We recently reported that indie developer Cypronia found success in Japan with its Minecraft-inspired title Cube Life: Island Survival. Since that time it has now sky-rocketed to third place in the Japanese charts, even sneaking past Super Mario Maker and Splatoon.
Minecraft: Wii U Edition is currently the number one game in the download charts in Japan, priced at 3,888 Yen (£27.80 / $34.50). When you consider Cube Life's launch price of 1000 Yen (£6.11 / $8.87) it's easy to see why it is selling well since its launch in the country; in short, Japanese Wii U owners really seem to love open world sandbox games!
We've also found out some more details about the v1.2 update which will be released in March 2016 for all territories, including Japan - it'll add the following features:
- Share Custom Maps (like Super Mario Maker)
- 400+ items are now available! New items like ladders, motorboats, diving masks, traps, etc.
- Completely redesigned AI. Canibals are now smarter.
- Stealth attacks! Approach an enemy from behind and gain the upper hand
- Bigger world to explore at 3,520 x 3,520 blocks (was previously 2,880 x 2,880)
- New pets: Added Chickens, Boars, Baby Boars, and Giant Crabs
- New Animals: Rabbits, Puffer Fish, Parrots, Lizards, Gorillas, Crabs, and Jellyfish
- Fight New Enemy Bosses: The Kraken, and Cannibal Boss
- Assign commands to pets now (defensive, offensive, or collect items)
- New Color Map with Radar (displays position of enemies, pets)
- New release territory - Available for download in Australia + New Zealand
It's nice to see that Cypronia has such confidence in its Minecraft inspired title and is continuing to support it with new content. We can only hope that Minecraft for Wii U gets an update soon to make better use of the GamePad for inventory management, while we still await details of Nintendo-specific content that was announced along with the game late last year.
[source nintendo.co.jp]
Comments 15
Probably talented/skilled enough that he/they could have thrown this together relatively quickly, all things being relative, and now it's paying off big time.
I'm too lazy to look into what the differences are in these clone cube games.
Well I guess Minecraft at least has some competition on wiiu which is good. Maybe they will now update Minecraft with gamepad features to try and entice wiiu owners to buy it.
I was wondering why this is happening, and then I looked at the price. Good lord, what were they thinking?!
Good! They were here first and Minecraft skipped the Wii U for years and didn't even add gamepad touch support and it's over priced.
I would have bought cube life if it had online. Just playing alone seems boring in a sandbox world.
Well dang, looks nice actually.
Pretty solid clone, but I was hoping for better draw distances and frsmerate. Bummer. The other thing this game needs is a better feel to the weapons. The projectiles feel like you are launching spitballs.
I want one of this Minecraft or Minecraft clones to some i can enjoy without download a lot of them, only one to enjoy forever. Can you make an article comparing all of them in Wii U and 3DS eshops?
@DarkEdi well, on the WiiU, I'd say the best Minecraft "clone" is this one. At least right now.
Of course, Minecraft itself is a more polished and content heavy game, but it's considerably more expensive.
On the 3ds, maybe cube creator, it's the closest thing for the system. The magic hammer is a good game, but it's more of its own thing than a Minecraft clone, and I haven't played the other one.
They deserve the success, very good game, only things that would need some tweaks are the enemies at night (coming too soon at 8pm, nights too long, and they keep respawning, making best way to pass the night up in your shelter, waste of time).
The problem with the 1.1 update was not the delay, it was Cypronias sudden lack of communication. That angered many people I hope they learned something from that.
Hope they fix the B button bug in Creative Co-op. That mode is nearly unplayable.
As for recommendation between Minecraft, Cube Life, Discovery, Stone Shire.
Minecraft obviously has the multiplayer (online+offline) and the most stable graphics engine. It's a solid Xbox Live port it seems. There's an expensive load of DLC skins but it's questionable if they ever add more to the core game than that.
Cube Life is still buggy and unbalanced but it gets regular free updates that add a considerable amount of new content, stability, and bugfixes. The developers understand how important it is to tweak and polish up the goldmine they have on their hands. I hope they can make it as good as possible. The single player survival/story mode is huge and challenging. My wishes for the next update are a better draw distance, gyro motion controls, and the bugfix I mentioned earlier.
I haven't played Discovery and don't know much about its content, but it's probably the best looking clone if you just want to be creative.
Stone Shire is a one man job and it shows. It feels as basic as a demo, but it's being worked on. It might turn very slowly into something.
@SKTTR Hi friend, add my ID is edi_tena. I remember you from years ago from the Wii VC forum here in Nintendolife.
As much as I'm not a fan of blatant ripoffs, I'm glad that this game is giving Minecraft a run for its money. This game seems to have a lot of really important [and basic might I add] features that a large heavy hitter as minecraft should have from day one, such as inventory management on the Gamepad, and larger worlds. God, how Minecraft needs larger worlds. I play the 360 version and let me tell you it is nearly impossible to do -anything- with the new biomes and areas released with the new update because of how tiny the worldsize is. Even simply doubling it would make a better experience. Maybe with this game taking off and hitting the top spots, Mojang and 4J will realize that they need to step their game up and provide the services they are due to their loyal consumers.
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