CUBE CHALLENGES — Attraction in Mississauga

we gave this place a try thinking it was like a small business version of activate, I was shocked to find out it's a fairly big international business.

The variety of rooms is nice, the different categories (skill, physical, mental) is a good starting point and surface level it does feel like the rooms are all different. I find the execution severely lacking though.

First of all, most rooms have a time limit and a score you have to reach to beat it, but there's no time clock on the wall and no real way of knowing what your current score is or how far from the goal you are. Every room has a tv but they're almost always behind your back next to the door so you can't actually see it while doing the thing. So the end result is you either win or lose and don't really feel like you know which it is the game just ends.

Second, there's different difficulty levels you can select, which give different amounts of points upon completion. That's fine in theory but again the execution is weird and wrong. So ultimately the games are always a matter of time and/or points. What should happen is, for instance, in a game where there's only a timer you should be scored based on your completion time and get either the easy, medium, or hard victory points based on how fast you did it, but how it actually works is you choose a difficulty before entering and you get all or nothing. If you choose easy and do it super fast you don't get bonus points. If you choose hard and are one second slow you get nothing even though you deserve the medium points. It feels bad, it feels anticlimactic.

Thirdly, the room setup is sometimes questionable. For instance there's a basketball room: That should be simple enough, it's the classic carnival / arcade basketball table game right? Wrong. It's a room with a slightly slanted floor and a cage preventing you from walking further into the room. Weird, awkward, you have to bend over to pick up balls. There's a room with slingshots that are bolted down and there's again a cage in front of you which in this case puts a bar right in front of your face where you want to look to actually aim the slingshot. There's a room where you throw a ball through a hole in the wall, but there's a cage in front of you meaning you either make an impossible throw through the cage without hitting the bars or you stick your arm through the bars which is just ergonomically not how you throw a ball, weird and awkward.

A lot of games give you 3 "lives" - you can fail 3 times before the game's over. OK so why don't you get that same failsafe in rooms where everyone needs to get to the other side? The game knows how many players you have but it doesn't matter if you have 2 or 8 players everyone needs to get to the other side without touching the floor / tripping the lasers or you all fail and need to leave the room womp womp womp. Almost complete the room, short on time, last person makes a small mistake and you get nothing, feels bad. They should penalize points for using lives, give full points for flawless completion, this is super simple game design that they just don't do.

Also there's no water fountain

It's entertaining, fun times with whoever you're with, but I have a lot of issues with the execution and no plans...

Pros: Very nice staff, Sama at the front was lovely They had someone in the hall to answer questions and help with understanding games Huge space Good air circulation, not stuffy Many different games At least five high cardio/strength games Bathrooms Free lockers that can fit a small- medium sized bag/laptop Bottled water available to buy Lots of parking Soft stretchy wrist bands that are easy to scan Team based vs individual

Cons: Poor UI, often having to double tap the screen to "reset" it before scanning The UI will allow you to scan all members and select a difficulty before saying "room occupied" - it should show this while a team is in the room so time isn't wasted scanning in No waitlist on games - you can't scan and wait for the room to free up Instructions are written and can be misinterpreted/easily misunderstood - a demonstration or short video would be better Instructions don't prepare you for what's in the room or are vague - many games were "learn as you play" No audio instructions when you enter the room Some games have a single life and there is no option to replay from the inside Timer starts when you open the door Timer keeps counting when you finish the game - you don't really know when you finish other than a long pause of silence a few seconds later Doors are difficult to open and close on you very fast if you don't hold it If you don't open it properly, the door stays locked and you have to rescan Tight-ish hallways, big groups take up a lot of space if they're scanning into a game Screens don't show how much time you have left, only when your time is done it says "team not registered" instead of "time's up!" Some rooms poorly designed; ball-based games like the basketballs and slingshots have balls rolling off to where you can't grab them or behind obstructions Some games had aspects (like one button) that were broken or not working properly Late open time on weekends - 9am or 10am games would sell it

Best games: Golden gate Boxing wall Tetris The fan/climbing one Baking

Tips: Bring a water bottle and good comfy footwear When waiting for the door to open, hold your ear up to it and listen for the click before pushing open

We usually go to Activate as it's close to home but saw this pop up on insta. It has lots of potential but also needs a lot of improvement before it's worth the trip/money. A lot of game variety but the instructions just didn't do it. The physical games were super fun and very Physical 100. I might go again in a year or two if they've had time to...

We tried cube challenges today and we had a good time overall. I think it is a good foundation, but there are some improvements that could be made.

It is a relatively small space, the rooms are nicely varied between strength, mental, and skill-based challenges, but there is not enough of them. Each room has levels of difficulty to choose from, but I wish the points for each and how to attain them were a bit more explained.

The entrance/lobby area was quite cramped at times. It was quite busy but we still found rooms which could be entered, so they let in just enough people at a time for you not to be left waiting for other groups to finish.

The software seems intuitive enough, with some moments feeling a bit slow, and the rooms are well built with nice decor; yet as an adult I found the mascot on every screen in every room quite tiring. The doors to each room unlock when you’re able to enter, but you don’t really know when that is (no green light or anything), so you’re somewhat left just yanking on the handle until it opens.

There is also one room which, when completed, gives you a birds-eye view of a significant portion of the interior of the building, including into other rooms as some don’t have a ceiling, which felt awkward.

There are some other strong competitors in this space, namely Activate and BRKFREE, and while I certainly see the similarities - I feel Cube will need to do more to differentiate themselves.

I would recommend as an outing, but I likely won’t be rushing to return out of fears of it...