Most mobile games are built around the idea that the player has a somewhat limited amount of time to play. Due to this concept Apple’s App Store is loaded with simple puzzle games. Sometimes these are intriguing enough for a quick play once in a while throughout the day to fill your down time and sometimes they aren’t even worth your time to download. Cosmic One by oeFun, Inc. falls into the latter category.
The funny thing about Cosmic One is that its simplicity and ease of use is its biggest up-side and its biggest pitfall. The game is so simple that you can play it for a few minutes and have it mastered but it gets quite boring after a lengthy playtime. Here’s how it works, you have a catcher on the bottom left or right of your screen with three different shapes on it and a randomly selected shape falls in from the opposite side where you must match your catcher’s shape to the shape that is falling by spinning your catcher with your thumb. Remember as a child when you had wooden shapes of squares, circles and triangles and a board to hammer the pieces into so you could learn shapes? Cosmic One is exactly like that and about as entertaining too. The pieces can be sped up by tapping them as they are falling to earn more points, which is required in the earlier levels because the gameplay is so slow. As the pace picks up you are spinning your catcher quite rapidly to keep up but it doesn’t really create any more of an entertaining game. This is all you do for the entire game. The developer never deviates from this simple formula. Cosmic One has no twists, power-ups or basically anything to reward you for getting further in the game.
Don’t get me wrong, the presentation is done very well along with the sounds and music. Everything is fluid and works as it should. Cosmic One even includes online leaderboards unlike most cost efficient games in the App Store so you can keep track of your scores with people around the globe. They even have the ability to play left handed. I was bored enough with the game to try out the left side catcher even though I am right handed and it did create a greater challenge but the game still wasn’t fun to play no matter how much I wanted it to be.
Cosmic One is available at the App Store for $1.99 and at this price point it is not even close to being worthy of a purchase. I can’t even recommend the game as a $0.99 purchase. The idea is that simplicity is addictive for the mobile gamer but Cosmic One is just way too simple. Maybe oeFun, Inc. could add a few more shapes to the game to create more of a challenge to warrant a purchase but I am not even sure that could save it. Steer clear of this one at least until it becomes a free download at the App Store.
Overall: 4.5 out of 10
If it were free I’d consider a once around but yeah, doesn’t quite sound worth $2 even.