Cogmind is a sci-fi roguelike epic in which you play a robot building yourself from components found or salvaged from other robots. Explore a living, breathing world through turn-based tactical combat, or sneak, hack, and fly your way to victory.
Experience sci-fi tactical combat and exploration in a procedural world that combines traditional roguelikes with an immersive modern interface like no other. Build yourself from components found or salvaged from other robots. Attach power sources, propulsion units, utilities, and weapons to become a slow tank bristling with weapons, or a fast-moving flier zipping past enemies before they even have time to react, or a stealthy sword-wielding assassin/hacker, or whatever else you can come up with from the salvage you find. The situation can quickly change as you lose components and rebuild yourself from enemy remains. You are the Cogmind. Discover what that means as you explore a living, breathing world ruled by robots.
Overwhelmingly Positive
1,943 Steam reviews
| LANGUAGE | AUDIO | SUBTITLES | INTERFACE |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | — | — | Y |
My first roguelike game (only played roguelites prior to this) and so far it's incredibly enjoyable
The developer plays their own game too much. They are intent on patching out any overly strong builds. Combat is never a viable strategy in this game; once combat begins you need to start looking for the level exit or you will be quickly overwhelmed. But the means to avoid combat indefinitely are insufficient and you will eventually be caught.
IMO this game is not a roguelike. There is insufficient build variety. You can never "break the game". You can never fight your way to victory. Some builds are strong enough to have a "power fantasy" for a brief period but the game solves this by just sending endless waves of increasingly stronger monsters at you as soon as you accidentally begin combat anywhere on the level.
Really cool and unique.
I bought Cogmind almost 5 years ago and experienced what others probably had experienced: a game that was a little too complex for me and for which I couldn't begin to parse through it all. I couldn't begin to understand the objective besides "find the exit before the enemies find you." So, after about 2 hours, I put it down for 5 years.
Recently it popped up again when I was looking through my library for games I hadn't played in years. I saw how much love was put into the game (12 years of development!), and I saw the 400+ achievements, and I decided to give it another go. This time around, I used the keyboard-only mode, ASCII mode, and I upped the difficulty. This time around, things felt so much better. While it was a little weird getting to know the controls this way, it forced me to think about what I could or couldn't do ("How do I equip something from my inventory then drop the replacement?", "How do I look around and analyze things that are in my way?", "How do I look at my weapons, and what does this all mean?" -- these questions, and more, were easily answered by just looking in the game).
However, Cogmind forces you to analyze everything and actually think about the items you pick up, enemies you encounter, and the actions you take in the game. This game can be a little forgiving on lower difficulties, but it rewards creativity, especially in its component and weapon combinations.
Overall, this is an easy recommend for anyone who likes deep games with a ton of reading. The game has no music, at least from what I have seen, so the ambience is always dependent on whatever is going on at the moment. While I doubt this game will appeal to everyone, for the people who do get past the tutorial and aren't immediate turned away by it will have one of the best games in the same vein as Caves of Qud, Kenshi, or, weirdly, Dwarf Fortress (it's hard to turn down an ASCII game).
Text is too tiny to read with no real way to increase it. Cannot play. Getting a refund
Yep
gud
Probably the best roguelike on the market. Easily hundreds of hours worth of content, meticulously polished balance and design, incredibly satisfying to learn and play, what's not to love?
I think my brain has become cog-shaped at this point.
played 49.7 hrs in 3 days then won on easy mode
(dont shun me i dont play alot of RLs recently)
good game but its smart to spread playtime out
slaps
Not only is it a top rogue-like experience - hard but not unfair (although one can soften the experience with several difficulty options), it also has very comfortable controls when using a mouse (gamepad via steam input works very well with a self-made layout). Very Tron-like vibe when using the ascii-mode :D
It took about 30 hours and a several year gap for it to click, but once you scale the initial learning cliff and can start making informed decisions the game opens up immensely and is so much fun.
The loadout building mechanics, while they seem simple on the surface, are incredibly deep. There's dozens of possible builds all with unique playstyles, and that's even before considering certain story events that can change it even further.
