![]() ![]() Cube World was a game I could always return to, a place I could call home. I basically grew up playing Cube World, learning English using it and discovering online communities. “What keeps me coming back is basically my sheer love for the game. When it comes to the lack of updates, it really is tough, because many of us really liked this game from the start,” one person said. The combat and movement systems are some of the best I’ve experienced in gaming. ![]() “The game is just incredible in terms of literally everything. So, why do people keep coming back to Cube World despite the prospects of a full-scale revival of the game being very unlikely? Well, for a variety of reasons. “There is smaller, more tightly-knit community of around 100 people where you can talk to the modders who are doing a good job of implementing what a lot of people want in the game, those people are the real carries of the whole community,” an interviewee replied. The alpha version of the game has a small group of active modders, which has kept some players excited for the small unofficial updates that come along. What does the Cube World community look like these days? There are official spaces, but people’s perception of the public community spots is that there’s a lot of negativity surrounding the game, Wollay’s disappearance left many feeling betrayed, and that sentiment has never left. If Wollay had maintained the game’s momentum, it almost certainly would’ve been a huge hit. The experiences of these community members speak to just how popular Von Funck’s game was. It was the first video game I owned independently of my brother,” she answered.Īnother respondent described themselves as a “classic Minecraft kid,” being instantly drawn to Cube World as a result. Cube World was more accessible, I was so young that I didn’t have to buy a credit card so I had to convince my Dad to buy it for me. As a girl, I had felt left out of the gaming community, which, at the time, was primarily violent shooters and scary horror games. I was pretty young at the time, so the pretty colours and simple voxel graphics caught my attention. YouTube was a common draw for these players, with one respondent becoming enamoured with Cube World because of its appealing aesthetics, “I was a huge fan of Minecraft and Cube World caught my attention. Interestingly, none of them were “new” fans of Cube World, with each of them sticking with the game since discovering the Alpha in 2013. The majority of those interviewed said they play Cube World in intervals, a few hours every few weeks, just enough to scratch the itch. We spoke to several community members and asked them several questions, including why they keep coming back to Cube World despite a lack of updates and support from the creators. According to SteamDB, the release version of Cube World peaks at about 30-40 concurrent players per day. ![]() The underwhelming release resulted in a core of dedicated community members continuing to play the alpha build of the game. It’s been speculated that Von Funck is a perfectionist and his inability to accept that things are “good enough” hampered the development of Cube World significantly. It’s unknown why Wollay decided to make these changes, rather than building upon his existing systems. Additionally, items were region-locked, meaning your cool loot now had an expiration date. While you used to gain experience from killing enemies, now you could only level up by collecting artefacts scattered around each region. Wollay reworked a lot of systems, most notably the progression system. However, the new version of Cube World was not what fans expected. Everyone who purchased the Alpha received a free key for the full version of the game. That wasn’t the end of the story, however, with Wollay releasing a completed Steam version of Cube World in September 2019. As you can imagine, a large amount of the community lost patience and gave up on the game a long time ago. Eventually, the creator went silent, sometimes for years, yet he still insisted he was working on the game. The alpha build they released in mid-2013 captured the imagination of many a gamer looking for something similar to the uber-popular Minecraft.ĭespite players buying the alpha version of the game, the updates repeatedly promised by Wollay were not delivered upon. Cube World was the passion project of a husband and wife duo, Wolfram “Wollay” von Funck and his wife Sarah. A decade ago, a new, bright, voxel-based RPG took YouTube subscription tabs by storm. ![]()
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