Cubos Engine - Meta

The First Cubos Jam

2025-10-21T17:00:00+01:00

From September 12th to September 21st, 2025, the first game jam focused on the Cubos Engine took place, with the theme "Retro". This was a major milestone for the Cubos team, which we had been planning for a long time. The idea behind it was to see how people would use the engine to create games, and to gather feedback on the engine and its tools.

The engine is still, of course, very hard to use, due to the lack of a proper editor and a scripting language. Participants had to code their games in C++, which is, as usual, not the most user friendly language. Even so, we still were able to attract 13 participants, which is a great start for a first-time event. Four of the five teams were able to submit a game by the end of the event, which you can check out on the Cubos Jam page.

Restrospective Penguin

Rider or Block

Space Runner

Sushi Chef Shuffle

The jam itself was remote, with an in-person opening and closing event. At the opening event, we held a quick workshop to help participants get started with the engine. At the closing event, we had a small ceremony to showcase the games made during the jam.

The workshop guided the participants through the process of installing the engine and compiling a template project we provided. This required setting up CMake and a C++ compiler (Visual Studio on Windows). Installing the engine and compiling the project itself wasn't a very smooth experience. In the future we plan to improve this process by providing pre-compiled binaries and installers for the engine, as well as better setup documentation.

Cubos Jam workshop, at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon.

After the jam we gathered a lot of useful feedback from the participants. Overall, they saw the potential of the engine, but also highlighted many areas that need improvement. Namely:

Tooling: the engine is still very hard to use for non-programmers, particularly artists, due to the lack of an editor and proper asset management tools.
Documentation: although the features are extensively documented, there are few examples and guides, which makes it hard for new users to get started.
Scripting: integrating a language such as Lua (which is happening right now) would greatly reduce the barrier to entry for new users.
Physics: add capsule shape collisions, and expose a nicer interface for handling multiple types of bodies.

We plan to hold more jams in the future, after improving the engine and its tools. We hope the experience will become more accessible and enjoyable for future participants.

Cubos Jam closing event, at the Gaming Hub, Lisbon.

A New Brand Identity

2024-09-09T17:00:00+01:00

Cubos had grown out of its cocoon and needed new wings to fly out of its embryonic phase. The new visual identity aimed at providing a more cohesive and professional look to an increasingly defined and completed game engine. A new logo was designed, alongside a set of visual rules and principals that form Cubos new identity.

The process started with the logo. The team wished to keep the 3D aspect of the former logo, but with a more slick and modern twist. Furthermore, as the project was aimed at a software (a game engine), an icon was necessary for the application, the branding the launch screen, etc. A stylized wordmark, like the previous version, was insufficient. So we set to design the icon. At first, the design followed a more intellectual and less literal approach, adapting an isometric view with 3 sides to establish a deconstructed view of a Cube. The concept of this design was to incorporate the movement and change in the symbol, while representing the assembly purpose of a game engine. In this case, the assembly of a cube, with is faces at the moment they are sliding into place.

First design - horizontal layout

First design - vertical layout

The team received this design with mixed feelings. The logo had little of the 3D aspect that made their previous logo and that also constitutes the main selling point of the engine - voxel base game engine. Therefore, we jumped to a second design, that retained the original while representing a shape made of literal isometric cubes. The final shape was a 3-armed spiral, inspired by the Keltic symbol the Trisquel, without copying the Trisquel GNU/Linux software.

Second design - horizontal layout

Second design - vertical layout

Unfortunately, to some members of the team, the new icon reminded them of some unpleasant symbol. Consequently, we're back to square one. A brainstorming session ensued. Various shapes were tested and debated, but the icons kept getting too complex and unrecognizable.

Logo brainstorming

Eventually, we arrived at an icon that was composed of cubes, that did not bring any bad connotations and that was relatively simple and memorable. As it can be seen in the experiment above, the spiral/movement idea was forsaken in favor of a greater emphasis in the assembly aspect. Three cubes merged to form something more complex, suggesting ideas of union and strength.

Final design - horizontal layout

Final design - vertical layout

Parallel to the icon design process was the font selection. The goals we set at the start were that the font had to transmit a feel of modernity and a certain degree of formality, since those were the goals of this redesign, while conveying the slickness and dynamism of an innovative product. Other concerns that were considered were the versatility and rights of the chosen font. To address this last point, we opted for google fonts library, a largely integrated and open-source collection of great fonts, that complements the open-source aspect of the project. The fonts selected were Russo One for the logo mark and displays/headers, and Roboto font family for text body. Russo One conveys energy and strength while maintaining a dynamic feel to it, while Roboto is a well-established in the space of tech and innovation.

About the logo's colors, it can be observed that these remained virtually unchanged thought out the design process. The contrast of neutral colors with a cyan blue, that aim to represent knowledge and innovation, was well received. Additional colors were added to the pallet for software and marketing purposes. Speaking of which, a Brand Guidelines Document was enacted to specify how the brand and marketing material should be designed and to which principles it should adhere.

Hello World

2023-11-10T10:06:00+00:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to the very first post of the Cubos engine blog. This is where we'll be posting updates and information about Cubos Let's start today by talking about what Cubos is!

Cubos is an open-source game engine with two core features: everything is made out of voxels, and the engine is built on an entity component system. You can find the source right here. Up to this point, our work has built a powerful core and an array of plugins that give Cubos a lot of the necessary functionalities to make a complete game. We have also been working on a suite of tools called Tesseratos that you can plug into any game you're making with Cubos to help with development. It provides, among other things, editors for scenes, entities, palette.

So, what are we working on?

Right now, our current goal is to have an engine that can feasibly be used in game jams. This means building some important engine plugins that we are missing, such as the physics plugin, and to create more tools to allow swift development, like a transform gizmo so you can move objects around with your mouse.

Thank you for your interest in our engine. Come with us, as we keep you updated on the developments, adventures and trials Cubos goes through.

See you soon!