The Cub Review
Avoid capture in this cute platformer.
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Platform: PS4/5 PC Nintendo Switch
Reviewed on: PC
Developer: Demagog Studio
Publisher: Untold Tales
Release: January 19, 2024
Time Played: 2.5 Hours
Genre: Platformer Puzzle Indie
ESRB: N/A
The Cub is a short indie game, a part of a larger story that the developers are building with a few other games. In this you are playing a child in a side scrolling platformer through the post apocalyptic remains of earth. They used a lot of different games and shows to stylize the game so you may find some similarities you enjoy while playing. I’ve played through the entirety, taking almost three hours, sit back and let me tell you about what the game has to offer before giving it a personal rating at the end.
Where it starts
The planet has been run down and destroyed by humanity. A few of the higher ups and wealthy were able to escape to Mars, all but a few left behind died due to the harsh conditions of the planet. You are one such survivor, a young child taken in by wolves and changed by your environment so you can survive the new hazards on the planet. Running around the forest one day you notice big rockets coming from space, landing near your home.
Can the kids watch
The Cub is presented in a cute cartoony way, but has quite a bit of darkness around the game. Old decomposed corpses lying around everywhere, vicious animals roaming around ready to kill you if you get to close. Whenever you fail to escape or fall there is a small cave drawing depicting your downfall. And you are running from people trying to hunt you down, they will try and shoot you with a dart or kidnap you with nets.
Moving around
The controls aren’t complicated, playing entirely with one hand on the PC, you move, jump, crouch, and climb. It’s a side scrolling platformer pitting you against the environment, from spikes at the bottom of a pit to violent animals wanting to take a bite out of you or trample you into the ground. If you do happen to fail a timed jump and die, the game will put you back close to where you died for another attempt. Some places throw surprises at you that you might not react fast enough to, causing you to die and try again multiple times to get through a section.
Learning about the past
The Cub remembers little about life before everything died, while playing they will find newpapers or letters left behind giving some sense of what happened before the end. These items also work as the collectibles in the game. If you keep an eye out it’s not tough to collect them all. You can also look through different environments to draw a good conclusion of what life was like and how it went from billboards and tvs.
The Radio
While playing you will constantly hear a radio station broadcasting from Mars. The DJ will talk a little bit about current news, giving you an idea of what life is like up there, and play some interesting music. There will also be people coming on to talk about a special story about there life, those weren’t as entertaining.
Outro:
The Cub is a very short story trying to make a point. There was a lot of finger pointing at real life things around today, with the name mixed up a little bit, but still obvious who they meant like Goopgle for instance. I didn’t care for the idea of real world politics and such put into the story, other than that it was an interesting tale.
The animations were alright, you can tell what you’re looking at, not a whole lot of detail was put into the characters and animals. It was easy to tell where I could jump with the different shading of objects, even if they sometimes all looked alike.
When I first started playing I had a tough time trying to get the environment noises and the radio to a complementary volume. Starting off it was an extreme sensory overload making it hard to focus on anything happening in the game. The radio could be silenced completely in the menu, but it had an importance to the story being told at times, and some of the music was good, so I didn’t want it to go away completely.
It was a quick few hours before I was done with the game, they didn’t drag on and it was entertaining enough, but I don’t see any reason at all to pick the game back up. I did miss a couple achievements but I was able to find all the collectibles and experience the entire story, this feels like a one and done kind of game. Have you played this or any of the other games Demagog Studios have created for their world? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
And that brings us to the ratings
Visuals are coming out at a three
The story was ok, I’m giving it a two
Gameplay was repetitive and simple, going with another two
Like I said, no replayability, that’s a zero
Overall fun… eh, it’s a two
Giving The Cub an overall score of one point eight out of five. I’m throwing it on the bottom shelf. Nothing really stuck out as amazing to me.