The information warfare and stealth build approaches to the game are unlike any other game I've played, ever. So is the uniquely responsive environment: it feels like Cogmind hits my own personal game design philosophy dead on: dynamic systems in dynamic environments, and it manages to do this in a way that has zero grinding or other tediousness (which nails another game design philosophy I hold: respect the player's time).
Also, install size is so small. I have more hours in this game than it has MiB on my drive. It's within an order of magnitude of the entertainment-hour-per-byte potential of a [i]plaintext book[/i]. Other games tend to be measured more in GiB per hour, rather than hours per MiB...
fire
it's a pretty neat cyberpunk roguelike for people like me who hated the necessity to do complex inventory management in "The Pit". Items in this game are much more expendable and the experience feels that much more natural as a result
An extremely well polished roguelike !
Feels great to experience it without any spoiler,
just figuring things out on the go :)
always remember to keep your mind on the cog
I cut my roguelike teeth on nethack in the 90s and this is probably the most faithful trad roguelike of all the modern incarnations that I've played, and I play a lot of them. The whole game and UI are brilliantly designed by someone who understands how to deliver a good user experience for this type of game. Also, rogue+ascii+keyboard modes is the only way to play.
Ну, это на любителя, но, здесь только одни чёртовы плюсы.
Русский язык бы запилить, что б три часа лор не переводить было бы вообще прекрасно.
Cogmind is a 10/10 awesome but I DO NOT recommend it game if you don't wanna use your head and spend hours upon hours trying to understand the game. Don't be mistaken this game is awesome (Dev is awesome too!) as it has different ways to play as well as pretty deep lore. But, in order to play this you must understand that this game is brutal and most of the time will be based on how lucky you are.
Extremely polished traditional roguelike.
Hard but fun
Super unique and fun roguelike. Great aesthetic!
simply the best game ever
One of the best traditional rogue-likes out there. Don't be mislead by the "Early Access" tag, this game has been complete for years, the developer just keeps putting massive amounts of content for free.
For an ascii/tileset game it has some of the most beautiful audiovisual animations, specially ascii mode!
You will encounter great lore, lots of mechanics and even different factions to help or destroy. Also it has an immersive modern UI with lots of customization.
But caution, since it's not a game for everyone. It breaks with some of the traditional tropes which can be jarring for new players coming from other games of the genre.
First of all the progression system is unique. You don't have the classical exp leveling with a class, instead progression is a mix of learning all the mechanics and getting new parts for your little bot .
Talking about parts, your bot is made up by them, you start with only a handful and, as you play, you get more and more which end up defining your "build". Some parts are more oriented to combat, others to movement or stealth, even hacking.
The big catch here is that you will need to get them replaced as you play, and depending on your rng you will probably have to switch builds, and your overall strategy along the game. This is by design, there's almost no penalty for changing parts.
And this is what makes or break the game for people. You can have at last, your perfect build, only to lose core parts with no easy replacement at hand.
But for me, this is what makes the game truly unique, it makes you to adapt to the situation with what you have.
Conclusion: Great game with a great developer, one of the best and unique modern roguelike.
sucks
This is my second favorite game under microsoft excel
Had a bit of a learning curve but overall it's a great and different roguelike with plenty of content and with frequent updates.
An original roguelike with fresh mechanics and setting.
Plein de bonnes idées, plein de trucs mal faits, ça s'équilibre et ça donne envie de rejouer mais c'est assez frustrant même en mode facile j'ai un peu de mal à m'y remettre
Coggers
Game is very cool
quite possibly the best roguelike ever made
Look, somebody has to laud the development of the graphic design, animation and UI design for a traditional roguelike.
I kid you not, this is the wet dream for roguelike players - and many hardcore fans of the genre who play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS) have already asked the devs and the community why they do not have the features of Cogmind: the sophisticated combat animations, the advanced UI, the zooming, the tutorials, the customization of the UI, etc.
Why do other games not have this? This question has been answered by the devs of other traditional roguelike games in lenghty articles and forum/blog posts detailing why it is out of the question while part of their playerbase looks envious to Cogmind.
Last but not least, the game is DRM FREE!
