Q.U.B.E. 2's new trailer shows off its story ahead of March 13 release

Q.U.B.E., the 2012 game about manipulating blocks with high-tech gloves, attracted comparisons to Portal, but while its puzzles were smart it lacked the personality of Valve's classic. In Q.U.B.E. 2, story and personality will be a major focus, as Austin found out when he spent some time with it earlier this year, and that comes across in the latest trailer, above.

The trailer also introduces what appears to be the game's antagonist force: an AI that sounds like it has bad intentions. "We know everything, Amelia," it rasps.

The world itself looks very pretty, with environments that are much more adventurous than the clinical white rooms of the first game. Austin noted that Amelia's animations are much sharper, too, which will help the game feel more alive.

Of course, it's the puzzles themselves that will make or break it. Early signs suggest they're interesting, but the challenge for developer Toxic Games is to keep coming up with new ideas throughout the 80-plus puzzles that the game offers.

Q.U.B.E. 2 is out on March 13.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.