Google’s virtual reality studio, Owlchemy Labs, is back with its “play with everything” approach to virtual reality in Cosmological high. As a student at an alien high school, you’ll discover a host of fun powers and items to play with. After graduating from Vacation Simulator, is the studio’s next game getting a perfect score? Find out in our full review of Cosmological high.

Cosmological high Details:

Available on: Quest 2 (not on Quest 1), SteamVR
Release date: March 31, 2022
Developer: Owlchemy Labs
Revised on: Quest 2

Gameplay

Although the game diverges in setting and structure from previous Owlchemy Labs games—Job Simulator (2016) & Vacation Simulator (2019)—Cosmonious High shares a lot in common with the Simulator series. Specifically, Cosmological high is densely packed with all sorts of interactive elements that cohesively respond to established rules in the world, creating a canvas for experimentation.

In Cosmological high you play as a Prismi, a new alien creature that can manifest various powers, such as the ability to shoot water, wind, or fire from your hands. The whole game takes place on your first day of school where things go a little wrong and it’s up to you to fix them.

Beyond just fixing what’s broken, you’ll enter unique classrooms where you’ll learn how the world works, complete missions, and gain new powers as you go. Throughout, you will be invited to experience the rules of the world and the objects around you.

Through “homework” in each class, you’ll interact with the game’s tight cast of alien characters and complete various tasks to your teachers’ satisfaction.

Take the chemistry lesson, for example, where players mix and heat various liquids to discover new compounds that do interesting things. Bouncium, for example, can be poured over just about any object in the game to make it bouncy. The same goes for Stickium, which causes objects to clump together into a big sticky ball. And from there, the game encourages you to keep experimenting and exploring by combining different compounds to see what else you can come up with.

And that’s the essence of Cosmoniosis High– experiment with the rules of the world to see what happens. You will need some natural curiosity to get the most out of the game.

And the fun part is that something almost always come. The depth of interactions displayed between the player and the world (including characters) goes far beyond what is seen elsewhere in VR.

Your powers, for example, seem to interact with almost everything. You can use your water spray to push objects or wash them after painting them. You can use your ice power to freeze things, then use your fire power to melt them. At some point, you’ll gain a “mind-reading” power that will allow you to target just about anya or anything throughout the game and you’ll get a thought bubble that tells you what it’s thinking.

The world of Cosmological high is very good at letting the player do things that seem logical given the established rules. For example, I came across a little puzzle that required me to light a wick on fire. At this point in the game, I hadn’t acquired the firepower, but had smuggled out a Bunsen burner from Chemosophy (by storing it in my backpack); Much to my delight, the game allowed me to use the Bunsen burner to ignite the fuse and top up the power, rather than making me wait to get the firepower later in the game.

Corn Cosmonious High’s the gameplay almost never goes beyond the “guided sandbox”. You’re given a world full of interesting objects and logical mechanics, but what you’re asked to do with them is never really that fun or challenging. There’s rarely a satisfying climax where you put everything you’ve learned to the test – an odd choice for a game designed around a “school” – or where all the mechanics come together in a way that makes them particularly synergistic. For the most part, you just listen to simple instructions and interact with game characters.

Although the game’s characters are well-designed, differentiated, and as interactive as the rest of the environment, their overtly heartbreaking attitude and mundane conflicts are very much like the kind of thing you’d find in a children’s show.

In reality, Cosmological high overall looks like a game designed for kids. The world as depicted resembles a tween’s notion of what a fantasy high school might look like. And while there’s no problem with games for kids, it’s an odd audience to target given that the game’s key platform, Quest 2, is explicitly aimed at kids 13 and older. When I imagine a real high school student playing Cosmological high I imagine a lot of eye rolling.

And I think it’s important here to distinguish between “family friendly” and “designed for kids”. I would call a movie like The world of Nemo ‘family friendly’; although it is suitable for children, adults can enjoy it just as well. Cosmological highon the other hand, feels more “designed for kids” than not – more than “family friendly” work simulator & Vacation Simulator.

For me (since I’m not… you know, 13 years old) it’s a shame because Cosmological high is a technically brilliant game. It’s visually sharp with excellent art direction, voice acting, character designs, interactivity, affordances, and ridiculous attention to detail. And it works really well on Quest 2, even with the emphasis on lots of physical stuff. It really just lacks more solidity Gameplay to support sandbox and task completion elements, while being accessible to a more general audience.

It took me about six hours to complete Cosmological high, having done about 80% of the game’s optional content. Optional content largely comes in the form of collectibles and optional tasks. There are trading cards to find, broken lights and pipes to fix, stamps to collect, and Blebs to discover.

Blebs are downright adorable spherical creatures that you can find throughout the school. As cute as they are, I was sad to find that they served no purpose other than being unbearably endearing.

Immersion

Cosmological high is full of rich interactivity the likes of which is rarely seen elsewhere in virtual reality. Rather than traveling through distant but sparse lands, the game contains a smaller area to the brim with things to touch, see, and play. Food can be eaten, containers can be filled with liquid, paint can coat surfaces, instruments can be played… in many ways.

At some point in chemistry class, I learned how to brew the game’s version of coffee, which then allowed me to dispense it from a machine capable of dispensing any of the compounds I have discovered so far. After filling a cup with it, I wondered if I could just lean over and drink it straight from the spout. Of course I could! Just one of a thousand little interactive details that the folks at Owlchemy had the foresight to include.

Interactivity really is the name of the game; if it looks like you can touch it, you almost certainly can.

And it’s not just objects. The characters are also charming and responsive. Spray them with water and they will spit it out at you. Try to freeze them and they will react physically and through dialogue. Throw something at them and they’ll catch it. You can even give them a first bump or a high-five.

You can also talk to characters in a simple but effective way. When you approach one, reach for your mouth and you’ll pop out a bubble filled with icons representing your dialogue choices.

And what school is complete without a backpack? Reach behind you and pull out your backpack which conveniently stores your inventory, lists of collectibles, and even a camera you can use to take in-game photos (which also come in-game). The backpack also allows you to store items to take them from place to place.

Cosmological high use a Half-Life: Alyx –like the forced pull system where you can target distant objects with your outstretched hand, grab to select, then pull to throw the object into your hand. it does not feel enough as sophisticated as Alex implementation, but it works great and remains my favorite force-pull variant to date.

Comfort

Cosmological high supports only teleportation movement and rapid rotation and is exceptionally comfort-conscious throughout. I can’t remember a single moment during gameplay where the game itself did something that made me feel dizzy or disoriented. Although it’s a disappointment for the “one fluid motion” crowd, moving itself isn’t much of the gameplay (most of the time you’re at a station doing things with your hands), so it might not be as detrimental to the experience as you might think.

The game has no qualms about letting you push things past the performance limit on Quest 2, which can seriously drop the framerate to unplayable (and uncomfortable) levels.

While nothing in the game I’ve ever been guest do would reach this point, those with a little patience can easily spawn more items than the game can reasonably handle.

Luckily, there are plenty of trash cans spread out in which you can use to demolish any performance-hogging creations and get yourself back up to speed.