GoCube – a smart Rubik’s cube that teaches you
Something I should have been good at as a child was Rubik’s cubes. I was not. I didn’t discover until years later that part of the reason these were so flipping hard for me was I was colorblind and as such I never really discovered naturally how to transition pieces into the right places as I’d end up discovering I had red and orange mixed up, or yellow and orange, or yellow and green.
I disassembled my couple of cubes many times to put them back because I usually could never get them back using my own skills. As a low-rate colorblind cube user I never really learned anything from it.
Many many years later and knowing I’m colorblind, I know if I want to play with a Rubik’s cube style toy I’m looking at sitting under very good lighting, and my adult brain never developed the neuro pathways that told me this, that, this and spin and you’re there. That’s OK though as they’ve got some really great tutorials that walk you through where you cube is currently, and how you go about solving each particular style of transition.
More than that if you’re just wanting to play with a cube, or know how to solve it from where you’re at, you can get straight instructions on what to turn to reset things to normal. Don’t want the connected part or just want to play with a cube? Don’t use the app.
The instructional videos combine with where you’re currently at in the real cube world, and if you mess up it can walk you through returning the cube to the proper position for the lesson. As I’ve messed up a lot I’ve become quite familiar with returning the cube to a learning position.
The academy is supposedly a one hour class. Being colorblind may increase this for some (did me.) I confess I’m over an hour in at the moment and need to repeat a class because I made the mistake of trying to do this in an un-lit area and my orange and red game were not on par.
Oh, what’s really cool about the connected side is the cube and what’s on your screen match. You rotate the cube slightly to the left in the real world, it rotates to the left on the screen. Throw it into the air and it lands in your hand green side down, white pointing at you? Same on the screen.
The GoCube comes with a carrying bag, a stand charger (if you want it,) and a proprietary easy-plug in cable. I don’t know what the battery life is on this thing, they list 60+ hours of play time but I don’t know if that’s a charge or the expected amount of time the average person will actually play with the thing their entire use of it.
The only thing with this I have not been blown away by was the stand. I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong or what but it doesn’t like charging consistently when it’s in there.
Anyway, I don’t know if I’ve expressed this well, but this little GoCube brings me glee as a non-kid that I can learn what I couldn’t back when I had time to learn on my own, and although I’m still not particularly good at it I can solve and start over without the need to disassemble the cube.
You can grab a GoCube on Amazon.
