Review: Cosmonautica Is A Quirky Space Trader Full Of Character

Quirky and charming, Cosmonautica delivers strongly on space-trading and combat with a sense of humour and a lot of character.

• Name: Cosmonautica
• Genre: Space-trading Sim
• Players: Single
• Multiplayer: No
• Platforms: PC
• Developer: Chasing Carrots
• Publisher: Chasing Carrots
• Price: $14.99
• Reviewed On: PC

The robot policeman asks me if I have anything to declare. Well, underneath the 15 tonnes of medicine I’m hauling, I have a stowaway, 29 tonnes of illegally smuggled whiskey, some secrets I liberated from a space pirate, and a hacker desperately trying to hide the lot as flowers, chocolates and bottled water. A tense few seconds pass as he scans my cargo and then sends me on through to untold space credits before my AI parrot loses her marbles again. Hopefully my crew doesn’t get into a row this time and incur either damages or extreme hangovers.

Cosmonautica is a pretty standard space trading simulator with a lot of character. You start with a pile of junk space ship, little more than a toilet, a vending machine, and a place to sleep, and set off to make your millions buying and selling computers, artificial DNA, games, and narcotics (among many, many others), fighting pirates on the outer rim, ferrying passengers, and generally working your way up from peanut captain to the commander of a great warship or trading galleon of the stars.

Where Cosmonautica, the debut of Chasing Carrots, excels is this mix of innuendo, vibrant visuals, electronic music, and irrepressible fun. Everything has conspired to present a wonderful retro-future, with great billboards like something from an 80’s sci-fi, and a score to match powered by electronic beats to carry you from planet to planet for interstellar misadventures. All of this complements the game’s focus on light-hearted humour, often playing on the risque nature of the space-smuggling business as you walk the fine line between legal trader and the dashing space rogue Star Wars and Firefly have made you want to be. Hire a mix of Pastafarians, Atheists, humans, aliens, fans of xenobiology or zero-gravity painting, stick them in a wallowing hulk called a Sealort, and ferry gamers from convention to convention to pay the bills on your newly-installed electro-disco.

The game has two styles of play, a campaign focusing on learning about the identity of your slightly unstable AI parrot N1L, taking place in a relatively linear manner, and a proceedurally generated sandbox mode for those who just want to sell whiskey to the mining colonies of distant suns. This can give a lot of replay value, especially for fans of the pure space-trading simulator, which is what Cosmonautica does so well. The game does well to make you work at being a good trader. Flooding the market means you get fewer purchases next time you swing by with a crate full of books and art. Missions for specific kinds of goods are another great way to break up the back-and-forward between systems, as is the idea that certain systems supply specific kinds of goods, encouraging more exploration and research to widen your pool of markets and goods to supply.

To add more to the game, you can also try your hand at illegal smuggling of goods, outright combat with pirates on the outer rim, bounty-hunting work, and passenger ferrying missions. These help pass the time in the sections of the campaign where your movement is limited (more on that later). However, these sections could do with a little more fleshing out. The smuggling is fun the first few times, when you have a fear of getting caught. But as long as your hacker is good and you’ve got some camouflage researched on your holds, the threat is minor, and the payoff isn’t all that much more than selling the goods legally.

The combat, too, has its strengths and weaknesses. Depending on your choice of ship, you can have various combinations of turrets, torpedoes, and cannons. The three systems feel a little unbalanced, with torpedoes being horrendously powerful and only requiring you to get close before unloading hell, while the cannons are a little sluggish and not very effective. Some of the abilities and buttons are also not really explained – especially the mysterious button next to your flight pattern, which (the forums tell me) increases your evasion (sometimes?). All said, though, the combat does feel fun, and the ability to haggle and negotiate a peace between yourself and the pirates is a great addition – especially the fact that they will also attempt to negotiate if they’re being whipped. That said, sometimes their offers are a little nonsensical – offering less sometimes when they’re about to be turned into space dust.

Finally the story, which is a big part of the game’s charm. You meet a gallery of charming rogues and ruffians, sharing in escapades and getting introduced to the game’s features incrementally to prevent too much overload. However, sometimes the story gets in the way of itself, locking you down in a specific system for narrative reasons when all you as a player want to do is to roam the great celestial ocean looking for new ports to call into. In these moments the game can drag its feet unless you focus solely on the story missions, rather than trying to continue your capitalist spree of money making.

All told, what sticks out is that Cosmonautica does what it does with a lot of heart and fun. It isn’t perfect, though: I ran into a few bugs here and there, and the game isn’t all that challenging under the surface, once you’ve figured your way around the various bits and pieces. It looks like the developers have plans to expand in future updates, which could add more depth and gameplay options to entice more players, but this is a satisfyingly fun experience for fans of the genre looking to burn hours working to make the ultimate space trading ship.

Name: Brendan Ward
Location: Grahamstown
Position: Columnist

Brendan has published 69 posts. Read all of Brendan's posts.

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