Alter Cosmos is not a very good point&click adventure, at least as far as the gameplay goes. Overall, it lacks polish in almost every aspect, numerous glitches when it comes to UI and click detection. Why do I recommend it? Well, I think the art style and the story are compelling enough to purchase it, plus the price is not particularly high. The comic book style makes it stand out in the genre, the backgrounds are very detailed and there are many cutscenes with text choices, kind of reminds me of CyberFrog in terms of aesthetic. I really like the mature tone of this game, it has plenty of dark humor, occasional gore, and some dirty posters. You play as the AlienCat, a cyborg-cat that is now a fugitive, to be honest, I don't know what to make of it.
Unfortunately, it has a combat system which is like always a bad sign in this genre. The combat kinda sucks, it does not add anything interesting to the game aside from clunky mechanics. Perhaps the developer should add some kind of impact and collision system, otherwise, the enemies tend to walk on top of you. Apparently, it has some sort of combo system, I am not entirely sure how to use it. If you hold space you can see interactive areas, and if you scroll the mouse-wheel you can quickly open the inventory. I would like to see the room exits when you hold space as well, sometimes it is hard to see an entrance to the next area. Also, the developer should map the weapons to hotkeys (1,2,3 etc), it would make my life a bit easier. I must give a warning in regards to puzzles, it has a surprising amount of those sequence minigames that everyone loves so much, you know, moving squares and turning valves.
Pros:
+ pretty awesome aesthetic
+ interesting characters
+ mature themes
+ text choices, many cutscenes
+ highlighter for interactive areas
Cons:
- somewhat glitchy
- combat is clunky
- subpar UI
- many annoying minigame puzzles
- hitbox problems/pathing problems
Overall Thoughts: 6/10
I am usually pretty harsh on games that cannot get the basic UI correctly (hence a relatively poor score), but I think that Alter Cosmos is potentially fun. If you can ignore its lack of polish, there is a very stylish and ridiculous adventure game. I guess I would describe as a guilty pleasure more than anything else.
Review By: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/
