Cosmo Tales Review

A Talking Space Car Fighting Glitchbots, From The Studio Behind ARMA

Cosmo Tales entered Early Access on September 3, 2026 from developer and publisher Bohemia Interactive, a name most people associate with military simulation series like ARMA and DayZ rather than a colorful, wisecracking third-person roguelite about a talking car flying through space. That pedigree mismatch is worth sitting with for a second, because nothing about Cosmo Tales reads like a Bohemia Interactive project on the surface: you pilot a chatty vehicle through waves of "Glitchbot" enemies, swapping between three parallel dimensions mid-fight to trade speed for shields, stacking build-defining upgrades as runs escalate toward a giant boss encounter. At $19.99, it's picked up ten English-language reviews so far, nine positive and one negative, a "Positive" score for an Early Access release that reviewers agree has real promise wrapped around some genuinely rough edges. One reviewer's blunt framing of the current state cuts right to it: "for those who wonder how big is the Early Access version, it has three levels that you can complete in about 30 minutes each... EA page should provide those kind of information," a fair complaint about a storefront that undersells just how early "early" actually is here.

A 1970s Saturday-Morning Cartoon With A Dimension-Swap Hook

The presentation is where the game earns its most unreserved praise. One reviewer describes it as "the casual colourful flightsim/roguelike I've needed in my life... a wonderfully wholesome little adventure wrapped in a gorgeous 1970s-inspired aesthetic that feels a bit like James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy," going on to call the experience "like discovering a forgotten Saturday-morning sci-fi cartoon, complete with groovy visuals, charming characters, and a soundtrack that absolutely nails the era." The same reviewer singles out the core mechanical hook for praise: "the dimension-switching mechanic is a particularly clever touch, allowing one to shift between realities to uncover new paths, solve environmental puzzles, and see familiar spaces in an entirely different light." A second reviewer, more economical with words, arrives at a nearly identical verdict on tone: "an incredibly stylish and breezy roguelite that, while not reinventing the genre, adds enough unique flavor to keep us jumping back behind the wheel of those constantly wisecracking space cars time and time again." Multiple reviewers independently praise the music specifically, calling it "great" and "a vibe" in separate reviews, a rare point of total consensus across an otherwise mixed pool.

The Optimization Problem Nearly Every Reviewer Hits Independently

If there's one theme this review pool corroborates more than any other, it's performance. A reviewer running a laptop with a mid-range mobile GPU reports "about 50fps... and there aren't too many options to better this." A Steam Deck player found the game "reasonable frame at the very start but as soon as there's a few enemies... the frames tank and it wasn't very playable," adding that even frame generation "was causing some weird flicking issues." A third reviewer, running on unspecified but apparently capable hardware, still noted the game "seems a bit demanding given the visuals it delivers." A fourth reviewer frames it most charitably, noting the "lack of optimization CURRENTLY" while pointing out "the devs specifically say that it is their main focus to optimize this game to the best of their ability." Four independent reviewers landing on the same complaint, in different words, across different hardware, is about as clean a corroborated signal as a review pool gets, and it's the single clearest reason to treat this as a wait-and-see Early Access purchase rather than a finished product.

Smaller Complaints, And A Combat Loop Reviewers Still Enjoy Despite Them

Beyond performance, the complaints that surface are specific rather than vague, and mostly single-sourced rather than corroborated pattern issues. One reviewer running an ultrawide 49-inch 1440p monitor reported being unable to fix the resolution, leaving "a lot that gets cut off in the menus." Another wished for "controller rebinding" as a missing quality-of-life feature, while acknowledging it's currently workable through Steam's own overlay remapping. A third found the power-up card artwork inconsistent with the game's stylized presentation elsewhere. None of these individually sink the experience, and the underlying combat, dimension-swapping, and build-stacking loop keeps earning genuine enthusiasm even from reviewers logging complaints: "I did enjoy this game having only a few issues," one wrote, while another called it simply "fun" outright, and a third landed on "gameplay is solid, music is a vibe." The one outright negative review in the pool is less a rejection of the concept than an acknowledgment of where the "makings of a great little game" currently stand: real, but unfinished.

An Early Access Release That Earns Patience, Not Full Price Confidence Yet

The ISteamNews history backs up the picture the reviews paint: an August 2025 teaser, a public demo in June 2026, a trailer in July, then the September 3 Early Access launch followed within a week by a post explicitly titled around "Feedback, Optimization & Steam Deck Verification," exactly the kind of transparent, performance-focused messaging a developer should be putting out when its own players are independently flagging the same frame-rate problems. That's a studio listening, even if the fix hasn't landed yet.

Verdict

Cosmo Tales is an Early Access release in the truest sense: a confident, charming art direction and a genuinely clever dimension-swapping combat hook wrapped around a build that, by its own developer's admission, still needs real optimization work before it's ready to be judged as a finished product. At $19.99 for what one reviewer measured as roughly three 30-minute levels, the value case is thin for anyone who isn't specifically excited to watch this grow, and the corroborated performance complaints from laptop, Steam Deck, and desktop players alike suggest the smart move right now is watching the patch notes rather than buying in blind. For fans of colorful, story-flavored roguelites who don't mind rough technical edges and want to support a promising concept from the ground up, there's a lot to like here already; everyone else should wait for a few more of those "Cosmic Signals" dev updates to land first.