Universal Cosmonautica (by Chasing Carrots)

Discussion in 'iPhone and iPad Games' started by touchy85, Jul 31, 2015.

  1. sapphire_neo

    sapphire_neo Well-Known Member

    Jan 20, 2011
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    That's why I said it... DotE is possibly this month itself and Prison Architect is in October.
     
  2. klink

    klink 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Jul 22, 2013
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    Yes bring on the ports. Just don't be lazy about it.
     
  3. sapphire_neo

    sapphire_neo Well-Known Member

    Jan 20, 2011
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    I've seen far, far lazier ports. Tiny Keep and Always, Soetimes Monsters come to mind, among others.
     
  4. Woodrith

    Woodrith Well-Known Member

    Oct 4, 2014
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    I haven't gotten fully into the game yet, but three points so far. Graphics, no AA, but it doesn't bother me, but for graphics people it will. Runs well on my iPad Air Gen 1, latest iOS 8. No real tutorial, so if you don't like digging through interfaces and clicking on things to figure them out, then this will bug you out.

    Otherwise I haven't done enough to fully judge the game yet, dev seems like they're active on steam, so hopefully this translates to iOS. Liking it so far!
     
  5. PSquared

    PSquared Active Member

    Nov 4, 2013
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    Playing on an iPad Air. Have about ten hours in and zero crashes, zero hitches,Mauro bugs. I'm amazed other people are reporting problems since I've had not a one. Graphics look good on my iPad Air though not as good as PC... But yeah... Good.

    Game seems polished and has a lot to do. Fully playable as a trader, a cargo hauler, a passenger liner, and a fighter. Perhaps more roles? There are multiple ships for each different style and since you can custom create your own ship layouts you can make ships that are multipurpose. Seems like there are tons of upgrades to research and tons of systems and galaxies to explore. There is a campaign mode and an open sandbox mode so plenty of replay ability for various gameplay styles. Mechanics-wise seems a lot more depth and attention to detail then most mobile management games I've played.

    One if the most baffling comments in this thread is that someone was lost and couldn't find a tutorial. This confuses me and makes me wonder if the commenter actually even tried the game... Or perhaps accidentally started in sandbox free-play mode rather then story/campaign mode. The campaign mode takes your hand and walks you through things. Gives you step by step tutorials and quests to learn how things work. There are some branching options based on which playstyle you choose but it teaches you... And then let's you free to pkY the campaign as you like and side track as much as you like anytime you like.

    It also starts you with a care bones ship and a ton of currency to upgrade and customize it. The game even tells you, explaining in depth, that you need to purchase more rooms, which tykes you need to purchase, how to purchase them, and where. Anyone can be confused by anything, I suppose, but honestly this games does a fantastic job of teaching you if you actually read the instructions and tips. Don't want the tips? You can turn them off and just go straight ahead and pkay freely.

    All in all this game could have been ported better. Graphics could be a little sharper but honestly, on an iPad Air running the latest version of iOS, they look good and have had zero crashes at all. The buttons onscreen could be a little bigger but I'm an adult with larger then average sized digits and I have zero issues touching buttons with the pad of my index finger as normal. No miss licks, no using my fingernail. It just works smoothly as I expect it should. On an iPhone... The buttons nay be too small but on the iPad they are good, better then merely fine.

    There are things that could be polished but if you like the management genre this is a solid 4 star. Perhaps more if it is as long and deep as it seems to be... But I'm only ten hours in. Definitely worth the price of admission.
     
  6. coolpepper43

    coolpepper43 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Aug 31, 2012
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    Lol only 10 hours in!

    I'm going to still hold out until there is some kind of update, just to be on the safe side. How's the humor?
     
  7. Baracus

    Baracus Well-Known Member

    Oh, shame... I was looking forward to that! :p
     
  8. farmboy74

    farmboy74 Well-Known Member

    Aug 26, 2011
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    I'm about four hours in and on my second game after dying horribly in a space battle early on. The biggest thing for me is the touch inputs, I don't know if it's me but they don't always seem to register.

    The couple of things are I struggled with is keeping the crew happy as one went on strike, I tried to figure out what to do, this took to long as the offending crew member jetisoned an escape pod and left me a crew man down.

    The other thing is space battles as I plainly suck at these at the minute, I'm guessing I need better pilots and gunners.

    I can't imagine playing this game on an iPhone as on my 3rd Gen iPad I have to zoom in on the galaxy map.

    In the amount of time I've played the game I've experienced one crash and that was trying to load from my previous save point after I had been destroyed.
     
