Interkosmos
- April 25, 2017
- Ovid Works
- 1h median play time
Interkosmos is a short virtual reality experience which places you in the hot seat of a space capsule returning to Earth during the Cold War. Combining an incredibly high pressure situation with a great deal of humor, Ovid Works has crafted a truly unique, narrative-driven experience. While the game is only around 30 minutes long, it has branching storylines, two successful endings, and makes death incredibly fun with a whole host of ways for you to perish. It's highly interactive, it makes incredibly satisfying clicky noises when pressing buttons and flipping switches, and it's over the top, colorful, retro graphics make it a unique and fun experience. Climb into the Interkosmos cockpit, make history, and show the world that Major Tom has nothing on you.
Get on Steam"Interkosmos" is a single-player historical simulation game with good graphics and humor. Players guide a Soviet spacecraft inspired by 1970's technology to a safe landing, with assistance from NASA and Roscosmos. The game features accessible and challenging gameplay, a fully interactive and realistic-looking space capsule, and a strong emphasis on story and humor.
PC
Windows
Reviews
- The game offers a humorous and immersive experience, capturing the chaotic atmosphere of a Soviet space capsule.
- Great voice acting and engaging storytelling enhance the overall experience, making it enjoyable despite its short length.
- The game is affordable and provides a unique VR experience that is fun for both newcomers and space enthusiasts.
- The game suffers from significant control issues, particularly with the Valve Index and Oculus controllers, making interactions frustrating.
- Many players report bugs, including crashes and broken achievements, which detract from the overall experience.
- The game is very short, with a playtime of around 40 minutes to an hour, leading to concerns about replay value.
- story47 mentions
- 36 % positive mentions
- 57 % neutral mentions
- 6 % negative mentions
The game's story is generally praised for its engaging and comedic elements, providing an entertaining experience despite its simplicity and short duration. Players appreciate the humorous dialogue and narrative that guide them through gameplay, although some technical issues, such as sound problems and control mismatches, detract from the overall experience. While the story is enjoyable, many players express a desire for more content and missions to expand on the initial premise.
“Amazing storytelling in an extremely simple environment.”
“I really enjoyed the story of the game as well as the flexibility if you mess up.”
“The story is one of the best parts of the game.”
“There's no challenge, nothing more than a very short story where you play the role of a monkey flipping switches.”
“After 10 minutes of 'easy' mode I couldn't figure out what to do and found it odd there was no sound, so I looked it up and found a steam discussion where the developer says alt+tab to get sound to work.... and the whole tutorial and story of this game is with the audio so that's a pretty big issue.”
“It's a $5 VR game, so don't expect an in-depth story or a lot of variety on gameplay.”
- humor37 mentions
- 100 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
The humor in the game is widely praised for its witty dialogue, funny voice acting, and engaging cold war references, creating a unique and charming atmosphere. While some find the humor slightly cringy or repetitive, it generally enhances the experience, making it enjoyable and memorable. Overall, players recommend the game for its comedic elements, despite its short length.
“The strongest thing in its favor, I think, is the writing; the dialogue is really witty and funny.”
“Despite working in a delicate and relatively complex environment, the humor from hearing your colleagues reacting to different situations (along with mock Russian accents) got me snickering and lightened the mood.”
“The game’s humor is unique and charming, and the voice acting is top quality compared to other titles on the VR market.”
- gameplay17 mentions
- 18 % positive mentions
- 65 % neutral mentions
- 18 % negative mentions
The gameplay is generally fast-paced and enjoyable, offering about an hour of immersive experience, particularly in hard mode, which enhances the challenge. However, it falls short in depth and variety, with limited orbital mechanics and a somewhat linear path, making it feel constrained. While the graphics are praised, some mechanics, like the oxygen/pressure system, are seen as forced, and the reliance on highlighted buttons detracts from the exploration aspect of piloting the spaceship.
“Overall, alright mechanics (though that could be due to just VR's wonkiness), fun story, good hour of gameplay.”
“On the pros: graphics are very well done (although I had to turn off high quality to get it to run smoothly on my overclocked 1070) and the gameplay is fast-paced and fun.”
“I can still heartily recommend the game, though, because for the ~1 hour of gameplay, it did really feel like flying a spaceship, and it was awesome.”
“In terms of gameplay and value, it falls somewhat short, particularly when compared to other space-based VR games.”
“As far as I can tell, the spaceship is on rails (you can't actually fly and watch the orbital mechanics play out; you have one path and you die if you get too far off it).”