If you buy through the cogmind website, the dev gets more money and it is also DRM free + you get a steam key for the game!
Традиционный рогалик, который просто поглощает своей реиграбельностью и тонной контента, при этом будучи в состоянии беты. Однозначно рекомендую, особенно тем, кто устал от средневекового сеттинга почти во всех традиционных рогаликах.
its kinda like minecraft but if like you added like cool robots and made it make you tear your balls off from stress
Incredible game, well worth the price. The level of polish in sublime. 10/10
cool game
I've played this game over several years and it just keeps improving.
Simply outstanding
This is my first traditional roguelike and I'm having a blast.
Leaving a review to boost this game, since Steam takes a cut from the revenue. This is an absolute must-play for all traditional roguelike fans, and the ways it subverts the genre without defying its roots is inspiring. You just gotta play this one, man.
oh you know the robot move around n stuff and shoot and maybe sneak, yes he sneak and stuff and maybe look around and move too and yes
The quality of this game for a Traditional Roguelike is insane. Truly a blast to play.
So, I played a ton of Cogmind when I first got it, and I play it every now and then when I get the itch. Only problem is I get incredibly rusty after a few months not playing. I used to make it to -4 every run, but now I can't consistently get past -6. It's pretty crushing. HOWEVER, I recommend this game because it is still a heck of a lot of fun. When I was playing consistently and doing well, it was the most fun I've had in a game... pretty much ever. So give it a try and keep at it, so you don't end up a washed up old hasbin like myself.
One of the best games I have ever played. Also very evil. 9.5/10
I bought this game off of steam, so i have more hours, but i've been watching with a keen eye and GSG is just cooking up a fantastical meal for us.
Very creative and challenging game, with a lot of work put into it. The art style and sound create a great thematic design for a relatively simple medium, and the user friendly controls make it more approachable than the genre usually is. More of a structured game than old school roguelikes, but to me that is a positive. Takes some time to get into still due to the large complexity and controls, but worth the effort for people who want a modern take on the genre.
You've got 20 hostiles chase you into the corner. You've got 4 rocket launchers. You know what you must do.
Probably the most passion I've seen put into any game in a long time. Very well made.
Best classic rougelike out there
Механически в это явно можно погружаться десятки часов, и отдельное уважение за (практически?) полностью мышиное управление, которое сложно заподозрить по внешнему виду игры.
Самое забавное, что из-за комплексности происходящего я совершенно не понимаю, насколько далеко я зашёл и многого ли достиг, исходя из чего полагаю, что нет, поэтому проигрывать не жалко и погружение в игру поначалу проходит практически без фрустрации даже на максимальной сложности, где смерть окончательная. Но достижений несколько десятков за две партии я, тем не менее, нахватал. Наверное, что-то делаю правильно.
Комплексность хорошо работает на восприятие игровой вселенной, как будто она живёт своей жизнью и без меня, но между тем я явно какой-то ключевой участник происходящего, просто по какой-то причине ещё не знающий, какой. Поданный до настоящего момента сюжет вполне себе создаёт ощущение, что там есть что поискать интересного.
you are cogmind.
i have played the game 5 hours and havent got very far but i have learned ALOT. theres mining bots that make caves theres yellow bots that will get alerted and use squad tactics to get you.... i ran into this 00-gvr robot on like level 4 he gave me a signal generator in case we "need it" . i said heck yea and i thought he would run off and get deleted to save memory or what ever, nope, he followed me and proceeded to rekt 3 robots i said woah woah save some for me and i step in the way to get some shots, boom, got em all with a rocket. now while im looting more yellows show up im like yea what ever then another faction steps in and rekts all of us. soo sick. had a run where i had to drop all my stuff for increased speed and i got away but ran into a room to get some energy back and they trapped me. bro, another run i had a sensor array soo i could see dude through a wall right? BOOM blew the wall up with him behind it " get rekt"
look, if youre wondering if 80mb is worth 20 bucks then im here to tell you it is.
gg
The reason I held back from buying the game for so long was my own prejudice that many traditional roguelikes suffer from a relative lack of tactical depth as compared with world-knowledge tests and focus on long-term strategy. Suffice it to say, those concerns were largely unfounded and the main concern a prospective buyer need have is whether they're the type to find satisfaction in mastering the complex interactions of various systems and their tactical and strategic implications in practice. In place of bumping enemies until they die, you'll be playing a turn-by-turn game of optimizing loadouts, managing heat, power, part-integrity, and carry-weight, along with a satisfying uphill battle of stealth against increasing alert, patrols, hunters, and map geometry. Note that stealth is a crucial component of most every run, with all-out combat generally requiring more skill and preparation.
