Cosmic Bump Review

It seems they can’t come out with new physics games fast enough to satisfy the demand for people to obsessively drag and tap on their iPhones and iPads. While we’d all probably prefer if they’d just make new Angry Birds levels every week, Cosmic Bump adds a fun new wrinkle into the physics canon. It’s physics meets pinball.

In Cosmic Bump, you have to help aliens collect enough power (represented by little lightning bolts), to launch their spaceship. You do this by launching the alien into the level and tapping the various obstacles to guide him along. Each different world gives you a new factor to work with, be it bubbles to float higher, fans to blow in the right direction, or teleporters.

It would be enough to have a whole new set of rules to think about as you plan the perfect launch, but Cosmic Bump combines this with pinball. Most of the levels have flippers in them, so as your alien bounces around you can actually flip it like a pinball. Don’t get too excited about the pinball though. There may be a few boards where you can use your mad skills to shoot the alien into the power cells, but the flippers are usually just another prop in the physics game. You have to open or close them to pass the alien through the level.

Cosmic Bump is fun and I was certainly hooked on playing level after level. It’s also a little too easy. I beat all six worlds in less than a day, though the “Coming Soon” screen indicates there will be more to come either as an update or additional download content. I was never stuck on a level for more than a few tries, and most of them aren’t that hard to win with three stars (the max score).

It’s weird to say you want a game to annoy you, but with physics puzzles there needs to be a certain challenge. It shouldn’t be unfair, but you should have to work at it. As long as you know what you have to do to solve the level, it's ok if they make it as difficult for the player to actually execute the perfect play. Cosmic Bump never had me shaking my iPhone in anger or furiously trying to fit in a few more games before bedtime.

Sometimes your alien can get stuck landing somewhere where none of the elements can make it move. It’s not that big a deal because you can just restart the level, and as I said before, it never takes more than a few tries to clear one. You’d just think they might debug that before release.

This sounds like I was really bored with the game, but I wasn’t. I had fun flipping aliens into fans and popping bubbles. I just plowed through Cosmic Bump as a lark. For a buck, Cosmic Bump is fine for a day’s entertainment and we’ll see if they come out with some new levels that step up the challenge a bit.

App Store Link: Cosmic Bump for iPhone & iPad | By Chillingo Ltd | Price: $0.99 | Version: 1.0 | 14.9 MB | Rating 4+