Within the Cosmos

Within the Cosmos – Early Thoughts from a Supportive Critic
Negative (But Hopeful) Review

Let me start by saying I won’t be refunding Within the Cosmos. I’m uninstalling for now, but I’m holding onto it because I can see the heart behind the game—and I genuinely want to see where it goes from here.

This isn’t a cash grab. It’s a passion project. One person made this (from what i red online), and that alone deserves respect. That said, passion doesn’t always equal polish—and this release simply isn’t ready for the big stage yet. Calling this a "1.0 launch" is... generous. It feels more like a late alpha or early beta, and that’s being fair. The core concept is compelling, but there’s still a long way to go before the gameplay experience matches the ambition.

The Good Stuff:
Beautiful Visuals & Atmosphere:
The environments are genuinely impressive. There’s a strong sci-fi vibe here—lonely corridors, sterile labs, and outer space backdrops that scream "cosmic isolation".

Great Concept & Lore Foundation:
The setting—humanity escaping a dying Earth, cryo-sleep voyages, fractured factions, mysterious android enemies—is classic space RPG material. The narrative groundwork is solid, and I’d love to see it fully realized down the road.

RPG Intentions Are There:
Character creation, attributes, skill systems, perks—it’s clear this game wants to offer deep customization and player agency. While not fully there yet, the structure exists and just needs further development and balancing.

What Needs Serious Work:
Gameplay Feels Rough and Unfinished:
Movement and combat feel janky and unrefined. There's no real weight to shooting or melee, and enemy AI is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes they charge you fearlessly, sometimes they get stuck. Animations and hit detection often feel off.

Buggy and Unstable:
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. Doors refusing to open, dialogue events not triggering, and quest objectives not updating properly were common.

UI/UX and Quest Flow:
Menus are clunky, and quest tracking often leaves you guessing. Sometimes it’s unclear where to go or what’s broken versus what’s intended. It interrupts the pacing and kills immersion.

Shallow RPG Execution (Right Now):
The skill and perk systems are in place, but they don’t feel impactful yet. Choices don’t seem to carry weight, and many mechanics (like hacking or persuasion) feel more like placeholders than fully functional systems.

Final Word:
There’s real potential here, and I don’t want that to be lost in the criticism. This is a labor of love from a solo developer, and it shows—but so does the strain of doing it all alone. Within the Cosmos is not a bad idea—it’s just not a finished product.

For anyone expecting a polished RPG like Mass Effect or The Outer Worlds, this isn’t that. Yet.

I’ll be back for future updates.
But for now, it’s getting uninstalled and shelved. I want to see this game succeed—and I sincerely hope the dev sticks with it, refines the systems, and delivers the experience this concept deserves.

Rating (for now): 6/10
Still in development spirit. Needs polish, but shows promise.

This has potential to be very fun.

but as of Apr 2025 it is very buggy and needs polish on some of its maps. it can be easy to get stuck of fall out of world. and some quest triggers don't flip when they should. I also think there may be missing quest markers.

but it is clear the dev is working on it and I look forward to seeing how good it gets

Good effort esp for a one man band. The controls are a bit more floaty with the controller vs keyboard/mouse but I'm also not as on point with my reflexes anymore. Has VO and character customization where I wasnt expecting it + the skill system is pretty varied so far. Will check back in on this game once I get into the mood to bury myself in gaming once more.

The game feels meh, It could be something interesting if the developer keeps working on it. I kept having crashes trying to start, thankfully reinstalling the game fixed that.

The UI is buggy and overlays each other. The gun play feels fine but half baked, there's definitely the recoil aspect but not much more. As someone who has played a lot of The Outer Worlds this feels like it takes direct inspiration from it, which is okay but it's a bit heavy on that. The voices don't sound great, I think they may be AI generated but I can't say for sure. It appears when the characters talk they have a generic mouth moving animation that doesn't sync up and continues when they aren't talking. I also had a few annoying deaths, potentially a skill issue, but I think you should definitely make it so opening the inventory pauses the rest of the game.

The game starts with a fetch quest, and it's boring walking, kill a few robots easily, then enter a building and kill a few things, grab item and walk back. Then generic we can't open thing here because it's not safe (there is zero sign of it being not safe other than one dude). He tries to blow himself up, the dialogue isn't great here. Some interesting aspects but I truly wonder how much AI generated material was used in the creation of this game. The graphics are nice but they feel the same as in 1000 other games. I don't want to discourage the developer from making, I simply want to give feedback and wish luck.

I will be refunding as of now and will keep following the game. Perhaps in the future I'll come back, but as it is the first 30 minutes aren't good enough for me to continue. My expectations were fair based on the price, yet it feels worse than a FTP.
For a game that's free this would be fine, but paying $20 CAD for this doesn't feel great.

A lot of love clearly poured into this project. Fun RPG, love the skill checks. The worlds are beautiful (my personal highlight, cant get enough of taking screenshots lol) The dev is putting out patches on a daily basis (which is really fast considering its a solo dev), so I'm sure the bugs that are left will be fixed. Loving it so far!

i really tried to give this a chance, nothing works.

