Cube Life: Island Survival

Mojang's popular sandbox title Minecraft, which saw its first console outing on the Xbox 360 in 2012, was not officially announced for the Wii U until December 2015. Prior to this, Microsoft wholly acquired Mojang in September 2014, and at the time Minecraft was already either available or announced for most major platforms except Nintendo's. Following the acquisition, many gaming news outlets expressed skepticism that Minecraft would arrive on any Nintendo platform, let alone Wii U. However, later that same month, startup developer Nexis Games announced their own sandbox title UCraft for the Wii U.[3] According to Nintendo Life, UCraft is regarded as very similar in both graphical aesthetic and gameplay to Minecraft, and likely "could fulfil a key gap in the market on the Wii U."[3] Due to Nexis Games' poor track record, and following the sketchy development of UCraft,[4] other indie developers decided to follow suit and release their own iterations of Minecraft-inspired titles for Nintendo platforms. One of those developers was Cypronia.

Cypronia announced Cube Life: Island Survival in January 2015 with a release date later that year, promising that the "goal is [to] create the best block building open-world sandbox game for Nintendo platforms."[5] Cypronia emphasized they would continue to update the game throughout 2015 and beyond, improving the game based on consumer feedback via Miiverse, Facebook, Twitter and various online community forums, such as on their official website.[5] Cypronia was keen on distancing Cube Life: Island Survival from being defined as a Minecraft clone.[5]

In May 2015, Cypronia announced the game would be available in both North America and Europe the following month. Cypronia CEO Stefan Pavelka was confident that their title has a lot to offer, claiming, "If we compare the game to competitors, other Wii U games of that genre, we will offer much more fun and greater value, either by means of lower price or by providing more content and features."[6] The game had a promotional discount during launch period.[7][8]

In April 2018, the game was released on Steam for Windows.[9] On 27 June 2018, the game was also made available for MacOS.[10]

In January 2019, the game was also released on Android and iOS for their primary app stores Google Play and Apple App Store.

In version 1.1, local multiplayer mode was added.[11] Version 1.2 made it possible to share maps from Creative Mode with other players and also added new areas, animals, pets and bosses and a smarter AI for the cannibals.[12] In addition, the world was enlarged from 2,880 x 2,880 to 3,520 x 3,520 blocks.[12] With version 1.3, a skin editor and a sorting by friends in the internet ranking list was added.[13]

With Cube Life: Island Survival becoming very popular on the Wii U, Cypronia announced Cube Life: Island Survival HD, which they described as a special edition of the original game. Though the original game did run in full 1080p HD, the remaster would be in 4K (except for the Nintendo Switch version). On April 20, 2018 at 17:57:05 UTC, Cube Life: Island Survival HD made its way into the Steam store under the same name as the original game.[14] On August 8, 2018 the game was ported to Android and iOS.[15] The game was scheduled to be released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2019,[16][17][18] although it was not released on that date. It was released on December 26, 2020 on Nintendo Switch via the Nintendo eShop.[19]