Cosmic Top Secret

Cosmic Top Secret Too was reviewed on a PS4

What do you really know about your parents? Did you ever wonder what your dad did at work all day? Is your mother really who she pretends to be? Could your parents be real life spies? These are the questions that Cosmic Top Secret’s protagonist, Trine Laier, dared to ask. She eventually got the answers she wanted, and thus Cosmic Top Secret was born, a documentary in the shape of a videogame.

What is Cosmic Top Secret?

Cosmic Top Secret is a real life term used by the NATO to designate a document that’s highly classified. If it were to leak, it would cause a national catastrophe. The definition alone should give you an idea of what the game is about. Spy movie buffs and cold war enthusiasts will find plenty to love as they discover the abundance of pieces of intel during the game’s 6 – 8 hours of playtime.

The game doesn’t make things easy for you though. You’ll have to piece all of the clues together yourself in order to wrap your head around this entangling web of conspiracies, schemes and pure, raw human emotions. The intel pieces aren’t organized by their chronological or logical order, so you get the joyful feeling of playing detective by linking them all together.

A Personal Story

This isn’t just a story about the cold war or the Danish Intelligence, this is also Trine’s personal story, and she bares some of her own secrets as well as her parents’ in Cosmic Top Secret. It’s more than a playable documentary; it’s an exploration of her life, thoughts and feelings. Cosmic Top Secret is filled with real emotions, real interactions and real experiences, wrapped up in the gorgeous paper cutouts design of its world and characters.

Trine’s Father has an enigmatic life to say the least. He worked with the Danish Intelligence, he was an economics genius and he developed the inverted matrix. Because of his inverted matrix, I got a few subpar grades in college, but at least we got a great videogame out of it. During the game, he’ll get to reunite with his old colleagues, visit his old workplace and teach us all about the DASK, Denmark’s first computer.

What’s great about Cosmic Top Secret is that the footage collected are all raw and unedited. Since Trine is interviewing those who are closest to her, their exchanges are filled with heartwarming moments, inside jokes and witty banters. This makes the game cozy like a warm blanket, as if you’re part of a Sunday family dinner.

A World of Paper

The game’s world is completely made of paper. You move around on punched tape, the characters are cardboard cutouts and the floor is made up of maps filled with coordinates. The clues that you’re collecting are seamlessly integrated into the world of Comic Top Secret thanks to its wonderful paper aesthetic.

You move around by crumbling onto the floor and turning into a paper ball. In one of the later areas, you even turn into a paper airplane as you fly into Poland and take photographs of classified locations. Your objective in each area is to collect nine intel pieces, which you can decipher and decode in order to use a secret code that will let you access the next area. The puzzles aren’t too complex though, and you generally have a good idea on what to do next.

The game’s map can be confusing at times but it does tell you at what coordinates each piece of intel is located. The UI was a bit confusing as well, but eventually I got the hang of it. Each of the game’s areas are perfectly sized, they’re not too vast so you wouldn’t get much lost in them, and they’re compact enough that you’d easily find your way around.

Gameplay Leaves a Lot To Be Desired

The camera is difficult to control and the movement is a bit sluggish. You can consider that part of the game’s charm since your character moves around as a paper ball, but it was more annoying than charming to me. The controls shouldn’t have too much of an impact on your experience though, since the game’s main source of enjoyment is untangling the constant stream of clues and documents it keeps throwing your way. The overall experience was also bogged down by the clunky platforming sections, which were unnecessary and added nothing of value to the game.

Overall,

Cosmic Top Secret is a unique experience, there’s nothing quite like it out there. It’s a charming, autobiographical documentary with a beautiful art design. It tells a personal and emotional story, you can feel the raw emotions in many of the game’s interview footages; in her mother’s reluctance to talk about her husband’s first wife, and in her father’s excitement when visiting the old building where he used to work, to name a few. It’s clear that Cosmic Top Secret is a project that Trine holds very dear to her heart.

Cosmic Top Secret stands as a new genre of its own, fusing between videogames and documentaries. It’s brought to life thanks to the memorable visual style. It’s an intriguing and entertaining experience, despite the lackluster gameplay mechanics and annoying platforming sections.

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Special thanks go to Nakana.io for providing us with a review code.

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You should play Cosmic Top Secret if you

• Love the idea of playing a documentary
• Don’t mind the frustrating platforming
• Love the paper visual style
• Don’t mind the clunky mechanics
• Love to uncover secrets

Cosmic Top Secret’s Score

8.5/10