Now, in exploring, you place increasingly well-educated bets against the attrition of [i]being[/i] inside the hostile complex, and it's this systems-focus and reliance on deep understanding that really appeals to me about Cogmind. The developer has a strong vision for how difficult the game should be (generally "very"), but while there is RNG, a lot of it can be mitigated by simply learning enough. I've played a lot of Noita, and it's a similar type of acquisition of mastery which I hoped to, and have mostly found, in the game. YMMV, but I can easily see myself putting hundreds of hours into the game for this. Time will tell.
The world itself feels pretty alive, and is, I think to the game's credit, structured predictably and with variety enough to allow the player very general and increasingly diverse long-term strategies of play. I've completed the easiest win-condition once, and seeing how large the world, don't expect to meet a skill ceiling anytime soon, or perhaps any time. It's this reason I don't play Noita quite as much anymore: once you understand every system of the game to what you think is its "full extent," the experience can begin to feel [i]inert[/i], like a puzzle whose solution you know but can't be bothered to implement.
Another part I particularly like is how much writing there is. Coming back to a settlement or faction base to meet old faces is fun and there's a great deal of lore and dialogue to uncover. Wouldn't be as charming without it all. There are so many random events, faction towns, little encounters you can get in your runs.
I think that about does it. I just wanted to add to the positive reviews in hopes of increasing the discoverability of this niche yet underrated title. I personally found the game through DoshDoshington's video, which I can recommend as an introduction.
It is a good game, so I am giving a thumbs up, but it is not for me.
I did not particularly enjoy my time playing either.
Honestly would not recommend it to anyone who is not specifically interested in the game to begin with.
Every day I clock into my shift at the Throwing Cogmind Runs factory
I came here from Caves of Qud, and was not disappointed. Cogmind is a pretty complex roguelike with an unusual emphasis on stealth and fluid character development. Where the game really shines though, in my view, is in the mystery of its world and its emergent lore, which give a unique setting to the game's tactical gameplay. That said, Cogmind is not an easy game to pick up, and it takes a good deal of determination to succeed.
Cogmind is pretty good
Cogmind is genuinely a genre-defining game in the roguelike category. It possesses modern controls with a classic interface, tons of customizability, lore, and many items. I would recommend it to anyone. It is up there with Balatro, Binding of Isaac, and Slay the Spire.
This game is awesome. I was on the fence for many months, as I wasn't sure the price would be worth it (for me). After playing this for over 50 hours now, I can honestly say I am happy to have found another roguelike that I know I will enjoy for many years to come. A big thanks to the developer and others that have contributed to this great game! Keep up the great work!
This is a unbelievable game, but it is hard to describe why it is so special and so satisfying.
Amazing game with an amazing amount of depth. There's alot of content in this game and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface. You can tell there's 12 years (and counting!) of work here and it shows. Once you get the hang of it, even just a little. Its lots of fun. A legendary roguelike.
Minded the cog. Also try to go for GOLEM cause its fun.
Easily the deepest and most complex game i've ever played. Cogmind is not a game for everyone, but the people that it is for - those who enjoy overcoming difficult obstacles, highly strategic gameplay, horrifying atmosphere, lots of crazy options and don't mind simplistic graphics overall (which is something that pretty much all Roguelikes share), WILL absolutely adore this game.
For me it's a true 10/10 but what you give it will highly depend on how much it's core essence resonates with what you look for in a videogame.
