Developer: Michael Hall
Publisher: Black Shell Media
Platforms: PC
Tested On: PC
Cosmic Leap – Review
After a successful Steam Greenlight campaign, Michael Hall’s Cosmic Leap has made it onto Steam. Cosmic Leap is an indie action game with platforming elements, where the goal of the game is to time your jumps from planet to planet while avoiding obstacles and getting back safely to your rocket ship. Test your skills, agility and patience in over 100 levels.
Story
According to the story, Cosmic Leap seems to be a TV show created to please the Emperor. Every year the show airs with new contestants randomly picked from a sector and this time sector 22 gets to play, willingly or not. Surprise, but you also come from sector 22, and you get dropped in levels and have to get to your rocketship in order to win. If you do good enough, you might be able to catch a glimpse of your Emperor.
The story in Cosmic Leap is pretty small but it provides a bit of a setting as to what you’re doing. It isn’t a long, compelling or fancy story at all but it’s something, and it’s quite funny as well with some Easter Eggs here and there.
Graphics
Cosmic Leap’s graphics are quite pleasant to look at. They aren’t the top notch AAA-game graphics a lot of people are used to, but it looks pretty retro with a lot of the props made out of blocks. To get an extra retro effect and since Cosmic Leap is in essence a TV show, a TV filter can be turned on which makes it look like an old CRT monitor. The graphic effects and background look a little bit more modern, but it provides a nice contrast between the actual world and the miscellaneous things.
Sound
Sound wise, Cosmic Leap is pretty subtle and doesn’t go over the top with its music and sound effects. The music is mostly ambient and doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the speed or intensity of the gameplay. The sound effects are pretty okay but they’re nothing too amazing. Also, in the options the music will be at 30% volume by default, which is kind of pleasant since you can make it louder if you want it to be more intense.
Gameplay
At its core, Cosmic Leap is an indie action game with platforming elements. It might remind some people vaguely of Super Meat Boy since you have to complete the levels as fast as possible in order as well as completing other objectives in order to get the highest ranking possible.
The game itself is pretty easy to play but extremely hard to master, especially since the controls are extremely awful. It’s played by simply running and jumping in between planets, where you go to the next planet where the gravity is the strongest. Your character keeps running in one direction but it can be stopped and turned around. However, the turning seems to be very unpredictable at times and is extremely annoying when trying to do the speed run portion of the level. It seems that left/right go with the orientation of the character on the planet it’s on, but it can be extremely confusing and frustrating in certain positions.
Every level has the same two objectives, one is to go as fast as possible and beat the target time, and the other one is to collect all 5 coins in the level and then finish. The levels are finished by going to your rocket ship that is located somewhere in the level. Both objectives don’t have to be completed in one run however, you can first collect all coins and then go to the level again and beat the target time and vice versa.
Once a level has been completed within the target time and all coins have been collected, an A will be awarded for that level. When an A is awarded, a harder version of the level, the “Comsic” version of the level will unlock which features extra challenge and contributes to the completion percent of the game. In total, there are ten worlds each with ten levels, five normal ones and five hard ones. Once all levels have been beaten on normal, an epilogue can be played. However, this epilogue will depend on how much of the game you completed, but you can always go back, complete more levels and play the epilogue again to see how it plays out next time.
Apart from completing levels as best as you can, some cosmetic items can also be unlocked. In some levels, a random space ship will fly by one of the planets. If you get to the space ship in time and hop on, you’ll unlock a character or space ship skin, which can look pretty neat.
Conclusion
All in all, Cosmic Leap is a very enjoyable game from start to finish. It features challenge, humor, Easter Eggs, more challenge but sometimes even frustration. The game has plenty of levels to keep you going and keeps adding new gameplay elements to keep things interesting. Considering the price of the game, it’s definitely a good pickup since you’ll be playing for a couple of hours in order to complete everything. Hopefully though, the controls will be addressed in a patch somewhere.
Cosmic Leap - Review,
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