“Having buttons highlighted when you need to press them takes away the main gameplay mechanic: figuring out how the spaceship works.”
- graphics15 mentions
- 67 % positive mentions
- 13 % neutral mentions
- 20 % negative mentions
The graphics in the game are generally praised for their quality and visual appeal, featuring nice 3D designs and a polished look. However, many users report performance issues, including lag and crashes at various graphic settings, indicating that the game may be unoptimized. Overall, while the visuals are impressive, they can hinder gameplay due to technical shortcomings.
“Short but very funny and engaging with some pretty good 3D graphics.”
“Graphics are great and so is the voice acting and storyline.”
“This game is very high quality, great graphics, great sound, very witty.”
“Crash with lower graphic settings.”
“Crash with higher graphic settings.”
“Wish it had graphics controls so I could crank the anti-aliasing up.”
- atmosphere14 mentions
- 57 % positive mentions
- 21 % neutral mentions
- 21 % negative mentions
The game's atmosphere is widely praised for its immersive and unique qualities, particularly its retro and cold war themes, which enhance the overall experience. While some users noted issues with specific animations during atmospheric entry, the humor and engaging gameplay contribute to a compelling environment that captivates players. Overall, the atmosphere is considered a standout feature, making the game worth the investment.
“Highly recommended for the humor, retro controls, and atmosphere.”
“Not only does this game bring an immersive atmosphere (even at 30 frames) but it engrosses you into a time when two ideologies who were ever so close to destroying each other had to come together and help save a lone cosmonaut from dying in space.”
“It's well written and the atmosphere is amazing!”
“Additionally, the window animations that I saw upon entering the atmosphere were lackluster and static, making the landing feel almost like it didn't even happen. All I could see for a while was black, then fade to clouds, but with no movement.”
“Will hopefully not make the same mistake when entering the atmosphere the next time I try.”
“Vent atmosphere into space.”
- replayability11 mentions
- 27 % positive mentions
- 36 % neutral mentions
- 36 % negative mentions
Overall, "Interkosmos" is characterized by low replayability, with most players noting that it offers a brief, one-time experience that lacks incentives for multiple playthroughs. While some suggest it could be enjoyable for friends and family to try, the game’s short length and limited content diminish its replay value significantly. Players express a desire for more engaging elements, such as varied death sequences, to enhance the experience.
“I wish I had seen some in-game death sequences which would have added much more replayability other than a simple text explanation as to what I did wrong.”
“I beat it in about 1 hour, and although it doesn't have much replay value, I would definitely recommend people try it out.”
“You might be interested in trying to complete the story in one go without dying.”
“Interkosmos strives to be a short experience with little to no replay value.”
“But it is short, and there's no replay value once you succeed.”
“You are basically paying $5 for a solid unique 1 hour experience, with no real replay value.”
- stability6 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
The game suffers from significant stability issues, including frequent bugs, glitches, and audio cutouts, which hinder gameplay and can even prevent progress. While some players appreciate the graphics and potential of the game, the overall experience is marred by these persistent technical problems.
“The game is buggy and achievements appear to be bugged and not triggering.”
“May be a great game, but I'll never know; it's super buggy and the audio cuts out when the program freezes up.”
“It is buggy though; in my short playthrough, I experienced several bugs, including one fatal bug that prevented progress.”
- optimization6 mentions
- 50 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 50 % negative mentions
The game suffers from significant optimization issues, leading to performance problems even on high-end hardware, such as lag during gameplay. While the graphics are praised for their quality, players report needing to lower settings to achieve smoother performance, indicating a need for updates to meet modern VR standards. Overall, the game would benefit from further polishing and optimization to enhance the user experience.
“Overall, it would be nice if the game was updated and polished a bit for modern VR standards and technology codebases for performance optimization and gameplay smoothness.”
“On the pros: the graphics are very well done (although I had to turn off high quality to get it to run smoothly on my overclocked 1070) and the gameplay is fast-paced and fun.”
“The graphics are great but unoptimized to a point where there's lag in the hands.”
“Overall, it would be nice if the game was updated and polished a bit for modern VR standards and technology codebases for performance optimization and gameplay stability.”
“Very badly optimized.”
“Besides that, it is unoptimized.”
- emotional1 mentions
- 100 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
Users have reported that touching the thumbpad or stick on knuckles controllers can unintentionally cause the game to exit, which disrupts the emotional immersion and engagement with the gameplay experience.
