None of the characters would be specifically memorable if it wasn't for the game's writing. This sense of humor and fun bleeds into the gameplay at every turn, too. The nerd has a crush on the jock, the goth kid has a creative streak, and the class clown has a mildly contentious relationship with the rich kid. Each character fills in a specific archetype that you might expect from any John Hughes movie, just with less hostility. In-between solving puzzles and exploring, you'll be introduced to Cosmonious High's teachers and students. While only the game's most complex, optional puzzles will ask players to cycle through the game's myriad of mechanics quickly, its moment-to-moment gameplay will certainly require you to make equal use of every power at your disposal.

Where some puzzle-adventure games would see players focusing on one core mechanic and expecting them to turn it inside-out, Cosmonious High opts to include a wide breadth of mechanics that often play together in interesting ways.

Cosmonious High throws a number of seemingly unsolvable puzzles in front of you, only for your hands to start glowing, initiating a sequence where you get a new power.

You'll play as a Prismi, a type of alien that can adapt their abilities and powers to their surroundings. Owlchemy understands that people of all ages are likely to walk (or teleport) through the halls of Cosmonious High, and its gameplay complexity and diversity reflect that. Like the best family-friendly games, Cosmonious High's aimed as much at younger audiences as it is towards adults.

What you're left with is a sci-fi school experience that leaves you waiting for the bus ride back home.Windows 10, Intel Core i5-4590 equivalent or better, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 / 970, AMD Radeon RX 480 equivalent or better, 5GB available space There are instructions scattered around the school in the form of textbooks, but those only cover the bare basics of the controls. Adding to the frustration, most of the time, the game just sort of expects you to know what to do. Step back too far and you can't even reach the terminals. Step too close and the terminals are spaced too far to connect in one motion. Simple enough in theory, but not in practice. One puzzle, for example, requires players to connect a set of colored terminals to their respective matches.

Other actions, though, are frustratingly clumsy and awkward. Some things work great, like being able to quickly swap between abilities by taping a button on the back of your glove or reaching behind you to grab your backpack and search through your collected items. In a lot of ways, Cosmonious High feels like an unpolished tech demo, meant to show off the range of activities available in VR, but in a disjointed and half-finished way. In fact, for all their bubbly enthusiasm and friendly smiles, the characters are little more than set dressing, providing the occasional distraction between solving puzzles. The characters are an odd mix of cheery and oblivious, which makes for a strong disconnect when they want to carry on happy conversations while the school hallways are literally burning down around them. The game's bright and colorful, with a quirky sort of style and personality that would feel more at home on a kids' show for preschoolers. But the first day at an intergalactic school where everything seems to be breaking down, all while going through the alien equivalent of puberty and growing into a new assortment on quirky abilities? Well, that's just another day at Cosmonious High. The first day at a new school is always stressful.

Cosmonious high characters