The Google maps team have been hard at work lately, releasing in late 2011 an interactive showcase of their newer maps features, including an updated mobile experience, 3D Streetview and even Indoor maps.
This campaign was quickly followed by a pair of videos showing off both a larger than life ball-in-maze style game, as well as a small gameplay video of the Google Cube game.
After a three month wait and lots of anticipation, Google’s promotional Cube game is complete and released, bringing with it all the quality and polish we have come to expect from any promotional Google product.
The premise of the game is quite quite simple: you guide your small blue ball from location to location over 8 levels within the 3D, cubic map, which itself has been styled with the iconic “Google Maps colors” that we have all come to know and love.
The gameplay itself is strictly 2D (with the exception of multiple ‘floors’ on the indoors level), a third dimension is also added as the cube itself tilts and pans, giving a much deeper 3D experience. The cube and levels are rendered in webgl with Three.js (No surprises there) and the physics and collisions are handled by the ever popular box2D. The beautiful background music which really completes the experience has been implemented with the html5 web audio API.
A quick glimpse at the source also hints a hidden easter egg: if you type in the Konami code (up up down down left right left right b a enter), and are on a mac-os, you can use the in-built accelerometers in your laptop, and really tilt yourself to victory!
Cube – A Google Maps project – put together by B-reel (@B_REEL)