Legends of the Universe - Cosmic Bounty

Nice metroidvania in 8 bit style, a jump back in the nes era

Playable.

The music was pretty silly.

I needed something more in the production department to be able to get immersed.

This is a low budget Metroidvania that I found weirdly… fun. There’s a **lot** of room for improvement, but it definitely nailed some core components.

The good - player upgrades. It very slowly and gradually upgrades your movement and combat abilities, almost imperceptibly, and by the end you are cruising through rooms. It did a great job of rewarding exploration in that way.

I also liked the tile sets. Nice color and texture variety. Combat felt serviceable, and map design was good as well.

But on the map… there are 12 “areas” like a typical Metroid game. But for some reason there’s no way to see an overview of them all, or know how anything actually connects. It’s very frustrating, because many times you have to go through multiple areas to find the next key upgrade.

The level design- really basic. Most rooms are basically flat with a few enemies. There’s only a handful of times where platforming is a consideration, which is a missed opportunity.

I hit a bad bug at the end where I needed to use a keycard to open a final door. The keycard somehow disappeared from my inventory. Luckily, restarting the game managed to open the door.

For a discount, I think this was a fine 3 hour Metroidvania experience. It feels like a “first project”, but I can definitely see potential in the dev. I’m gonna hop into their newest release now, so hoping to see some improvement there.

Legends of the Universe - Cosmic Bounty is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro pixel platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. It's an extremely badly made ripoff of Metroid (copyright Nintendo, 1986). To date, it's unclear whether Nintendo have taken any legal action against the "developer" to preserve their intellectual property rights. It's a very buggy (to the point of being unplayable) 2D retro pixel side scrolling "Metroidvania" platformer slapped together with GameMaker Studio, so the developer chose pretty much every way one could fail at game development and ran into them headfirst (again). It gets worse.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.

While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals. Compounding this problem, the developer didn't bother with resolutions over 720p, so the game looks like complete garbage. Despite being over 30 years newer than Metroid, the game looks considerably worse in quality.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers.

Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs.

Other reviewers report that the game also contains enough breaking bugs that it simply cannot be completed. I can't confirm this as the game presented enough defects almost immediately for me to make a fairly brisk assessment that it fails to meet acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 4 players. That's right, only 4. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is to be expected. Gamers just didn't take this low quality game seriously, and for good reason.

Legends of the Universe - Cosmic Bounty is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.

I was enjoying the game alright until I hit a glitch that made a red key-card disappear right at the end of the game (92% complete) making it impossible to progress. I tried exciting various times to close the game out and go back to the location of where they key-card should be, but it's just gone.

Buggy mess. I got softlocked twice during the playthrough bc the dev didn't consider backtracking (and this is a metroidvania of all things) after each upgrade and certain keycards literally disappear, to the point the last boss door needs 3 but if you get 2 the first one gets sent to the shadow realm, so if you did this and saved before realizing that (like me), then congrats, you softlocked the game again and will have to replay all this mess again.
I just went for the achievs but now I regret tbh.
Avoid it.

This game is exactly as advertised: a simple Metroidvania where you run around an alien complex for a few hours, collecting upgrades and unlocking new areas until you finally meet the boss at the end. The game is a little rough around the edges, and the level design is very basic, but it does the jumping mechanics right, and the character moves quickly enough (after getting the unlimited sprint upgrade early in the game) that exploring never feels tiresome. It is also very easy to complete 100%; all of the achievements are tied to progress, so if you play through the entire game and defeat the boss at the end you are guaranteed to get them all. I paid less than a dollar for it on sale and I am completely satisfied with my purchase.

I really enjoyed this game. For the price, it's quite a good deal. It feels a lot like Super Metroid, with hints about where to go next, as in Metroid Fusion. It has a lot of back-tracking, which could put some people off; it helps to take notes to remember just which power-ups you will need to access certain areas to reduce backtracking until you have the right ones.

There are a few minor bugs, but they are all easy to get around: The keyboard remapping screen is confusing until you realize it swaps Shoot with Run, and Bombs with Rockets. The Pause menu uses the standard jump, shoot, run, and map buttons, not digits as shown. When the game starts up, it remembers (but ignores) your saved Video and Audio settings, so you have to re-visit those option menus each time you start the game. One in-game bug is if you have a key and pause or reload, the key is gone. No worries; you can just go back and acquire the key again. Another is that sometimes while walking through a door, the arrow key gets stuck and you automatically moonwalk into the room, which can sometimes be dangerous. Tapping both arrow keys fixes this.

Fun game. Deserves more attention.

I enjoyed this game much better than the first. Graphics are a little more detailed and objectives and upgrades are shown on the map, (tip- if the objective isn't showing up on the map pause the game and you can view all maps that way). You can rebind controls to your liking. There's slightly less backtracking this time around too. There's even a short little shmup level as well. It's great to see the dev improving upon the first game.

