Within the Cosmos

About

Within the Cosmos is a single player role playing shooter game with a science fiction theme. It was developed by debdev and was released on March 28, 2025. It received neutral reviews from players.

Within the Cosmos is a single-player first-person sci-fi RPG. The year is 2278. Humanity teeters on the brink of extinction. As a member of the United Earth Space Agency (UESA), you were one of 500 chosen for cryogenic sleep and launched aboard a starship to the secluded Adallio star system. This hidden refuge, far from the devastating war consuming Earth, was humanity's last hope for surviva…

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41%

Audience ScoreBased on 37 reviews

atmosphere1 positive mentions

stability14 negative mentions

Impressive scope and ambition for a solo developer project with noticeable passion and consistent updates.
Interesting RPG systems with solid character customization, skill trees, and loot mechanics that scratch the niche Outer Worlds/Fallout itch.
Visually appealing sci-fi environments and atmosphere with good world design that some players found beautiful and immersive.

Severe and numerous bugs including crashes, quest breaks, UI issues, and game progression blockers making the game frustrating and sometimes unplayable.
Unpolished gameplay with clunky combat, poor enemy AI, underwhelming sound design, and lack of impactful RPG mechanics leading to a bland experience.
Performance problems even on high-end PCs, inconsistent graphics/art direction, awkward UI/UX, and poor voice acting/lip-sync that break immersion and reduce quality.

story
22 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
14%
72%
14%
The story is generally considered average to below average, with issues such as unengaging narrative and repetitive quests. Numerous bugs affect quest progression, including broken or missing quest markers, quests not updating, and tasks failing to trigger or complete properly. Despite these problems, some users are forgiving given the game's indie solo development background.
- “The story is fine though, most indies would just not put voice acting in it.”
- “The game is pretty good, performance is good - like The Outer Worlds (story, visuals are nice).”
- “Story, dialogue, and voice acting are average at best (arguably below average), but since the game is made by a solo dev I don't mind that too much.”
- “Crashes, none of the quest markers ever seem to work, you can break quests easily, and even complete ones off of conversations with dead people hours after you killed them.”
- “Doors refusing to open, dialogue events not triggering, and quest objectives not updating properly were common.”
- “Story is boring and unengaging. Completed a mission, talked to quest giver who gave the quest again. Shooting him didn't progress or fail the quest.”
stability
14 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game is plagued by numerous stability issues, including frequent bugs, crashes, and glitches affecting quests, UI, audio, physics, and core mechanics. Many users report game-breaking problems such as freezing, lockups, and unreliable character customization, indicating it needs significant polish and bug fixing.
- “I'd pass on this, especially since I just barely got to the second zone through the buggy mess, and they're apparently in 2.0.”
- “During my time with it, I ran into quest bugs, UI issues, audio glitches, and the kind of wonky physics you'd expect from an early-access project.”
- “Some shopkeepers lock up the game or don't function, my custom character reset to the default character model of the opposite sex, the quest log randomly freezes the game.”
gameplay
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
30%
40%
30%
The gameplay shows promise with interesting RPG mechanics and a compelling core concept, but it feels rough and unfinished due to buggy, unpolished systems and underdeveloped features like hacking and persuasion. Choices lack meaningful impact, indicating the gameplay experience has yet to fully realize its ambition.
- “The game is obviously heavily inspired by The Outer Worlds, and it does have some interesting ideas mechanics-wise.”
- “The core concept is compelling, but there’s still a long way to go before the gameplay experience matches the ambition.”
- “ The RPG mechanics are solid, and you can really tell the dev put a lot of work and love into this.”
- “However, even almost a year after release major gameplay elements still don't work properly.”
- “Choices don’t seem to carry weight, and many mechanics (like hacking or persuasion) feel more like placeholders than fully functional systems.”
- “Basic mechanics are buggy and unpolished.”
graphics
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
38%
24%
38%
The graphics receive mixed feedback, with some users praising the visuals and atmosphere as beautiful and impressive, while others criticize inconsistent performance, outdated or generic graphics, and issues with graphical settings not being retained properly.
- “In the Reddit post, the developer said he was getting positive feedback on the graphics during his beta-testing.”
- “The game is pretty good, performance is good - like The Outer Worlds (story, visuals are nice).”
- “It has awesome visuals and pretty cool customization features.”
- “Performance is terrible on a mid-to-high performance PC with generic and poor graphics where changing anything doesn't help with FPS.”
- “Visuals are comparable to PS3 quality and the sound balance is horrible.”
- “Graphical settings don't persist; motion blur and bloom randomly turn on after being turned off, and FOV defaults back to 90.”
optimization
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
75%
Optimization is generally poor, with users reporting low performance even on high-end PCs and minimal improvement from adjusting settings. While environments look visually appealing, they are not well-optimized, causing high-end GPUs to struggle unless graphics are significantly lowered.
- “The game is pretty good, performance is good - similar to The Outer Worlds (story, visuals are nice).”
- “I think the environments look really nice but there's a massive lack of optimization in them; I had to run on medium 1080p so my 4080 Super GPU would stop whining.”
- “Performance is terrible on a mid-to-high performance PC with generic and poor graphics where changing any settings doesn't improve FPS.”
- “I think the environments look really nice but there's a massive lack of optimization; I had to run on medium 1080p so my RTX 4080 Super GPU would stop overheating.”
- “Performance is terrible on a mid-to-high performance PC with generic and poor graphics where changing any settings doesn't improve FPS.”
grinding
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Grinding is praised for enhancing the value of looting while minimizing the tediousness commonly associated with material collection in open-world RPGs.
monetization
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The monetization is well-balanced and not overly aggressive, avoiding the feeling of a cash grab.
atmosphere
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Users praise the game’s atmosphere for its beautiful visuals, creating an immersive and captivating environment.