Rubik’s Cube inventor collaborated on new Rubik’s Match mobile game
Rubik’s Match
50 years ago, Ernő Rubik invented his first working prototype of the Rubik’s Cube, the irrepressible little shifting box that is still a mainstay for puzzle fans around the world. And out now, there’s a new free-to-play mobile game with the inventor’s stamp of approval, titled Rubik’s Match, developed by Nørdlight Games.
“Puzzles have always been close to my heart and mind,” said Ernő Rubik, via a news release about Rubik’s Match. “As a child, I spent hours on end with the tangram or the 15-puzzle as well as enjoying solving chess-problems. Some puzzles fascinated me by their complexity; some by the simplicity of their core ideas; and others by their beauty or novelty. I always preferred difficult puzzles, not the easy ones.” According to PR, Rubik “was involved in early testing of the game in Stockholm and collaborated on one of the levels.”
Rubik’s Match is somewhat different from the original Rubik’s Cube puzzle, as it’s primarily a match-three puzzle game, with cube-centric, cartoonish designs inspired by the original cube. The peppy, synth-pop music was definitely a highlight for me as I plowed through several puzzles on my iPhone earlier today. So far it feels more like playing Bejeweled than like solving a Rubik’s Cube, but that’s not a bad thing for me, a person who very much enjoys Bejeweled. I already have the sense of how much the puzzles will get harder the more I play, and I’m curious to see how that will unfold.
Ernő Rubik provided this cerebral quote to Polygon as well, which I’ll have to keep in mind once I hit the more difficult puzzles in this game: “Inspiration is unpredictable. You keep working on a problem in your mind and something quite unexpectedly comes to your help in finding a solution. It can be a passage in a novel or the pebbles on the shore of the river. You have to be ready and receptive to be inspired and act on it.”
Rubik’s Match is available to download on the App Store and Google Play.