Intelligent Qube

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

PERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRFECT!

Intelligent Qube (also known as Kurushi) is a puzzle game series for the Sony PlayStation.

You play as a man who, for an unknown reason, is stranded on a floating grey platform in the middle of a featureless black void. An unseen 'Voice' demands that you take part in an arduous mental and physical trial known as 'Kurushi'.

Giant cubes stomp from the far end of the Stage toward you. You must use your 'mark' to trigger the destruction of each cube, one by one, before they roll off the edge of the Stage, and before they crush you. Succeed, and you'll open your mind to possibilities you never thought possible. Fail, and the universe will never be created. Perhaps.

Tropes used in Intelligent Qube include:
  • And I Must Scream: If you fail, it appears that you will fall for a very long time.
  • Bizarre Puzzle Game.
  • Death Cry Echo: Fall into the void, and your character will yell as they fall forever.
  • Flawless Victory: Completing a level without errors in the correct number of steps earns you a PERRRRRRRRRRFECT from the Voice. Completing a level in fewer steps earns you an EEEEEEEEEXCELLENT, and a 'True Genius!' bonus.
    • Miss one, and you lose your back row. You soon learn to do everything humanly possible to always get perfects.
  • Level Editor.
  • Mind Screw: It's not really explained what's happening in the game at all. The ending shows the player's character being returned to their normal life, be it in a town, or the army, or wherever, with the Voice sharing some words of encouragement on your victory over the trials of Kurushi.
    • Some endings end with the caption 'The Beginning of the Universe'. If you fail, you fall off the Stage into oblivion, and the universe... simply isn't created.
  • Nintendo Hard.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: The game takes place in a completely featureless void with nothing but the cubes, your footsteps and the Voice. Without the music, it's very eerie.
  • Scoring Points: You earn ordinary points, and you're also rated on your 'IQ'
  • Sinister Geometry: The only other visible object beside yourself in this game is an endless torrent of unstoppable giant stomping cubes.
  • Spiritual Successor: Although they're really completely unrelated, the Practical Intelligence Quotient (PQ) series is considered by many to be the Spiritual Successor to Intelligent Qube, due to being a sort of test, clean graphics, no plot, and a 'meta person' as the main character.
  • Trapped in Another World: The blackness.
  • True Final Boss: Kurushi Tektonics.
  • The Voice: The... Voice.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: You're running around a floating platform in a featureless black void, fighting for the very survival of the universe through a bizarre mental trial at the behest of some unseen god! While listening to this!
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: Kurushi Tektonics.