EGX Hands-On: Unbox

A look at the ultimate postal service.

Unbox, by Manchester based developer Prospect Games, was initially developed during Unreal 4 Christmas Game Jam, and it is now being developed into a full title, inspired by retro games as well as contemporary games like Marble Blast Ultra and Katamari Damacy to create something quite unique.

In Unbox, you control a small self delivering parcel and you get to explore a sunny, tropical land by rolling around it and jumping.  There are various collectables you can find as you make your way around, and a bunch of inhabitants of the world who will have challenges for you.

The world of Unbox is charming and colourful, with all the inhabitants being cardboard boxes with unique charm and characteristics.  The physics based platforming is challenging and the destructible parts of the environment look very realistic within the cartoonish world.  You can definitely see where this game’s influences have come from when you play the game and it really is delightful to explore the world.

The most interesting and unique mechanic of the game is the ‘unbox’ move, which is a bigger version of the classic double jump moves.  When you jump, hitting the ‘unbox’ button will launch you in the air again, and you can do this up to six times.  It enables you to do things like cross vast stretches of water, or get up really high towers, but the limit means you can’t do it forever.  You can replenish you jumps by collecting health boxes or hitting checkpoints.

The full game will also contain split screen multiplayer with a variety of modes available.  It was on show at EGX but we didn’t get a chance to play with it.

Unbox is looking like it’s going to be a lot of fun.  The twists on classic gameplay are great and the world is vibrant, fun and full of character, with a great soundtrack.

Unbox is due for release in May 2016 for PC.  You can vote for it on Steam Greenlight here.