Wednesday 11 February 2015

Cosmochoria - A Quick Review About Terraforming in the Nude

What is Cosmochoria? According to the developer:
Cosmochoria is a love letter to old-school action / arcade games like Asteroids, Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. Cosmochoria is a mesmerizing way to kill hours: hopping between planets, unravelling forgotten mysteries, killing aliens and planting seeds to sprout new life across a long-barren galaxy.
I would personally like to add that Cosmochoria reminded me of the psychedelic Jeff Minter game Llamatron that everyone I knew loved (but obviously which I don’t and yet had spent hours playing it!?).

Ahem, personal nostalgic moments aside, lets get back to my take on the Steam Early Access version of Cosmochoria. Early Access would mean that the game is still in development but good enough to be played. In other words, it’s the beta or whatever version.

Under normal circumstances, I would not have purchased this but it must be the lure of terraforming (I'm still desperately searching for a good modern day God game) and what more, doing that in the nude in space except for a helmet!!!

Ahem, ahem. Anyways, in Cosmochoria, you hop from planet to planet but because your size is not proportional, it's like you are actually hoping from rocks to rocks... which makes it look rather appealing. You will need to plant seeds and nurse them to grow while at the same time fight off aliens that appear out of no where (I assume wormholes). There are boss battles, too after every few planets you save. Well ok, I apologise for the long winded narration when the whole game could be described in a paragraph. :D

Graphically this game is simple but at the same time rather appealing. 3/5

The gameplay can be a little slow at the start but will become frantic in no time. So provided this is your cup of tea, I'd rate it a 3/5. Would be higher if not for the very difficult boss battles (difficult for me, at least!).

There's basically no story there yet but probably things might come together better when the game is fully polished. I'd also like to see the save game feature return soon. Otherwise, I'd call this an above average game that's unique in its own way. 3/5



Update: Cosmochoria will be out of Early Access come Monday, 27 April 2015 and become a full game.

No comments: