I am going to begin this post by saying that I love puzzle games. There is nothing about them that I do not adore and hours of my life can be lost staring at a good set of levels. So whenever I am fortunate enough to get my hands on something by Draknek & Friends that has had the involvement of Alan Hazelden, my calendar empties so I can be immersed! That has been the case for A Monster’s Expedition, Sokobond, Sokobond Express, Bonfire Peaks, The Electrifying Incident and the recent Spooky Express (the walkthrough can be found here) which I had the privilege of testing. Cosmic Express was no different!
Cosmic Express is unsurprisingly based in space! There are a range of adorable aliens, each need transporting from the small station that you find them to their specific home. Each carriage of the train can only take one alien and you must lay the train tracks to get each and every one home before exiting through the predesigned exit point to the next puzzle. The graphics are brilliant! Each puzzle is set within a dome and each of the ‘boxes’ the aliens disembark to transform into a wonderful home just right for your recent passenger.
The game is fully controller compatible and the task of knowing who wants to reach which point feels totally intuitive. As with all creations from this company, you cannot fault the sheer amount of gameplay that you get. There is over a hundred levels and hour upon hour of possible gameplay. Yet it never reaches the point of feeling tedious. The curve in difficulty increases at a pace you can keep up with whilst the new mechanics and increase in quantity of the old ones keep the areas fresh. One of my favourites involves an alien that reminds me of Slimer from Ghostbusters. Once he has left a carriage he has left it in such an undesirable state that no other alien will get in!
There are also extra puzzles within a selection of the levels. These are called Monoliths and a certain set of requirements must be met to cause the black box to rise to a full pillar with light emitted from it. I did not spot these until I was part way through gameplay and was so excited that I had to backtrack!
Cosmic Express is a delight for true puzzle gamers. If you do not want to spend hours delighting in all the possible ways to lay train tracks, smile as aliens reach their destination and feel soothed by the soundtrack then it is not for you. For those of you like me – this is your next game!
It is available on Steam as well as other platforms.
My Cosmic Express walkthrough with timestamped solutions can be found here.
