96 percent positive Steam reviews and over 10,000 active players: Why does Cosmoteer captivate so many space fans? The test will tell you.
Who wouldn”t want to be a Jedi Knight? Ridding the galaxy of evil, using cool Force abilities, making your displeasure known over sand – everyday life is never boring. But less turbulent professions also have their appeal: in the new Early Access game Cosmoteer you also traverse the galaxy, grow your own spaceships and eventually command an entire fleet.
Sounds exciting? At least that”s what thousands of players on Steam think, who have given the title extremely positive reviews. In this Early Access test, you”ll find out what the game from developer Walternate Realities already does well – and where there”s still room for improvement.
Table of Contents
Space: infinite lengths and widths
In Cosmoteer: Starship Architect & Commander, the name says it all. But before you take control of your own flying machine, you must first decide between the two game modes “Career” and “Creative”. In the latter, you have access to an infinite number of building materials, as is familiar from many other genre representatives.
You only build your own space cruiser on a two-dimensional plane. During the construction, beds are indispensable, which offer space for your crew members, who in turn man stations and supply them with energy. Beds should be placed as centrally as possible so that walking distances are not too long. Whether the beds are close enough or too far away is indicated by the game”s colour.
Apart from that, you should add a cockpit, a reactor and engines in every direction – and you can basically start flying. Of course, a real spaceship is not complete without a few weapons, which are available in numerous variations: From a normal laser to a rocket launcher to a railgun, everything is there.
Shield generators are also useful, but they only cover a small area. So if you want complete protection, you have to plan and fiddle very carefully. In creative mode this can be done quite easily, but in career mode it is considerably more difficult.
Making a Career in Space
Let”s take a look at the career. Before you start the game, you choose one of three pre-built ships. We recommend the Model-S, as it has a built-in shield generator. As soon as you arrive in a star system, you should first visit one of the space stations, as these are the lynchpin of the game. Here you not only take on missions, but also replenish your crew and buy items.
Missions consist, for example, of eliminating a certain spaceship or delivering a shipment to another station. So in theory there is some variety, but more different mission types would benefit the game experience.
For example, if you accept a bounty hunt, you must fly to the location within the star system. Your ship has a certain range of vision, which you can use to gradually uncover the “fog of war”. Question marks will also be displayed in your immediate vicinity, which can hide hyperspace barks (more on this later) or target areas for bounties, for example.
FTL as inspiration
The battles are quite simple: As soon as an enemy ship is within your field of vision, you can attack it and target individual systems such as guns or reactors – very cool! Theoretically, you can still manoeuvre your ship during the battles, but in our experience this only reduces your chances. Accordingly, the enemy ships usually only attack each other head-on, whereby a winner quickly emerges. This is where the game still lacks some tactical depth.
The 2D perspective and the targeted elimination of individual subsystems are of course strongly reminiscent of the genre classic FTL: Faster Than Light. However, where the latter relied on roguelike mechanics, Cosmoteer allows you to save and load freely at any time and to set your difficulty level precisely. On the easiest level, for example, you suffer no damage from attackers. This makes the game ideal for genre beginners, and the many hints and codex entries are also very useful.
Growing spaceships
But back to the battles: If an enemy ship is damaged badly enough, you can dismantle it, which will give you new materials that you can use to repair damaged sections or buy new weapons, shield generators and so on. So you keep upgrading your ships.
Due to the limited resources, you will have to think a lot and make some visually unattractive compromises. But watching the spaceships grow is a lot of fun and is also the core aspect of the game.
In addition to cannibalising the ships, it is also possible to annex enemy space ships to your fleet and control them yourself. This makes Cosmoteer almost a real real-time strategy game. Great!
Ad astra
Flying through a star system takes a while, so you should take advantage of the up to eightfold time acceleration. The hyperdrive is even more comfortable, but its use consumes the expensive resource hyperium. With faster-than-light speed, you can either jump to a certain bar within your system or explore completely new areas of the galaxy.
Unfortunately, the various star systems are all very similar in structure and lack individuality. Controllable planets and a few – pardon the bad pun – cosmo animals would do the atmosphere a world of good.
Multiplayer and plans for the future
Also worth mentioning is the multiplayer mode: Here, in theory, you can choose between five game modes, including Battle Royale battles. In practice, however, almost only the co-op career is played – quite understandably, after all, this is the best part of the game.
The developer studio has already published a (Roadmap) which talks about more variance in the missions, a more diverse environment and more complex battles, among other things. This addresses exactly the points of criticism that we currently still have about the game. If Walternate Realities does a good job here, Cosmoteer could turn out to be a really good sandbox space game.
If you don”t want to wait that long for new mods, you should take a look at ( the Steam Workshop). There are currently over 500 mods for Cosmoteer available for download. Speaking of Steam: In addition to the full version for 20 euros, you can also (download a demo). Interested space explorers do not have to take a hyper leap into the blue.
Preliminary evaluation box
Cosmoteer is one of those games that, when looked at soberly, I can completely understand why it excites so many people. During my testing phase, however, it never really clicked with me personally. What I find most regrettable is that the game doesn”t tell any stories. By that I don”t necessarily mean a story worked out in detail in the classical sense. No, even the kind of story that naturally results from the game”s mechanics didn”t click with me. On top of that, I always find it a bit of a pity when I”m only allowed to build in two dimensions – especially in space, which is probably the most three-dimensional of all settings.
But if I leave my personal taste aside a little, Cosmoteer can score points with many game modes – especially in multiplayer – as well as a motivating core game mechanic. Technically, everything runs smoothly, and the German translation is a nice bonus. If the developers now manage to bring a little more variety and depth into the individual game systems, then I”d be happy to give an unqualified buy recommendation for genre fans. As a potential buyer, however, I would first watch a bit to see how well the Early Access phase goes.
