Update One Hundred and Eighty-Two: 13 June 2018

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

I’ve played a broad range of point and clicks, and luckily Tales of Cosmos (not to be confused with the immensely popular Tales of JRPG series) falls more in the ‘good’ category. I could be biased, though - of course it’ll win my heart, I can play as an adorable little dog whose special ability is to bark really loud.

This delightful little game, made by a two sibling team, is closer to an Amanita Design game than something out of Wadjet Eye. There’s not a lot of dialogue - Perseus the dog is the only one who can communicate with other characters and the player, and she describes what other characters are saying. Your other character, the monkey Professor, is more handy and content to hit things and use items. Together, they fight crime find a way to fix their spaceship and fly out of this solar system.

It’s story light and mechanics light, but there’s six or seven worlds to explore and take your rocket between. One thing that works against this game is how slow travel can be. There’s a way to speed up spaceflight, but it takes a while to walk to places on each planet. You can get in your rocket and fly around to land in a different spot, but that was too clunky and cumbersome to save any real time. You have to fly from planet to planet and back again to do different puzzles, and just the GETTING to places takes up a lot of time. There’s no music, either, so it’s very…. silent.

There’s also a lot of literal moon logic in this game - if I wasn’t following a guide, I’d have NO idea how to do many of these puzzles. There’s one in particular that is a particular asspull - you have to make a lunar flower bloom by waiting for three planets to align over it. You can speed up the time you’re waiting by using your little time device. Then, when they open, you have to quickly scoop nectar out with a spoon. How in the good god damn would I have thought to do that? The game doesn’t give you very many hints.

I know most of what I had to say here is negatives, and maybe I just miss point n clicks and love this little dog, but what the hell, I liked it anyway. Give it a shot.

Next up: Let’s find some shit!

See you soon!