Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure

Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure tells the story of a small alien whose family ship crash-lands on an unknown planet, and when his parents go missing, Cosmo must find them on his own. The core mechanic is suction cups on his hands: Cosmo can cling to vertical walls and climb up them, turning ordinary jumping into a much more interesting spatial puzzle. Enemies are dispatched by jumping on their heads, levels are full of bonuses, hidden rooms, and explosive crates that reveal secret areas. The game is split into three episodes, and its design consistently alternates safer passages with more demanding sections where you need to carefully plan how to actually get upward.

Graphically, this was one of the more attractive titles of its time on PC. The sprites are large, rounded, and expressively animated, the environments burst with saturated colors, and the game noticeably goes beyond what players were used to from DOS platformers. Smooth screen scrolling and carefully drawn backgrounds give the world a pleasant sense of depth, and yet the whole thing runs briskly even on modest hardware. Sound through an Ad Lib card accompanies the adventure with light, almost cartoonish melodies that underscore the game's childlike, gentle tone, even though some levels can be surprisingly tricky and demand good jump timing.

Apogee distributed this game in the usual shareware fashion, with a freely available first episode and paid sequels, and Cosmo became one of its signature titles alongside the publisher's other platformers. At the time it was praised mainly for its graphics and for the wall-climbing idea that set it apart from the rest of the field. Today it's a pleasantly short adventure good for one or two afternoons, delighting mainly with how clean and readable its gameplay is. Anyone who enjoys classic platformers with an emphasis on exploration and finding secret nooks will find exactly what they're looking for here. The short runtime is, if anything, an advantage, since the game never loses pace anywhere.