Having said that, there's still a few things that need to be addressed... There's still a lot of rooms that are quite large and empty, so condensing and/or shortening them would make for a better experience. Music is still terrible and far too loud but thankfully you can lower or turn it off. It would be cool if running would be auto enabled and if you want to walk you could hold down a button instead of the other way around. The sound effect of running sounds really harsh, like he's running on a constant bed of water. Controller bindings don't save when you exit and restart the game.

For all it's faults though, it's still an enjoyable little bite-sized metroidvania that took me over 3 hours to finish. Looking forward to more games in the series, and a shmup would be cool too.

Short entertaining Metroidvania. It starts slow for the first 15 - 20 minutes or so, but it gets good after that. Fun platforming, classic Metroidvania exploration, decent story, good upgrades. My first run-through was under 4 hours, and I'm not an amazing gamer - so you may be able to run through it much faster.

I have several thoughts in the "Cons" category, but they are mostly minor. The good far outweighs the bad here.

The map is too helpful but also confusing (see below), there are not that many enemies. Enemies introduced in the first section never reappear, which is odd. Some power-ups are only used immediately after getting them and then almost never again. And other power ups are used so much you wonder why they aren't default.

Some of the barriers that are unlocked by power-ups are way too similar looking so you think you can open it with what you have, but you can't, and the animation doesn't really help to show why. (IE - if a beam can't open the door, it shouldn't pass through the door, it should stop at the door and maybe sparks fly off.)


MAP Problems: It tells you were things are, which is helpful, but I wish it was able to be turned on and off for people who want the challenge. It is divided up into sections that don't easily tell you which part connects to which. And some segments connect to multiple other segments. If you have the map for that area, you can always see where you are within that area - but it is not easy to see which areas you can get to from where you are. The areas don't have names and the maps aren't color coded or anything to each section.

Overall: Fun game, retro graphics, story that is better than it needs to be, solid game play. 7.5 / 10

Recomendo.Joguinho divertido, vale a pena quando tiver nas promoções.Com progressão à la metroidvania.Só tem uns problemas no mapeamento de controle,mas nada que não de para resolver.

Not as good as the first installment "Legends of the Universe - Starcore" but still a steal for it's price. I don't like that the game spoon feeds you everything. The first game didn't do that at least. Not a bad game though and I would still recommend it.

I was originally going to write a negative review, because I really enjoyed the last game in this series, and was hoping this one would follow suit. It sort of did, but I ran into a game-breaking bug, where I had to perma-quit. I asked the dev for help and they were basically like, "I pretty much can't fix this because the software I used to make it doesn't work on my new computer" - oh. Great.

But then, several months went by and suddenly, there's an update. They fixed it. I tried it and it works now. Rejoice!

On to the game itself. It's simple, graphically, musically, and in game play, but it's inexpensive, kind of catchy, and fun to play. Feels like playing an old MS-DOS or C64 game. It makes very efficient use of the elements employed. There's a fair amount of world-building and story behind it, or at least it feels like there is. I would call it Good Value.

not bad for it being $00.50 lol its like a open world 2d side scroller. kinda like a cheap metroid. if you have 50 cents left in your steam wallet after purchasing those holiday sales, why not just blow it on this game. ide recommend it to players who are tired of the same old gameplays and need a break for awhile.

Game breaking bugs make this valiant attempt at a metroidvania game a complete failure. I got the purple key card but couldn't open the purple door because it disappeared from my inventory! I got the red key card but couldn't open the red door because it disappeared from my inventory! I defeated Volgat but couldn't progress because I didn't have the beam weapon! Such a shame! The developers really should play test the game before releasing it! I did go back and finish the game after having to restart three times and really enjoyed it but it still gets the thumbs down.

Legends of the Universe - Cosmic Bounty is a side-scrolling, shooting adventure through a space station with some of the most basic environments using the ugliest color palette I've ever seen. That is the major, glaring flaw about the game. There are a lot of poor design choices, but there is still simple fun and enjoyment here. Before buying, ask yourself if you can take a light MetroidVania with basic enemies, basic bosses, basic secrets, long empty corridors and lots of backtracking that you can finish and 100% in under 4 hours? It's a poor recommendation, but you can do a lot worse for the low price. If it was a bad game, I would have given up at twenty minutes in. Compared to its contemporaries of the genre, it's easier, more forgiving with less hazards, enemies and annoyances.

You play as a blue clad, helmeted character with a white face plate and yellow cape in charge of other blue soldiers. Well that is until you crash land and you're forced chase after a bounty alone and on foot while your crew repairs the ship. I can only imagine this to be a parody to a certain 80s cartoon villain. Along the way you'll meet a green skinned woman with red hair in pink space armor that still remains an off-brand recognizable protagonist from a similar game.

The story takes a back-seat as it's all about the action and a scavenger hunt throughout a subterranean space base. You'll walk, run, jump, double-jump, glide, shoot, missile, bomb and beam your way through the area. When the game begins, you start with a lot of these powers, but that's to get your feet wet, to show you what's to come. It's a good taste, because then you're forced to earn it all again.

