Cosmic Trip
Trip the light mediocre
Developer Funktronic Labs publisher Funktronic Labs price $ 19.99 AvAilAble At steam cosmictripvr.com
Cosmic Trip is a slickly-crafted first-person VR RTS where the player peers down at the battlefield from above then literally grounds them among the units and structures that produce them. The approach is a refreshing take but may frustrate players more comfortable with a better view of the battlefield.
You’ll get started placing bot factories and physically inserting batteries and bot disks using the motion controllers to build units. This works well from both an interactive standpoint and a management one. Battery levels will deplete, and you’ll need to keep an eye on when a replacement is due if you want to keep your operation running optimally. Bot disks, which are like the blueprints for a unit, must be bought separately and inserted into a bot factory. It’s fun but can feel a little like double handling.
The retro sci-fi art style is great and the user interface design is among the best I’ve seen in a VR title to date. Floating UIs that appear with the touch of a Vive button and respond to aiming and triggering are fun to use as you select research items, buildings and the batteries that power them.
In addition to your offensive bots and a deployable turret that takes both hands to fire, you’re provided with three different controller attachments: a bubble shooting gun which suspends enemies mid-air, an exploding disc slinger and a shield. Frustratingly, your units can become pretty easily overrun if you aren’t paying attention, so these tools will be key to campaign survival.
Across the map there are several circular base nodes you can build on. Expanding your foothold across the
the user interface design is among the best I’ve seen in a VR title to date
map quickly is a must. My first game saw me really hunker down and build out my base for a long time, only to deplete the local crystal mine and spend the rest of the game fruitlessly fighting off increasingly vicious waves of enemies, who had steadily whittled down my squad of attack bots and established an unbreakable hold on the next-closest base node.
Though recently out of early access it still suffers from a couple of bugs. As waves of approaching enemies intensified I noticed some of my robot minions stuck shooting into solid rock, inside which an enemy snake alien had spawned. Another enemy was simply invisible, freely hurling blobs of acid at my units that were helpless to respond.
Being face to face with the action is a trade-off for less oversight across the world. There is an overview map that can be summoned by pulling the grip buttons, and selecting and ordering units this way is simple enough, but still complicates what would traditionally have been a simple glance to the bottom corner of your screen.
With decent-sized map and a combination of strategic and more mellow nodes to build on there’s quite a game to be played here. That said, I found myself spending too much time playing caretaker to my units. Patient strategy fans looking for a VR outlet may find Cosmic Trip a fresh and challenging experience. MICHAEL JENKIN