While I would say this is mostly a niche game for a specific type of audience, I do think anyone could get into it if they were to give it a fair chance. If you've never played a traditional rougelike though it might be worth trying one of the many free open source ones like ToME or CDDA to see if you vibe with the genre. But if you know you like traditional rougelikes already, you really owe it to yourself to add this one to your collection. There's a polish to it similar to caves of qud. The polish extends to the audio and adds so much to the experience, and kind of puts to shame the audio found in other games in the genre.
While there's usually a deceptive depth behind the combat in these rouguelikes, often the gameplay consists of nudge against the enemy until it dies. But in cogmind there is a unquie twist where every part of your "body" making up your build takes damage in a fight, your legs are useful to move, sure, but their most important attribute is their ability to stop bullets and protect your core. This might sound frustrating if you want to lock in a particular build. But it adds a frantic quality to the combat where your often find yourself cobbling together a robotic frankenstein out of bits you've just blown off a group of enemies just to stay in a fight. Also in these types of games often the user has to commit to memory a plethora of complex keybinds just to do the simplest things, but cogmind is able to straddle a space of complex game mechanics with relitively simple controls.
Now I dare say you can evetually lock in a specific build not that I've been able to manage it. But I haven't played a massive ammount of the game yet. And even so, I've had numerous strange and intriguing encounters, found perculiar areas or discovered a surprising game mechanic. For me though the most impressive thing that cogmind has achieved is its cohesive tone, where the art, the sounds, the gameplay mechanics, the behaviour of the robots roaming the halls and the writing, which gives glimpses of the sci-fi world surrounding you, all combine into one of the most immersive traditional rougelikes I've ever played.
this game is insane. It's very different from most other traditional roguelikes, but I really like it.
thanks to the dev for adding zoom features so I can actually play without a huge screen!
You like roguelikes now
I have gone down the Cogmind rabbit hole. The game looks complex till you play it, then it looks simple, then you realize it is hard, then you get good but still lose.
i am HOOKED. so fun, take your time to learn wtf is going on and you will become a robogod.
if you like CoQ or Noita or DF adventure mode this is for you.
7W7
[b]“ 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01100111 01100001 01101101 01100101”[/b]
[i]-Cogmind[/i]
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Want to get into classic roguelikes but they are either too intimidating?
[b]Cogmind[/b] is an amazing starting place that also won’t skimp out on content and complexity once you got down the basics.
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
Propulsion: Movement, and how much cumulative weight you can carry
Weapons: Shooty, killy stuff
Utility: All the rest, sensing enemies through walls, armor, storage for extra pieces, and so on
Power: The juice you need to power all the above
You’ll get two slots for each type at the start of the game to mix and match anything you can find.
The gameplay itself is both turn based and grid based, a turn (or fraction of a turn) passes each time you perform a movement or an attack.
To add to the emergent complexity, enemies don’t always hit your core points, each part has its own HP so expect to go through parts like they’re on discount, keep moving and keep scavenging new ones both because later floors have better gear, but also to keep in tip top shape.
You can heal in any way during a floor, so your parts taking damage during an engagement means your unrecoverable Core Points aren’t.
There is no experience, so progression comes in the form of advancing floors, when you do so you’re given the choice to add two more slots of any type as well as an increase of Total health and a complete health refill (the only way to heal).
[h1]X-Factor[/h1]
Combines the original Rogue gameplay with modern design elements to make itself accessible but without overdoing it to a point of being a completely different kind of offshoot.
The game’s world reacts to your actions.
And while many games claim to do this, Cogmind is one of the few actually able to pull it off with complex 0b10 feeling less like a megastructure and more like an organism reacting to a foreign body of varying degrees of danger.
This game has been in development for more than 10 years.
And while this alone isn’t a mark of quality what should suggest you is that a lot of time and effort was dedicated to refine it into the perfect version of the developer’s vision and it shows.
[h1]Story[/h1]
Without spoiling the deep lore this game has, you’re a lone robot that awakens in the depths of the 0b10 megastructure, filled with the drive to reach the surface.
The way you’ll experience it is reading snippets of information on terminals and trying to contextualize what the other non-immediately hostile robots have to say.
You’re very much dropped in a world where you’ll quickly want to make sense of it to know who would want what to understand where to better stand based on what you want to do.
