Ubinota Review

I started up Ubinota and was immediately greeted by calming music and a title screen that was very easy on the eyes. The protagonist, Lucien, is relaxing on a cloud before he sails off on his floating boat. This wonderfully soothing menu basically sums up the entire game. Contrary to its puzzle game roots, my journey through Ubinota was a relaxing and stress-free one. Ubinota is a simple and comforting cruise through the sky, but still leaves something to be desired.

Lucien is a painter who was called upon by a wizard to stop houses from falling from the clouds. Lucien complains about being hungry all the time, but is generally a care-free fellow. He is tasked to journey from cloud to cloud, and then to other skies, to try to preserve the foundations for houses. He later meets other characters, who aren’t very important but mainly provide Lucien with someone to complain about his hunger to. By no means is this an epic or complicated story, but it does the job fine for a puzzle game.

Lucien needs to paint different blocks to create a sturdy foundation for one or more houses. When you are ready, or when you run out of paint, you press a button that makes all of the blocks fall downward, unless they are a painted block connected to a foundation box. The box stays static and doesn’t fall, and as long as there is a paint connection between the boxes and the house, the house won’t fall either. If the house ends up falling, you fail the level. The physics can result in some pretty interesting dynamics, like trying to balance the blocks by distributing their weight. It's a bit difficult to explain, but it's very easy to learn.

Throughout the different levels you are introduced to new paint colors, some of which have different abilities. The game does a nice job of making sure you don’t get stuck with the same type of puzzle. As soon as I started getting bored of playing levels with the same type of paint over and over, the game introduced a new paint with different abilities. It does a great job of making sure the puzzle design doesn’t get stale either, and makes sure that each puzzle is different from the last.

The best part of the game in my opinion is the carefree nature of it. I can sometimes get frustrated at puzzle games, but each time I failed a level in Ubinota I wasn’t mad, I wanted to restart it and try a new approach. I credit this to the art design. The art style of the game is unique. The game has a special charm to it that makes it very easy on the eyes. The music is also light and relaxing. All in all, the general look and sound of the game makes it a very carefree and zen-like experience. It eliminates the stressfulness that comes with many puzzle games by being so warm and inviting.

The game does fall short in some ways. There really isn’t much story, and the dialogue between Lucien and other characters really just amounts to Lucien complaining that he’s hungry all the time. While charming, they could have done more to flesh out this magical world with floating cloud-houses. It doesn't ever promise to be anything more than a simple 3D puzzle game, but a little more depth would have been nice.

Overall, Ubinota was a charming, happy little experience. It could have been bigger, but it's just fine where it’s at right now. The art design and simplistic game play work to its merit and make Ubinota a relaxing game to experience. Just don't expect the storytelling or level design of something like Portal.