A puzzle I've been carrying in my head for 20 years

[imccolm]

Hello all,

I've just released a free iOS puzzle app called Qubixer that I've been wanting to make for over twenty years.

The concept is the classic 15-puzzle taken into three dimensions. Real 3D models — a Balinese mask, a steampunk hat, an animated phoenix, a deep-sea fish, a playing card — are sliced into cube segments, shuffled, and you slide the pieces back into place to reassemble the model. The card is gentle (a 2×3 grid, ideal for warming up). The harder models will properly test your spatial reasoning — I built them and I still have to think hard to solve them.

I'm not a trained programmer. I first had this idea around 2003 and made a much simpler 2D prototype back then, but the 3D version was beyond me at the time. I rebuilt it from scratch this year as a passion project — no ads, no in-app purchases, no monetisation of any kind. It exists because I wanted it to exist.

I'd genuinely value the eyes of this community in particular. You're the people who will find the hard models hard for the right reasons, and your feedback would mean a great deal.

App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/app/qubixer/id6761525783

Happy to answer any questions about the design, the mechanics, or the long-running story behind it.

Kindest regards,

Ian