Cosmo Tales is a funky, colorful space shooter with a strong foundation, but its thin Early Access content and repetitive combat make it difficult to recommend right now
I never expected Bohemia Interactive to make a game like Cosmo Tales. This is a bright, bubbly space shooter where retro 1970s-style cars fly through asteroid fields, fire lasers at angry robots, and chat along the way. It is strange, playful, and most importantly, it works from the moment you pick up the controller.
The setup is light and family-friendly. You pilot a talking space car through compact sci-fi landscapes, clearing groups of robots with blasters, lasers, grenade launchers, and other weapons. At a glance it resembles a much more playful take on Everspace, but Cosmo Tales is smaller, simpler, and far more interested in accessible arcade action than demanding dogfights.
Its roguelite structure is also quite limited. During a run, you choose upgrades that remain active until that run ends. These include automatic lasers or rockets, extra damage, and passive effects that let the main weapon burn or electrify enemies. The upgrades are fun to collect, but the current pool is straightforward and does not offer much meaningful build crafting.
The bigger problem is that the stages themselves are fixed. There is no procedural level generation or rotating mission structure. Each attempt sends you through the same small environments with the same objectives, and the Early Access version currently has only three levels and three cars. Replaying a stage may let you chase a better result or try different upgrades, but it does not meaningfully change what you are doing.
That puts a lot of pressure on the combat, which starts out fun and gets old surprisingly quickly. Most encounters involve strafing left or right while holding the trigger, with an occasional dash to avoid a projectile. Enemy designs rarely force a different approach, and the upgrades do not transform the basic rhythm. A stronger roguelite shooter such as Deadlink uses weapons, abilities, and enemy combinations to make builds affect how you move and fight. Cosmo Tales does not have that depth yet.
The signature dimension-swapping mechanic should add some strategy. You can enter an armored dimension to absorb more damage or a rush dimension to fire, fly, and dash faster. It is a cool idea, and switching between defensive and offensive bonuses could have given battles a satisfying flow.
Unfortunately, both powered-up dimensions mute the game's colors and audio. The vibrant environments become bleak, while the excellent retro music and lively soundscape fade into the background. Since there is little reason to stay in the standard dimension when the alternatives provide clear buffs, the game effectively encourages you to undermine its own presentation. It is a baffling design choice.
That is especially frustrating because Cosmo Tales looks wonderful. The rounded car designs, saturated colors, chunky robots, and small but gorgeous space landscapes give it the appearance of a lost retro-futuristic cartoon. The music completes that identity. Removing so much color and sound during the modes I used most often makes no sense, and I would rather see the effect reduced or removed entirely.
Performance on the ROG Xbox Ally X is playable but inconsistent. The game generally hovered between 40 and 50fps straight out the box with default settings, which felt fine during quieter fights. When more enemies, fire effects, and bullets filled the screen, it hitched noticeably. Every dimension switch also caused a significant performance drop while the transition animation played. More optimization could improve things, but right now the demanding moments are exactly where the frame rate feels least reliable.
Cosmo Tales has an appealing foundation. It controls well, the shooting is immediately enjoyable, and its art direction is fantastic. I can easily imagine future updates adding more stages, cars, enemies, upgrades, and genuinely different build paths until the whole thing becomes an easy recommendation.
As it stands, there simply is not enough variety to support repeated runs. The same stages and objectives lose their charm quickly, combat asks too little from the player, and the dimension mechanic dulls the presentation instead of enhancing it. There is fun here, particularly for younger players or anyone after a light arcade shooter, but waiting for more content and optimization is the smarter move. Thanks for reading!
