Blood Nova Reviews

4/10 - Good writing and plot but bad puzzles in a sci-fi fantasy adventure that feels like it wants to be more than it is. I feel this is one of the weaker games from Cosmic Void (played three so far). The setting and world building is pretty good and the plot is alright, but it also feel like it want to tell a much grander space opera story, you get a ton of concepts and names thrown at you and a lot are of little value to the story. Perhaps they where hoping to make this into a series, and if there are more games in this world, then I might be interested, but in the context of this game it's a lore dump with little payoff. What's worse is that the puzzle design is pretty bad. Too much moon logic and "click on everything with everything and hope something happens" puzzles, it doesn't help that several of the inventory objects are magical sci-fi objects that you get very little context of what you are supposed to do with it. In other point and click adventures you often have some idea of what you can use a specific object with, or a general idea of what you might need to solve a specific object. The map you use to move around with is also pretty terrible with only some areas available depending on what room you are in, but with little logic in why. There are so many other games in this genre that I have to draw the line somewhere of what to recommend and not, and unfortunately this has too many flaws.

I really enjoyed Blood Nova. Gorgeous pixel art, rad music, and interesting writing. The story is about an aloof space-princess-queen-to-be who escapes her assassination and must unravel the mystery in a sparsly populated intergalactic lighthouse. The esoteric magic meets sci-fi brought The Incal to mind in way of vibes. And I liked the lore and political intrigue. Cosmic Void does a lot in it's short run time (which is a perfect length for the story they wanted to tell). The puzzles are pretty decent poink adventure stuff. Nothing too difficult though a couple I had to brute force my way through because esoteric sci-fi logic. Nothing egregious. This is the first game I've played from Cosmic Void and certainly won't be my last! Great first impression and I really look forward to playing more from them! Huge recommendation for poink adventure fans!

Pros - Looks great; pixel art with a beautiful color palette. - Can be played entirely with mouse, including exiting and saving the game. - Pretty good puzzle design, standard point and click inventory based puzzles for the most part with a few mini-game bits that seemed like they were optional. - Rather then clicking on doors/exits within a scene. Navigation between rooms is via a small grid popup menu in the corner. I've used similar systems in other games and it works well once you get used to it. - Decent story. Cons - While I respect the immense world building I really would have appreciated some kind of compendium or codex to keep track of everything. So many names, places, cultural and religious references etc It certainly made the game immersive but was a bit of an information overload IMHO. - There were a couple of times that I swear the solution to the puzzle was something I already tried. I wasn't even going to bother mentioning this because I figure it must be my own mistake but I see that its something specifically mentioned in another review so it does make me wonder if there is a couple of bugs or misaligned hot-spots or just some point and click gotchas like dependencies on particular sequence. Overall highly recommended.

Don't let the "1.1h" playtime on this review fool you - I played the game through Steam library sharing feature on my main account. This is a very fun first person POV point & click adventure game, albeit be prepared for a LOT of reading. Princess Love has thoughts on a lot of subjects, including just about any hot spot you click on, and she is not shy at monologuing them. Sure, you can skip all the inner (and outer) dialogue, but then you wouldn't get the proper experience of the game. The story is exciting, with some twists that, at least to me, were unexpected. I don't agree with some of the choices Love made, but then I'm not Love so that's to be expected. I do wish that she'd have explained the reason for those choices better (or, at all, in the case of a very big one at the end), as for once she was unexpectedly silent there. Having said that, there are some plot holes (or at least there's lack of explanations for why those wouldn't be plot holes, though it wouldn't be too hard to think of them). The setting is one of science fantasy, with space travel, space aliens, and space magic. There is a strange mix of serious and ... ridiculously silly, which might put some people off. For example, there's a character with a snow globe for a head. A literal snow globe, with snow and a snowman and everything. No explanation given. And they're otherwise a very serious character, not a joke one. You can see them in the game trailer video on the store page. The puzzles are, for the most part, pretty easy if you pay attention. There are still a few though where I went "Huh? How I was supposed to think of that?", particularly when it came to the "magic" side of things. And one "puzzle" towards the end was a board game against an A.I. that took me far too many tries until I finally baaarely won. The board game in question has identical rules to the ancient 1993 DOS game Hexxagon, though the board is smaller and doesn't have gaps. Usually I stay away from first person adventure games, especially ones where you click to go to other room rather than smooth-moving to them, as I quickly lose my bearings and which rooms connect to which, but Blood Nova makes it simple by having you move to rooms by clicking on the minimap, so that solved that particular personal issue of mine. On a technical side, I didn't encounter any bugs. The graphics are ... well, you can see them in the screenshots. If you like the style, great. If you don't, the game may not be for you. The music is great, though not always quite fitting what's happening, especially near the beginning. There is unfortunately no voice acting, I imagine the dev simply didn't have the budget for professional voice actors who would do the characters justice, and decided that silence was better than amateurishly voicing the characters themselves. On the whole, I enjoyed the game, and would be interested in a sequel.