Story- boring and unengaging

Gameplay- point and shoot

visuals - PS3 and horrible sound balance

this is very much a fan game from someone who really liked the "Outer Worlds" but it has none of the same aspects.
even if the constant bugs will be fixed the systems underneath are simply not worth it.
if this is truly a single dev work then, good job trying, but the game is still bad. maybe better luck next time

It's a very ambitious game and I'm very impressed with what debdev has managed to do with this game. Definitely still needs a bit more polish as there are a few bugs that could annoy some people, but otherwise it's alright. Kinda reminds me of fallout new vegas a bit.

Within the Cosmos still needs some work and a lot of polish however found ways to get around the glitches & Bugs and did enjoy playing however could not get past the point of talking to the leader of the Raven group without the game locking up and requiring a re-start. The vendor transactions really need some work.

Janky but the looting bug patched already. Will wait for a couple more patches but looks good and not refunding as the developer deserves support :)

>wake up at start of game
>get sent to a mission
>go out and do said mission
>return to the cave you came from
>upon entering your inventory gets wiped and you lose all your stuff
>go talk to quest giver
>he gives you the quest again

Yeah, I'm thinking I'm never going to play this game again

Well, this game is really disappointing - it's too raw to buy it.
You're not able to rebind sprint button, time ability (or how do call it?) wasn't working for me, inspite of i've changed use button - it always displayed me prev one and etc.
First i wanted to keep it just to support devs - but after 0.6 hrs of playing i got some kind of a lock: repairing generator doesn't move the progress.
I could ignore that and wait for later updates in case if it was EA game - but it's not.
And such quality isn't normal for released products, IMHO.
Still, this game "has something" - so, i guess, i'll give it a shot later in the future.
Hope devs would work on this game/
But for now - i'll refund it.

REVIEW PENDING, THIS IS A PSA.

From what I can tell, this is a one man project, and an impressive one considering the scale and pricepoint. However, there is currently a plethora of bugs hampering an otherwise solid experience. There has already been a day one patch, and I expect these remaining bugs will be fixed in due time.

So while I hate to leave a negative review for a game I haven't dug deep into, my first day playing I think I spent more time writing bug reports than actually getting anywhere. Some shopkeepers lock up the game or don't function, my custom character reset to the default character model of the opposite sex (It's a solid character creator for a solo dev though), the questlog randomly freezes the game, I could go on.

I will be changing my review as I manage to complete more of the game. Was looking forward to this one, and while I still think there is a fun game in here, it was not quite ready for release. Don't write it off just yet, but I can't recommend you buy in right now either.

Very ambitious for a low priced indie!

Definitely a few bugs that I’ve had to work around, if they can work them out this is pretty impressive for a solo dev and at this price.

fun rpg & great writing. happy to see it finally released. this is a dev trying to compete with giants like bethesda and obsidian. we should support devs who aim for the stars, as that means more great devs making great games. yeah it has some visual similarities to the outer worlds but to me, it plays more like deus ex and fallout, maybe a bit of cyberpunk too. seems like there will be a patch later today, can't wait to try it out then

Following this game for quite some time now....it amazes me that this adventure through the cosmos was built by a single developer! It has awesome visuals and pretty cool customization features. I'm rooting for the developer to continue to add to this game. Highly recommended for fans of sci-fi and adventure alike!

after 6 years of development and 2 missed release windows, this game majorly disappointed. broken on release, way to many bugs, poorly polished UI. Definitely wait to see if DEBDEV actually patches this stuff, but after the abysmal release, don't be surprised if support is cut and this game collects dust is the steam archives.

Found out about this from a youtube video about upcoming indies. good game. 👍

An interesting premise but boy does it need more time in the oven. Basic mechanics are buggy and unpolished. Example: If you use a container you become frozen and have to zoom in with right mouse button to reset.

Sections of the map were started and then just abandoned or left empty with places you can jump down and get stuck. The first map is clearly unfinished and relatively empty too. Certain quests are bugged as well.

Not yet ready for early access and certainly not for a full release. However If the developer continues to work on it and fix the myriad of launch issues it could wind up being a decent game in a year or two.

janky for sure, but with a patch or two it'll be pretty good for 15

edit: already(day 1) released a patch addressing most of the negative review complaints

Crazy buggy, I had combat, inventory, and movement bugs within the first 5 minutes. Refunding until this gets patched a few times.

janky and buggy

weapon randomly disappearing, character gets stuck in place for 5-10 seconds after looting bodies and containers, and that's all in the first 20 minutes

there's quick save, but no quick load, quick saves don't overwrite the previous quick save so you up with hundreds of quick saves in your saves list

can't overwrite manual saves, either, have to make new save and delete old one manually

graphical settings don't persist, motion blur and bloom randomly turn on after turning off, fov defaults back to 90

areas look like a straight ripoff of outer worlds, there's "inspired", and then there's straight ripoff, this is the latter

this might be one of the few games i'll end up refunding

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3453754655
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3453754634

Buggy doesn't even begin to describe the game, can't even move after opening a container.

I’ve been lucky enough to test this game (twice!) during the betas and now with the full release, and I have to say, it's so much fun!😍 The RPG mechanics are solid, and you can really tell the dev put a lot of work and love into this. This is such a massive game for a solo dev to tackle... it’s truly no easy task! Even huge RPG companies like bethesda and obsidian struggle with bugs, but this dev was on top of it, pushing out patches all the time and squashing bugs as soon as they came up. So, I’m absolutely confident that will continue. It’s awesome to see all the effort that went into it.