Cyberbox II

When you grab the joystick and the startup screen appears showing a pixelated box full of lines and lit dots, you know you're in for something strange. Cyberbox II from 1992 is a puzzle game from an era when developers were experimenting with a touch of sci-fi aesthetics and riddles built on geometry.

It's a simple logic game where you manipulate a box filled with lines and objects. The goal is clear — solve the configuration and move to the next level. The graphics are sparse even by the standards of the time the game was released. Colorful, angular interface with no story or atmosphere to speak of. Just boxes, lines, and computer aesthetics that echo old systems like Atari or CGA monitors, except a few years later.

You play with a mouse or joystick, and the controls are straightforward — you select an element, manipulate it according to rules the game gradually reveals. The first few levels introduce you to the basic logic, then things start getting complicated. The problem is that the game often isn't visually clear enough — it's not always obvious what happens when you move something, and there's a lack of meaningful feedback. Playing it is plagued by uncertainty about whether you're doing things right or just fumbling in the dark.

Cyberbox II was swallowed up by the flood of more sophisticated puzzle games that started appearing in the nineties. It wasn't engaging enough to stick in people's minds, and without interesting graphics or sound, it was hard to recommend. It remained a piece of old PC software that people played mostly out of boredom or a desire to try everything that could run on an old computer.

Today it's worth trying only as an artifact of the era — a case study in "how not to make a puzzle game". But if you love experimental games and want to understand how weirder titles were being made in the early nineties, here's something worth spending a bit of time on. It runs fine in an emulator and certainly won't take more than twenty minutes of curiosity.