Cubism’s latest update adds hand tracking support to the full game on Quest and Quest 2 and it works incredibly well.
Cubism, which launched midway through last year, is a fantastic puzzle game available on PC VR and Quest. The concept is simple — fit the pieces into the 3D wireframe with no gaps and nothing sticking out — but it’s one that strikes a perfect balance between being easy to understand and challenging to solve.
Before its full launch, a short demo of Cubism was available to sideload with basic hand tracking support. However, when it arrived on the Oculus Store, the game only supported Touch controllers. While they worked well enough, it sometimes felt a bit clunky to position the controllers in the right orientation when placing a piece.
Now, Cubism offers a more natural solution with hand tracking for the entire game and the implementation is better than ever.
The hand tracking update for Cubism is now live on Oculus Quest!
Put your controllers down, and get hands-on with some brain-teasing puzzles 🤏🧩
👉https://t.co/xEo7JXnQZW pic.twitter.com/kTRfSehONG
— Cubism (@CubismVR) March 17, 2021
As with all hand tracking on Quest headsets, it’s not perfect. However, Cubism has designed its hand tracking support to be as user-friendly as possible. An introductory dialogue box educates you on how to get the best performance — playing in a well lit space, not crossing you hands over each other, etc. — and from there it’s very simple. Grab pieces and place them in the desired position.
What sets Cubism apart is the intelligent design safeguards in place to account for unavoidable technological shortcomings. The tips of your fingers will light up when grabbing a block to indicate which specific fingers are being tracked as part of the ‘grab’ action. This adds a lot of clarity, as it lets you know exactly which fingers to release when you want place a block accurately.
Likewise, your hand will go red when it’s occluded by the other or when it’s in a position that’s difficult to track accurately. It’s a subtle feature, but one that makes it incredibly clear when you need to adjust something to improve the experience.
It’s these little additions that make Cubism’s hand tracking feel more refined than it would otherwise. It works within the limitations of the current technology, not in spite of them.
There’s still bumps in the road — sometimes a piece will get ‘stuck’ on your hand after releasing, and sometimes it’s hard to twist your hand to the right angle without encountering tracking hiccups. However, it’s definitely one of the more natural hand tracking experiences on the Quest — it feels like a perfect fit for the game and not just a gimmick.
The hand tracking update is available now for Cubism on Quest. Hand tracking is not supported for PC VR, so the Rift version of the game will only support Touch controllers.
You can read our full Cubism review for more details.
