I decided to try Cube Escape: Paradox late one night (bad idea). It is created by Rusty Lake, and is available on the Steam application. Its target audience is ages 15+ (problem solvers who always appreciate a good challenge). It’s a mystery escape room game where you play as a detective who wakes up in a locked room with no memory. Sounds simple? It was, until I realized you basically have to click everything to find hidden clues. At 3AM, when I was tired and slightly creeped out after already watching a psychological thriller with my friends, this wasn’t the most calming experience. I ended up using a walkthrough more than I’d like to admit. But still, I couldn’t stop playing, the game hooked me in.
How the Narrative Shows Up Through Gameplay
This game doesn’t just tell you a story, it makes you solve it. Every puzzle you complete gives you a new piece of information about the main character (Detective Vandermeer) or the strange world he’s stuck in. There’s no voiceover explaining what’s going on. Instead, you interact with objects like lighting a cigarette, burning paper, playing VHS tapes, or typing things on a typewriter and each one pushes the mystery forward. The story is hidden in how you use and combine these clues.
This connects really well to the MDA framework from class. The mechanics (clicking, collecting items, solving clues) create the dynamics (you trying to piece together the mystery), which lead to the aesthetics which in this case, a mix of discovery, challenge, and that “oh shoot, what did I just unlock?” feeling. This is a strong example of an embedded narrative, where the player reconstructs the story through clues and actions instead of being told everything upfront.
The puzzles are all linked in a clear sequence, a design choice that prevents players from feeling overwhelmed. Like when you piece together the paper fragments to form a photo, it points you to the typewriter and says “the woman” – pretty self-explanatory: go type it in. This linearity matches the idea of player vs. game, where each action unlocks the next, and it gives the player a feeling of progression.
fig 1 – the clue for the typewriter
How the Architecture Controls the Story
The whole game takes place inside one room, and the space is basically the story. Each wall has different items like a mirror, a typewriter, a clock, a painting and solving puzzles on one side unlocks new changes in others. This setup is smart because it forces you to explore every part of the room in order. You can’t move ahead until you fully understand what’s already around you.
This ties into the course concept of environmental storytelling and spatial narrative. The room slowly changes as you progress: a painting falls, a mirror cracks, secret compartments are revealed under floorboards. According to Ernest Adams, architecture in games exists to support gameplay and here, it functions through constraint, concealment, and exploration. Like when you had to fill in the drawings to get the next clue, the drawings were kind of explaining what was going on too (fig 2 below). You’re trapped in a literal cube, and your only way out is to observe how the space responds to your actions.
fig 2
The room becomes a mental map, a metaphor for Dale’s fragmented mind. As Adams noted, surrealism in game architecture signals that “things are not what they seem.” That idea is everywhere in Paradox. The strange layout, shifting visuals, and unexpected changes all warn you that you’ll need to think differently if you want to understand what’s going on.
What Didn’t Work
As much as I enjoyed the story and puzzles, some parts were frustrating. Certain clues felt random, like I was just clicking on everything until something finally happened. The rotary phone puzzle especially threw me off, I didn’t know how to use one, and the game didn’t explain it. The keys were also confusing, it turned into trial-and-error trying to figure out which key matched which lock. That kind of broke the flow and made me rely on external help.
Also, movement can be a bit slow. You can only move using arrows by clicking them, and switching between walls gets tiring when you’re stuck and don’t know what you’re looking for. A small map or just smoother transitions could’ve helped a lot.
Accessibility & Design Ethics
The game has subtitles, which helps with hearing accessibility. Some clues are also really tiny and hard to see, like the little photo scraps hidden around the room. If someone has low vision or trouble scanning lots of visual information, they might miss key objects. The game could really benefit from a hint system, or a highlight thing that shows you interactive objects without giving away the answer. That would keep it fair while making it more accessible.
Final Thoughts
Cube Escape: Paradox is a cool blend of mystery and puzzle-solving where the space and story are tightly connected. I enjoyed it because even though I struggled hard at first, eventually (with some help from Google) I started solving things. And the validation I felt was honestly greater than getting a tech internship. I also loved how the game gives you tiny pieces of the narrative like rewards – like it’s saying “Good job, here’s a little more peace of mind.”
Just… maybe don’t start it at 3am.