I am thankful the run is one of the first abilities to get unlocked, because wow there is a lot of running, backtracking and empty corridors. There are enemies, but the only hazards are spikes and those are sparse. It's a game geared toward the easier side of things. It's forgiving in a lot of ways. Fall in a pit? Respawn at the room's entrance without taking damage. There are health potions for lack of a better term that you can buy for 100 zil at stations scattered throughout the base. Using a potion refills your energy, but sometimes t uses more than one "potion" to restore your health. So it feels like I get robbed of an extra use when it happens.

Save points restore your health, rockets regenerate, your beam recharges slow and it's all manageable. When you die, you have to load your save again, so save often. Go out of your way to go back and save with the early parts of the game. The enemies start out tough, but get easier once you find upgrades for your projectile strength, health increase, defense boosts and projectile amounts.

I was at the point where no enemy could withstand me, because I had upgraded so much. That's when the game put a nice little twist on things. It's not about to be a spoiler, it's about to be something to entice you. At some point the statues scattered throughout the station that have been random background objects become alive and far greater foes.

The real issue with the game is the lack of detail. Sure it's a cheap game, but changing the player's armor color would go a long way to making a new defense feel special. There are plenty of weapon upgrades, but it's all the same gun, but more bullets. The environments as well look like a grid or a checker board at best. The colors are ugly, dim and dreary. It's a dark space station, but the area has so much color even if it's ugly color. Every area is unmemorable and it boils down to colors. Blue area, red area, orange area, purple area and so on. No area feels unique since they all use the same mechanics like fans to propel you upward and the same enemies. The bomb and rocket explosions feel out of place, like from another game since they have better colors and more detail to them.

Another big missing detail is a game over sequence. When you run out of health, you're kicked to the reload screen. There's no death, it's an instant cut to menu. Sure it saves time, but in a game where you live so long, the demise of your character means more. A simple explosion or death jingle would have worked wonders.

If you thought we're done talking about details, there are three types of walls that you can laser beam through, along with magnetic walls. All four are grey and the same cubic dimension, the laser walls have X on them and the describable difference is their shade. For a while I felt the laser wasn't working like it had been.

The laser in general is a flawed method to break through these tiny blocks, because it drains quick, takes a while to recharge and only goes straight forward. Imagine clearing bricks from a wall with a sniper rifle rather than opening a door. A lot of the time I was stuck waiting for the beam to recharge, because it failed to destroy the small blocks to let me pass through. This resulted in wasted time.

There's a lot of what feels like wasted time. Waiting for vertical moving platforms to come down for a lift. Having to backtrack so much, which leads me to the map. This map has a lot of pros and cons. You can call it up and have it laid on the screen as you play. You can see the room locations of collectables and save spots. The biggest help of all is seeing the location of your next goal. The down side to the map is the fact it only shows you your next goal if you're in that map's area. So if you're in the blue area, but the goal is in the red area, you need to get to the red area, before you can see where the goal is. On the map, you'll see tiny dots off to the side of rooms. These tiny dots are how you find new areas or sectors. These little yellow dots can be easy to miss when the map is transparent laid over the action on screen. Having a mini map on the screen would have also been nice. Another thing I noticed is sometimes the map was a bit incorrect. My position shown in a simple blue dot would be in the wrong room. The adjacent area marker would be in the wrong place. It's nothing big.

With secrets, they're basic walk through walls sort of stuff. Most secrets are easy to find since items get marked on the map. So if you explored an area and there is no item, it's behind a secret wall. Sometimes the game would lure me into thinking there's a secret, by having destructible blocks next to a solid wall, but I was still unable to go through.

As for other frills of the game, it keeps track of your progress when you view the save files, but it marked me as having 100% when I knew there were still items left behind level-3 beam walls. I was too far into the finale to go back tracking yet again to scrub each area down. It was frustrating getting a new item, scrubbing everything down to discover oh I still can't break through that beam wall despite having the beam.

Cosmic Bounty makes full use of every face and shoulder button on a controller. This allows you to fire rockets, shoot your gun and a beam all at the same time. It's good for wiping out tougher enemies. The default controls felt awful with shoot as the B button and run as the X button, so thanks to the rebinds, I set the shoulder to trigger run and the shoot to be X. After rebinding, I had to rebind them several more times. Sometimes performing rebinds would get me stuck in a black screen that I assume was the rebinds menu, but unseen off screen somewhere. It was impossible to leave or progress.

There is an issue late in the game where enemies fire projectiles from off screen and your character is too big to dodge. It becomes a gambit of bullets that you have to beam your way through, because your bullets and rockets dissipate when they leave the screen.

I will reiterate that Cosmic Bounty falls somewhere in the middle ground of games that have problems, but they're still fun enough to keep playing. Worth a try if you can get past its lack of details.

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