  9. klink

    klink 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Jul 22, 2013
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    Chasing Carrots (@Chasing_Carrots) tweeted at 9:02am - 2 Aug 15:

    @BitGameReviews We'll have a look at the iOS version, but it might take a bit since we're at gamescom next week. (https://twitter.com/Chasing_Carrots/status/627826899201486848?s=17)
     
  10. eksaint

    eksaint Well-Known Member

    Jan 2, 2015
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    Personally I'm liking this a lot, I've got a couple hours into it and haven't had any crashes.

    The size of the buttons doesn't bother me at all nor do the graphics.

    The only annoying bug I've seen has been on three occasions when the trading window (as well as the world information in the solar system view) doesn't appear. Quitting to main menu and reloading fixs this and since it saves every time you arrive and leave you don't lose anything, but it is annoying.

    The game itself though is way,way better then anything else like it I've found and I'm happy I decided to buy it besides the reviews in this thread.

    Its fun, buy it if you like this type of game. Wouldn't want to play it on a phone though. iPad Air 2 here
     
  11. ScotDamn

    ScotDamn Well-Known Member
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    Jul 8, 2013
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    Wow thanks for the in depth clarification. My biggest gripe with an Internet forum is trying to filter through the commenters that are quick to troll a game. :p
    It takes effort to actually post worthwhile impressions of a game so I appreciate it.
     
  12. Talbs

    Talbs Well-Known Member

    May 1, 2011
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    Yep agreed. I suspect that some of the posts here, typically there shorter ones, are premeditated. Such as the 2.5 rating someone just gave this. I suspect that rating is a bit harsh to be coming from someone that's given this at least an hour.

    Disclaimer: I don't own yet. Just waiting for my backlog hoarding personality to take over.
     
  13. mindmagicgames

    mindmagicgames Active Member

    Jun 11, 2015
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    Indianapolis, Indiana
    As a developer, I bought this game hoping the others were wrong and I like supporting other devs that produce these types of games. I played on an iPad Air 2 and for the first two hours I played, I didn't get any crashes. The in-game tutorial wasn't the greatest, but it was enough to keep me from hunting and pecking functionality. One thing I would've liked to know (or maybe I just missed it) is more info about trading. Trading seems like a core component for the style I played and there's wasn't enough info about it.

    After two hours, I started my first battle and about half way trough the game crashed. I think I shot my turret three times before a bug appeared. I was able to relaunch just fine, but I haven't replayed the same battle that crashed the game for me yet.

    Overall, I think this is going to be a great game with some serious depth. The graphics could use a little work, but that wasn't a serious issue for me. Does anyone know if this was their first port? If it was, I'm guessing they'll be fixing the issues other people talked about and the crashes.
     
  14. Bloodangel

    Bloodangel Well-Known Member

    Jan 19, 2011
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    Is it possible to edit the ipa, to higher the resolution on iPhone?
     
  15. Baracus

    Baracus Well-Known Member

    I doubt it's that simple. The UI is already retina it's just the 3D parts have no AA and maybe half res to keep Frame Rate up.
     
  16. hunkyducky1

    hunkyducky1 Well-Known Member

    Aug 9, 2013
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    I really like this game. It would be nice if they added more room types, even if they are just cosmetic as well as sharpen up the blurry graphics.
     
  17. Skypoint

    Skypoint Well-Known Member

    Apr 22, 2010
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    Stability is OK for me

    I've played about 4 hours so far inclouding 1 restart to fix some mistakes I made, across a iPhone 5 and a iPad Mini 2, and the stability has been perfect for me. I've been in 2 fights without issue (apart from me being terrible at fighting, need way better stuff than you can get at the start).
     
  18. farmboy74

    farmboy74 Well-Known Member

    Aug 26, 2011
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    I'm now over six hours in and this game has got some serious depth to it. I have managed to win and survive a couple of space battles.

    I experienced a new bug where I got to one of the space stations and all my icons on the left hand side of the screen went tiny and I mean tiny was then unable to select any action as the game would not register any of my inputs. The only way I solved this was to quit the game and then reload it from a checkpoint.

    Speaking of which when I load up my last check point on my iPad 3 it seems to take an age, anyone else experienced long loading times?
     
  19. Bloodangel

    Bloodangel Well-Known Member

    Jan 19, 2011
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    True yeah, it's just the graphics.
    Surely they didn't Make it blurry/low res to keep frame rate up, as there's not a lot going on. Surely would run fine with high res on a ip6
     
  20. Baracus

    Baracus Well-Known Member

    I dunno but they probably can't win. If it was full res and sometimes dropped into 20fps range then they would get complaints about that instead.

    I think there's quite a lot of lighting and stuff going on though, as well as animating up to 8 characters and path finding / logic running all the time. Maybe there's something they can do - we'll have to see :)

    It really doesn't bother me though. I mean it wasn't long ago that 1024x768 was considered high resolution on a 17" desktop screen!
     

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