CosmoOdyssey: Trip to Mars is a first-person spaceship adventure with a special Ukrainian flavor.
The game follows a young boy from Pavlovo Pole who developers from Kharkiv and Dnipro recruit to travel to Mars and collect metal for infrastructure development. However, the boy hopes to use the trip's earnings to start his own farming business back on Earth, providing him with personal motivations beyond the businessmen's interests. This Ukrainian-focused premise and setting offer a distinctive cultural flavor that sets the experience apart from more generic space-themed narratives.
Players can freely navigate the various compartments of the protagonist's spaceship, engaging in a variety of hands-on activities. These include cooking, searching for lost items like the TV remote, and even dealing with unexpected situations like a flood. This intimate, first-person approach to spaceship management and problem-solving effectively immerses players in the role of the young Ukrainian astronaut.
In addition to the spaceship exploration, the game also incorporates farming and resource management elements. Drawing on the protagonist's experience as an agronomist, players can harvest sunflowers and cereals, as well as process them into oil. This unexpected gameplay layer allows players to experience the challenges of maintaining self-sufficient food production in the harsh environment of space.
A standout feature of the experience is its dedication to authentic Ukrainian localization. The game features full voice-over in the Ukrainian language, including the "Syrzhik" dialect of Kharkiv. This attention to linguistic and cultural detail helps to deeply immerse players in the unique setting and story, creating a strong sense of place that is often lacking in more generic space-themed games.