Developer and publisher, Owlchemy Labs, takes being the new kid in school to another level in Cosmonious High, where taking classes is balanced with trying to fix malfunctions and restore the school before it's destroyed by meteors. With the cowardly principal locked away, saving the school is up to the Prismi and their adaptive abilities. Students and teachers help along the way as the new Prismi student fixes errors, puts out fires, and restores the school to its former glory.
Cosmonious High starts with the Prismi's bus crashing into the malfunctioning school. The Prismi will gain and wield their first power, a water spray, in order to put out the fires and safely exit the bus. There are additional fires and other debris throughout the school that can be cleared to gain clean-up credits. Credits are needed to enter new classrooms and gain powers that can help save the school. As the Prismi attends different classes, they'll come across situations where they need to adapt in order to complete assignments and stop disasters.
Powers can be switched at any time by accessing the menus on each hand. Multiple evolution abilities in the game can also be used at once by assigning different powers to each hand. As the story progresses, more powers are gained, like telekinesis and crystal creation. Throughout the game, side activities will also become available, such as completing secondary classroom assignments, finding collectibles, working at the café, and even taking pictures for the yearbook. Some of these side activities will inevitably be required to earn enough credits to access new areas, but many of them can be left as post-game content.
Even after beating the game, there are plenty of collectibles to find, student requests to help with, and some lingering maintenance problems that require late-game powers to fix. These issues and side activities are optional, but they add enough to Cosmonious High to make it worth visiting again after the story concludes. Replaying Cosmonious High can also offer slightly different experiences by choosing alternate dialogue options and interacting with each character in new ways. However, core gameplay stays the same regardless of dialogue choices, so replayability is mostly based on wanting to see different character reactions or earning the final credits.
Each character in Cosmonious High has a distinct personality, including the teachers who range from dramatic or mystical to highly logical. The teachers are interesting, but the students are where Cosmonious High really shines. From the hyper and forgetful pandimensional Speks to the resident nihilist, Gleg, there is no shortage of strong personalities. The lovable traits of each character inspire the side missions, like finding missing items for Speks or helping Blort win the heart of their crush. However, while learning all about the different characters in Cosmonious High, the Prismi will still need to attend classes to complete their high school experience.
There is a range of unique classes to experience in Cosmonious High, including Visualetics, Sports Dome, and Astralgebra. The school is split up into three wings that can be accessed from the Grand Hall, or through secret passages in the vents that the Prismi will eventually be able to open. The environment in Cosmonious High encourages exploration while still steering the Prismi toward their ultimate goal. Owlchemy takes the chaos of being a new student on the first day of high school and amplifies it for a unique and entertaining VR adventure with Cosmonious High.
Cosmonious High is available for Meta Quest 2 and SteamVR. Screen Rant was provided a digital Meta Quest 2 download code for the purpose of this review.
