The Norwood Suite

Play Off Peak and Tales from Off Peak. This one is seriously bugged and not worth buying until it is fixed. It's got great visuals and music as always, but it's unplayable, and I've got a pretty good machine. You have to run it in 32 bit mode in order to get it to start, and then it crashes within 10 minutes. When I reload the game, it didn't save and pops me back at the beginning. Really hoping they fix this!

Might be a good game, but the experience has been heavily marred by how buggy it is. The base version of the game doesn't even launch, requiring a beta branch to even get in. I had a crash to desktop just over an hour into my playthrough which lost a huge chunk of progress, which is further exacerbated by only being able to save on a quit rather than freely. If I could either save on a whim and not restart the game, or the game launching sequence didn't take so long, then I could save more frequently and not be as affected on a crash. Or, you know, the crashing itself could just be fixed. After crashing, every time I try to redeem the coupon for my room, the people at the front desk don't progress their dialogue to hand me my room key. Some other miscellaneous issues that have cropped up:[list] [*]People's heads disappearing, but their eyes and teeth remaining [*]The dialogue for a specific person won't render, but everyone else's will [/list] Hopefully this gets fixed at some point, but I doubt it given the game's age. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

A small indie game witha great story that allows you to piece together the narrative as it unfolds. I was a bit put off when I installed it and ran into issues as it crashed at launch time. A few months later, I revisited and looked up on solving the problem. Though it did launch, it still crashed mid game and the only way to fix that was to turn off my Internet connection! Anyways, I liked the way music was used for dialogue instead of actual speech and how characters respond to you when prompted. The player character doesn't respond but it wasn't breaking the experience. You will not complete some of the objectives as described, but that is part of the gameplay and it is fine. There's exploration (though slow) and revelations from conversations between the NPCs. This appears to be a continuation to the game "Off Peak" by the same developer (though I haven't played it yet). There are hints laid out throughout the game and you can miss them if you don't pay enough attention. - 8/10

The zenith between Cosmo D's Unity learning phase and his selling out to...whatever. TNS is inspired eccentricity, with a passion for food, experimental music and quirky characters. Followed by the almost-equally fun "Tales From Off-Peak City Vol. 1", then the disappointing fall. He should have made "Tales From Off-Peak City Vol. 2".

probably the weakest of all the Cosmo D games but still surreal and fantastic nonetheless

Cultural heritage