Cube Life: Island Survival

""Imagine being stranded on a beautiful deserted island... All of life's necessities: Food, water, shelter - all of your everyday needs are now gone, and it's up to you to survive. Cannibals and wild animals will not make it any easier for you. You'll need to explore, build, and craft to stay alive. Do you think you have what it takes? Find out in Cube Life: Island Survival!""

Cube Life: Island Survival is a cube-based action/adventure sandbox video game. Released exclusively for the Wii U Console on June 4, 2015, and ported to Steam in 2018. It is currently in development for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.

Development
Cypronia, the developers of Cube Life: Island Survival, first announced the game in January 2015. They stated that players on Xbox One and PS4 all had Minecraft, but Wii U users (at the time) didn't. They said that Wii U users "Deserve something special of their own". And that "Nintendo Fans This Is For You" In their first commercial for the game. From the start Cypronia promised to update the game, adding new features based on fan feedback, a Promise they made well on. Cube Life: Island Survival had three large updates, each of which radically changed the way the game was played. Cypronia announced each of the updates before they were released, and always gave some projection of the release date. These projections, however, always turned out to be at least 3 months off. Cypronia's explanation for this was usually because they had difficulty getting past Nintendo's quality moderators.

In 2018 the game was successfully ported to PC, and in 2019 it was ported to Android. The Wii U version was abandoned, but the PC and Android versions still receive updates to this day.

Future
The developers are currently working on integrating Steam Cloud Save into the game, and considering some kind of save back-up system. They are working on balancing item durability and cost according to consumer feedback, while at the same time updating item sprites. Cypronia is also "thinking about" a new mode, possibly called "real survival", with procedurally generated terrain and where the Cannibals know where Barry is automatically. As of 2020, the PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch versions of the game are still confirmed to be in development.

Wii U
Cube Life: Island Survival was released to the Nintendo eShop on June 4, 2015. During the first few weeks of its release the game was 50% off. (It normally costs $7.99) The game was wildly popular on Wii U, due to the fact that it filled the market vacuum Minecraft left behind on the platform. In fact, the sales were so good that some believe Cube Life: Island Survival is partly responsible for the release of Minecraft: Wii U Edition one year later. A free demo was available, giving players a preview of the gameplay. Cypronia later offered Cube Life: Island Survival customers a limited time discount on their Rubik's Cube and Cube Life: Pixel Action Heroes video games for Wii U, as well as offering Zombie Brigade for free during the first week of its release. Cypronia promised to give existing Wii U customers the Newer "2018" version for free. However, when the game released 1 year later, this had been forgotten.

Steam
Cube Life: Island Survival was released on Steam at $14.99 with little fanfare. (Cypronia never even announced it on their Twitter, except for a comment on one of their old posts). During the first week of its release the game was marked 20% off, and a handful of people who had entered in the lottery were given the game for free.

Android Version
In 2019 Cypronia unexpectedly released an Android version of the game with no announcement. It is available only on Google Play.

Gameplay
Cube Life: Island Survival borrowed much of its Gameplay from Minecraft, as it was meant to be a Minecraft substitute on the Wii U. However, it had a much greater emphasis on the "Survival" Mechanics, with a unique, Food, Water and Health system. Players would take on the role of "Barry", the lone survivor of a shipwreck. Barry would have to move from island to island, taking resources in order to craft better armour and build better shelters. At night, Cannibals would come out and try to kill Barry. As Barry killed enemies and gathered resources, he would level up. The Higher Barry's level, the more powerful the Cannibals would become.

The game also had a "Creative Mode," where the player had unlimited resources, many of which were not in the Survival Mode of the game. As of v1.1, two players could play in the Creative Mode at the same time (Player one on the Wii U Gamepad, Player two on the TV) in order to build together.

There were also multi-player arcade-style games modes, such as "Deathmatch" and "Tower Defense" modes, as well as an online leaderboard for Survival Mode. Later, Cypronia took even greater advantage of the Wii U gamepad by adding a built in Skin Editor.

Wii U
Cube Life Island Survival received mixed to positive reviews, with Metacritic giving it a 55% rating. Nintendo Life gave the game a solid 7, praising the game as "the best sandbox game on Wii U yet", while Nintendo said that "it does not go far enough to become a significant title in the Wii U's library". They did, however, express interest in future updates, as Cypronia had promised to correct several of the faults Nintendo found with the game.

Steam
Cube Life: Island Survival went largely unnoticed on Steam, with a little over 1000 users in its group. It has received mostly positive customer reviews, sitting at 8/10 stars. Critics have not yet reviewed this new version, though many look forward to the Switch version.

Android
The Android version of Cube Life: Island Survival was positively received, winning the title of "3rd best game from Slovakia" in the 4ka Android Code 2019.

​Trivia

 * The world in Cube Life: Island Survival is more than 4x larger than the world in Minecraft: Wii U Edition, though there are large load times in between Maps, each of which is about 1/3 the size of a Minecraft: Wii U Edition world.