Cosmonautica Review

Developer: Chasing Carrots
Price: $6.99
Version Reviewed: 1.1
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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Overall Rating:

Cosmonautica is a very nearly great game. I’ve no doubt it’s great on the PC. On the iPhone though, it doesn’t entirely work. A little too much like a direct port of the PC version, it’s going to require some patience.

The idea behind Cosmonautica is that you’re a space captain, managing a crew, and attempting to run a successful operation. Flexibility is huge with plenty of missions to partake in, as well as a campaign to follow. Ultimately, it’s all about earning money so you can reinvest into your spaceship and so forth.

In that respect, Cosmonautica is great. It’s full of humor and variety, and you can easily sink a ton of hours into it. You’ll soon find yourself role-playing, leaning towards preferring certain crew members or deciding to take a more pacifist route through trading frequently rather than fighting.

It all sounds great, right? Nearly. Cosmonautica isn’t geared towards mobile play. Its tutorial is wordy and a little vague at times, meaning it’s far from pick up and play. As you travel between planets, you have to sit back and wait to get there. You can speed things up a bit, but it’s still kind of slow for those wanting to accomplish something in a 5-10 minute burst of gaming. Worst of all, Cosmonautica’s UI hasn’t been optimized for mobile, meaning it’s quite awkward to tap on things at times.

I can see this being less of an issue on the iPad - the same being true of the time constraints - but it’s going to be off-putting for the average phone based player. While many will be able to find time to overcome that learning curve, that awkward UI is never going to improve. You’re always going to feel a little overlooked compared to if you were playing on a PC.