Odysseus Kosmos and his Robot Quest – Review
Follow Genre: Point 'n Click puzzle adventure
Developer: Pavel Kostin
Publisher: HeroCraft
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC

Odysseus Kosmos and his Robot Quest – Review

Site Score
8.6
Good: Funny, nice pixel art, interesting story
Bad: Puzzles can be frustrating
User Score
9.3
(3 votes)
Click to vote
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 9.3/10 (3 votes cast)

Odysseus Kosmos and his Robot Quest is a challenging retro-style point ‘n click puzzle adventure which will be released in multiple episodes. Episode one has been released on December 1, 2017, and a demo episode which is also a nice introduction to the story can be played for free via Steam. Four more episodes are planned to complete the story of the game. Odysseus Kosmos and his Robot Quest has been developed by Pavel Kostin and is published by HeroCraft.

Odysseus Kosmos

Story

You are a space ship engineer named Odysseus Kosmos, and your task is to keep the ship and all its systems running while your crewmates are away. You have a robot assistant who will let you know what the status of the systems are, and will help you with tasks he can help with. As engineer you try to do as little work as possible, and you are a master at finding workarounds for several problems. While these workarounds work fine in the short term, sometimes it might cause a problem in the long term.

Your crew is down on a planet’s surface where the time is incredibly distorted. Minutes passing for them, could be years for you, so you are not sure when the crew will return and whether that will be in your lifetime. It’s just you and your robot Barton, trying to keep things functioning.

As you go around on the ship, doing your daily routine and fixing some minor things which needs fixing, you’ll get alerted by your robot that some irregularities have happened on the ship, like the loss of a giant antenna and some weird system errors. As you try to get to the depths of the malfunctions using your ingenuity, you do notice some weird damage in all affected systems… what could possibly have caused this?

Odysseus Kosmos screen 3

The story will be released in several chapters, and this review only covers the first one. This chapter sets the stage of the story, and ends with an interesting cliffhanger. There are four more episodes planned to complete the story of the game, each will be released about four months after the previous one. There’s also a demo, which is a short standalone episode and a good introduction of the characters and the story.

Odysseus Kosmos and his Robot Quest’s story is being told mostly through conversations and musings of the main character, and as you play you’ll learn more and more about what’s going on, but much is still left untold as well. You can read a lot about the background and setting by checking out the in-game computer consoles, which contains info about the ship, its crew and the star system you are in. It’s a fun and interesting way to tell a story.

Graphics

Graphically everything is presented in a really nice retro style pixel art. It’s colorful, very well executed, and fits with the theme of the game. The space background with a planet and black hole look gorgeous, and the ship’s rooms look really beautiful and detailed.

Odysseus Kosmos screen 2

The UI is very straightforward and handy to use. All items in your inventory are displayed in a scrollable bar at the right-hand side of the screen, and can be dragged when needed. You’ll quickly collect a lot of items! All interactable items on screen are identified whenever you click the space bar, so you can make sure you won’t overlook anything. Most items can be examined and used, but Barton the robot can also be talked with.

Sound

There’s constant background music in this game, a nice relaxing soundtrack which fits the whole Sci-Fi space theme. The dialogues are not narrated, but the characters have their own individual ‘babble’ sound whenever they speak. This gives an impression of their voice without the narration, and adds character.

Gameplay

Odysseus Kosmos and his Robot Quest is a classic point ‘n click puzzle adventure, where you have to collect a lot of items wherever you go, and combine them in ingenious ways to solve the problems you encounter. Often you’ll need to think creatively, and gather many clues from your environment to see how to solve something without the materials you’d normally use.

Odysseus Kosmos screen 1

The puzzles are rather tricky. Expect to use everything around you for parts to solve the puzzles, like a true engineer! That means whenever you are missing something, think about an object you’ve encountered which could contain that part. Usually all important parts are briefly mentioned in the description if you inspect an object, but it’s easy to miss if you’re not reading carefully. Try to improvise, using everything around you. The computer consoles are pretty important in the game to solve several puzzles, so you’ll navigate the menus to switch things on and off, and to unlock some functions.

Sometimes the hints for puzzles in the conversations are a bit vague, so you might have solved the problem already but are missing one tiny part and are unsure what it can be, or you are unable to combine things because you first have to place something on the right location before combining it. Luckily, there’s a hint button in-game, which gives you way more detailed hints about the next step you should solve in your current quest. These hints are really helpful, but if you’re really stuck, checking out a walkthrough or the game’s Facebook page (as hinted in-game even) can be handy. Most of the time when you read the solution, you’ll probably say to yourself: ‘But why didn’t I think of that?’ or ‘D’oh..’.

Odysseus Kosmos screen 4

There are several mini-games involved to complete tasks, which are often fun puzzles completed rather quickly if you think about them a bit. For example: you need to complete a circuit board, or fly a spacecraft to an object and match the rotation. These puzzles are a good way to add some variation in the gameplay.

Conclusion

Odysseus Kosmos and his Robot Quest is perfect for people who love challenging point ‘n click puzzle games. The beautiful retro pixel art fits the type of game, and hints at the beloved classics. The puzzles aren’t simple and often rather funny to solve in their improvised silly ways. The game has a lot of humor and the characters are fun and likable. The story is intriguing, and will make you curious about the other episodes!

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 9.3/10 (3 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)
Odysseus Kosmos and his Robot Quest - Review, 9.3 out of 10 based on 3 ratings
Anmaja


I'm a LARP writer, freelance teacher and everlasting PhD student, and an avid gamer. Nowadays I game mostly on PC, but I love my retro playstation 1 & 2 as well :) I like watching anime, movies and series, and read books & comics whenever I have time!

1 Comment

  1. […] news! The well-received Odysseus Kosmos, developed by HeroCraft,  has received an expansion – it costs $4.99/€4.99 […]

    VA:F [1.9.22_1171]
    0 people found this helpful
    Was this review helpful?
    Yes
    No

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.