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Cogs Review for PC

Cogs Review for PC

A Tinkerer’s Dream

As steampunk fans will attest to, there’s something oddly alluring about watching large masses of cranking gears, billowing pipes, rotating wheels, and other miscellaneous mechanical widgets all working in tandem towards some ultimately obscure goal. But imagine what it’s like for the person who must assemble this mess into something functional – a maddening or intriguing task, depending on who you ask. If you’re up for a compelling but brutal challenge, the two-person independent development team at Lazy 8 Studios might have exactly what you’re looking for. Cogs is the perfect puzzle game for tinkerers… and sadomasochists.

Cogs screenshot

Meta Quest 3 128GB - Asgard’s Wrath 2 Bundle
  • 2x the graphic processing power of Quest 2 with the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2
  • Mixed reality blends virtual elements and physical space
  • 4K+ Infinite display
  • 3D audio with enhanced clarity and bass
  • Touch Plus controllers deliver a more intuitive experience
  • Library of over 500 titles
We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

Some might recall those tricky sliding puzzles that require you to assemble a scrambled picture by moving tiles around one at a time. Cogs takes this core puzzle premise and throws it into a blender with a ton of moving mechanical parts. The result is a curiously entrancing game that’s incredibly captivating in its earlier stages and increasingly becomes more brain-melting the further you progress. While most puzzle game fans will be intrigued enough to give it a spin, it takes a very particular type of player – one with nerves of steel, lightening-speed cognitive function, saint-like patience, and an insatiable desire for completion – to fully overcome this beast.

Instead of solving a scrambled picture, these slide puzzles have you moving tiles, with various gizmos attached to them, around on a flat board or 3D object to complete a cornucopia of strange inventions. There’s only one empty space in each board (or section on a 3D level) to move tiles into, which makes shifting pieces around to where you want them to go part of the challenge – even when you know where they need to be placed in order to work properly. Only tiles adjacent to an empty space can be moved, and a quick click of the mouse slides them into place. You can also slide a full or partial row of blocks if you choose to cut down on the number of moves. Solving the puzzles is hard enough to begin with, but the inventor mode (the main area of the game) imposes strict time limits and tallies your every move.

Cogs screenshot

Only a few of the game’s 50 levels are unlocked from the start, and you’ll gain access to more levels as you earn points by completing puzzles speedily and efficiently. Each level is scored in three categories – completion, time, and moves – and you’re given a bronze, silver, or gold metal (which adds one, two, or three points to you total, respectively) for meeting predetermined performance benchmarks. Beating a given puzzle automatically earns you a gold metal, but the time it takes you to beat a level and the number of moves can impact the number of points your receive substantially. Replaying previous puzzles to get a better score is always an option, and you can skip over some puzzles if you have enough points accrued.

Meta Quest 3 128GB - Asgard’s Wrath 2 Bundle
  • 2x the graphic processing power of Quest 2 with the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2
  • Mixed reality blends virtual elements and physical space
  • 4K+ Infinite display
  • 3D audio with enhanced clarity and bass
  • Touch Plus controllers deliver a more intuitive experience
  • Library of over 500 titles
We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

The puzzles are deceptively clever. Things are relatively simple early-on. You’ll chain together rows of cogs on flat, solitary planes to power larger gears, move pipes around to direct steam (filling balloons and triggering other devices), and figure how to ring chimes. Eventually, 3D levels are thrown into the mix, allowing you to right click and manipulate the object you’re working on to solve multiple puzzles incorporated into its various sides. After the first dozen puzzles the challenge spikes dramatically. A variety of musical tasks appear; they include moving gears around to get two separate bells to ring simultaneously and getting hammers to strike different bells with just the right timing to trigger a brief tune. You’ll quickly find yourself working with combinations of gears, pipes, and other elements in a single puzzle. Then there’s the charm of working on recognizable mechanical objects like a bike, a tank, a rocket, a music box, and others.

Cogs screenshot

Cogs’ presentation (which lacks a story, cutscenes, dialogue, or other accoutrements) may be a little too bare for some tastes, yet the way the mechanical themes are worked into the menu navigation is truly remarkable. The menu itself is a machine of sorts; every button you press or selection you make causes gears to crank and grind as sub menus whirl around and click into place. The developers’ inherent creativity and obvious appreciation for both sliding puzzles and mechanical constructs is readily apparent in every facet of the game’s unique design. Beyond being tricky to complete, the puzzles are visually interesting and will frequently inspire awe. Unfortunately, this head-scratching sense of wonder will, more often than not, fall into the “they expect me to do WHAT?!” category.

Cogs screenshot

The game’s complexity and difficulty catapults to staggering heights well before its conclusion. In fact, less hearty puzzle gamers may throw their hands up in frustration within the first dozen puzzles. Imposing time and move score restrictions substantially increases the intensity of the game, and the constant drive required to complete the puzzle with a high enough score to unlock later levels can be a bit much at times. The stress this induces can quickly override the fun, particularly in most of the levels past the first quarter. Countering this slightly, two secondary play modes let you focus on either completing puzzles within a set time or completing them within a set number of moves, not both. Points earned in either mode all go towards your overall totals in the main game, which still lets you unlock new levels and progress a bit further after you’ve inevitably reached a roadblock. However, without cheats, you’ll be hard-pressed to make it to the final puzzle.

Cogs is a highly commendable effort, due to the creative spirit and drive of its two-person development team. Slide-puzzle addicts with a steampunk fetish will undoubtedly find themselves in heaven. Casual puzzle players may find Cogs easy to get into, but they’ll just as quickly wind up bludgeoned into submission by its grueling difficulty. The lack of a hint system is a major oversight. Still, players who enjoy brain boggling challenges will derive some measure of enjoyment from this quirky puzzler. A high threshold for frustration also helps.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 4.0 Graphics
Highly creative presentation. Visually impressive, despite a lack of bells and whistles (bad pun). 3.8 Control
Manipulating tiles with the mouse is easy, though the very nature of the puzzles can make the limited mechanic frustrating. 3.7 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The way sound and music is incorporated into the puzzles is clever. 3.9 Play Value
Tons of awesome steampunk puzzles to tackle affords lots of play value, but it’s counterbalanced by an absurd level of difficulty that sets in quickly. 3.8 Overall Rating – Good
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • 50 challenging levels and three play modes to explore.
  • Clever combination of slide-puzzles and steampunk gadgetry.
  • Use gears, pipes, steam, bells, and more to complete each invention.

  • Meta Quest 3 128GB - Asgard’s Wrath 2 Bundle
    • 2x the graphic processing power of Quest 2 with the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2
    • Mixed reality blends virtual elements and physical space
    • 4K+ Infinite display
    • 3D audio with enhanced clarity and bass
    • Touch Plus controllers deliver a more intuitive experience
    • Library of over 500 titles
    We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.
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