Strange but Good
With literally tens of thousands of games crowding the App Store, iOS developers face the increasingly difficult challenge of creating games that are not just fun to play but interesting enough to get noticed as well. Numerous strategies are employed to accomplish this: well-polished design, innovative gameplay, stunning 3D graphics, or a unique storyline. Kosmo Spin is the type of game that distinguishes itself through a single pervasive concept that can be summed up best in one word — quirkiness. The very premise of the game, rescuing personified breakfast foods from alien invaders bent on their abduction, is nothing short of bizarre. But the makers of Kosmo Spin didn’t stop there; they saturated every facet of the game with idiosyncrasies ranging from cute to quixotic. This common theme of all things unexpected certainly makes the game different, but it also succeeds in making it surprisingly fun.
Breakfast and Basketballs
The design of Kosmo Spin is both beautifully polished and engaging. Through the use of bright colors, rough edges, and a cut-and-paste scrapbook paper style, the game’s designers have created a tiny world that feels cleverly cohesive and decidedly unique. As is sometimes the case with other games, you never get the feeling that Kosmo Spin is a regurgitated concept stolen from another already successful game within the iOS ecosystem; everything from the menu systems to the sound design feels custom, and the game has clearly been created from the ground up for iOS.
Kosmo Spin’s controls, while nothing groundbreaking, are well-suited to the iPhone’s touchscreen and have an extremely simple learning curve. If you can swipe your finger in a circle, you will soon find yourself, a strange little character named Nod, scampering around the surface of a minuscule planet rescuing breakfast muffins and reflecting extraneous athletic equipment back towards the UFO that just launched them towards your head. Ok, I told you this game was weird. If by chance you fail to bounce said sporting goods back into space, their impact creates a short but devastating earthquake which momentarily impairs your mobility and exposes you and your beloved breakfast foods to the dangers of the alien invader’s tractor beam. As bizarre as it sounds, that’s all there is to this game — stay alive as long as possible while preventing your planet’s little muffin people from becoming some alien’s interstellar brunch.
Short but Sweet
Kosmo Spin’s simplicity is also where it comes up a bit short. This is not the sort of game that will attract the attention of hardcore gamers pining for the latest first-person shooter or tower defense title for their iPhone. Despite the inclusion of over forty additional challenges along with the primary arcade mode, Kosmo Spin may still feel a bit simplistic even for some casual gamers. However, the cuteness and quirkiness of the Kosmo universe is endearing enough to win over plenty of other fans who just want a quick play in their pockets — one that also happens to provide an amusing chuckle from time to time. And at 99 cents, Kosmo Spin makes it hard for anyone to pass up on the intergalactic muffin-rescuing adventure that awaits.
