Cosmic Top Secret

I enjoyed this game thoroughly, the weird presentation, aesthetic, simple but engaging gameplay and the fact I don't know if this was all real, lore, troll or a History Channel documentary makes it all even better. Also it has a heartwarming ending.

A little expensive ($16.95AUD) for what it offers- but as an experimental multimedia experience about some lesser-known tales of the cold war, I'd say this is worth checking out if that's your kinda thing.

Cosmic top secret is quite a peculiar game. It has a very unique art-style where landscapes and characters are made of carboard, paper and photography cuts. The game is a mix of documentary and collecthaton with some puzzle elements. It tells a very personal story recollected by T, the game dev director and player in the game, whose parents used to work for the Danish Intelligence during the cold war. The game felt like an homage of T to her aging parents while showing how "growing up in the clandestine climate of the cold war" affected her. This is a Danish game and most of the voiceovers are original audio and video interview recordings, so the game is mostly in Danish with English subtitles. I found the game very well done. It talks about serious topics but presents them with a light and amusing way that incite us to keep playing and discover more. We will learn things about various subjects such as cryptography and the first Danish computer. The game also has some mini-games such as grenade throwing or piloting a paper plane. The gameplay consists mostly of walking around and collecting various pieces of intels while interacting with different characters and objects. Each int…

Cosmic Top Secret is interesting. As the store summary says, it's a documentary game about a woman (T) trying to discover her parents' past as Danish Intelligence workers during the Cold War, but it's not particularly academic. The narrative is quite personal and close to T and her family, with their relationship sometimes overshadowing the Cold War topic itself - whether this is good or not depends on your taste in documentaries, though I personally found it quite endearing. Otherwise, the game is a mixed bag. The cardboard cutout collage visuals are striking and the sound design is generally strong, but I found the music quite grating at times. The gameplay is... not great. It's something of a collectathon platformer(?), but the movement is [i]remarkably[/i] crappy. You click and drag to roll your character in the direction of where your cursor is pointing, which causes minor freakouts whenever the cursor brushes across an object between the camera and where you want to go (a constant problem when trying to navigate in tight spaces). You right click and drag to move the camera, click to interact, and flick the mouse to jump. It's all mouse-driven, and as far as I can tell ther…

Extremely unique platformer type of game with tons of movement freedom, but I feel like it does its job so well to the point that I don't think I should be peaking at its contents! Jokes aside, this is such a neat way to tell a life story along a string of memories. It feels very personal, but it lets me stay curious at the same time.

thumps up