostly recommended, but with the caveat of needing some fine-tuning. Technically, it's fairly sound. Morally, there are mostly some mild concerns of violence, and this is otherwise suitable for any older child and higher. I'd rather get Minecraft if you want a far simpler crafting game, but if you want a deeper one with a space exploration element, then Cubic Odyssey may be for you.