Cube Escape dodges the end of the Flash era with a new collection on Steam

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Cube Escape is a collection of small, bizarre point-and-click puzzle adventures, heavily inspired by the Twin Peaks television series, that very loosely follows detective Dale Vandermeer as he investigates a woman's murder. The first game in the series, Cube Escape: The Lake, debuted in 2015, and it and most of the others are Flash-based games, which is going to become a problem at the end of the year when Adobe and browser developers drop Flash support.

With that deadline looming, developer Rusty Lake has put the first nine games of the series together on Steam as the Cube Escape Collection, "updated, preserved, and bundled to survive the end of the Flash Games era." There's no new content, and the gameplay, graphics, and unsettling ambient audio are all unchanged, but the Steam versions support achievements, cloud saves, a new hint system, and translations.

I'm a big fan of the Cube Escape and Rusty Lake games. They're weird as hell and I can't honestly claim to understand them, but there's something oddly compelling in their simplistic presentations and the constant undercurrent of horror that's present throughout. It's a bit like the creepy opening act of a movie that never ends: You know that something's not quite right, but for good or bad you never get the release of finding out what. It's great.

The Cube Escape Collection is 30 percent off its regular $5 price on Steam until October 21, and the rest of the Rusty Lake games are on sale as well. If you'd like to know more about the games before you jump in (and to be honest, I don't blame you), you can still access the free versions of each through the Rusty Lake Wiki.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.