[h1]Downsides[/h1]
The test by fire for a roguelike comes in two forms, first we have the “Am I having fun even if I can’t get the build I was looking for?”
And yes, Cogmind got this one down well.
The second one although is: “As soon as a run is over, do I want to start a new one?”
And unfortunately, the answer for me here is a no, mostly because the game misses on that wacky weird equipment that does strange stuff, you’ll learn to plan around on the fly each so unique it’ll create emergent gameplay where you want to see the next crazy combo.
Here instead we have a very tightly balanced act of “this gun generates 0.5% less heat but uses 0.1% more energy, does 1% more damage but has 2% more weight” making them feeling very nuanced but rarely unique.
And this is what makes the game feel a bit sterile, when there’s a lot of stuff but very little change it makes every run feel the same.
Same goes for the enemies, they may have their own “archetype” based on how they’re equipped but them working off your rules means they’re limited in what kind of challenge they can pose.
(this complaint was somewhat fixed by adding a rare type of enemy in update 16)
Worldbuilding is great, but having to read it all from terminals in random order means you’ll be confused as hell for the first 20 to 30 hours, so a heavy time investment is required to “get it” without spoiling yourself beforehand.
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Excellent entry point into the original genre, lots of content and still being developed, completely worth the asking price as well as becoming more and more “worth it” with each new update.
Cogmind you have to stop. You hack too tough. Your propulsion too different. Your operator too bad. They'll kill you.
I was a bit disappointed and annoyed at the beginning because the game throws an overwhelming amount of mechanics at you. After getting over that hump, it became much more enjoyable. Though even now I find the durability system incredibly tedious. But it's not nearly as bad once you figure out repairs and get a few upgrades. Though the amount of utility slots seems really constraining. Without a bunch you're quite blind and helpless. The game is overall very Dwarf Fortress-y, but not nearly as difficult to grasp. If you don't like DF at all, I doubt you'll like this. Overall I'm finding the game really intriguing.
This is a completely excellent traditional roguelike, with notably great stealth elements. The only game I can think of that comes close for stealth specifically is Sil-Q.
Sure why not, if you've finished Caves of Qud
its good
I've played other Roguelikes before like TOME or Caves of Qud, but this is the first one I completely bounced off. There essentially is no tutorial and what mechanics exist are incredibly obtuse. The game in its entirety centers around the most unpleasant durability system I have ever seen. From research I did after thinking to myself "That cannot be intentional", the game is designed to essentially be played as a stealth game, with all other builds being heavily discouraged or requiring expert knowledge.
More painfully, there is little to no story or lore from what I have seen, even on the level of infodumps a la TOME, to say nothing of COQ. Maybe there is some much later on, but in 2 hours and after getting to the Factory I have encountered zilch. The most common refrain about the game appears to be "it gets good 20 or 40 hours in" to which I say these people need to get a grip.
There also is no demo for the game on Steam, which given the astoundingly niche nature of the gameplay comes across as a bit sleazy. I would recommend you "try" the game via other means first.
A roguelike hasnt challenged me as much as nightmare TOME has until now. I love how intense things can get at the drop of a dime, forcing you to adapt and use all of the tools at your disposal. I'm only a few hours into a run but so far everything about the game is fantastic.
Very fun game. Difficult, but lots of options for your robot and how you play it. Worth a buy for sure.
Good game
This game It is a time commitment to get into, but it is also an ocean in both the breadth of the available content (with more being added all the time still) and the depth of the strategy it enables.
You can be a flying hacker, sneaking through the rooms of the Factory to download schematics for rare parts and using fabricators to print them. There are programmer bots trying to hunt you down, but you hack a terminal to send them back home and learn intel about the traps and exits. Sometimes you have to fly past a sentry, but nothing can catch up to your cesium-ion thrusters. In a hellish Research chokepoint, an unlucky shot destroys one of your power cores - and you've brought no spares! Throwing away your weighty weapons and armor, you turn off some of your thrusters to compensate and limp to the exit, looting a low-level ion engine from a civilian cleaner bot, hoping that the you'll keep enough hackware on the next floor to escape.
You can meet a weird cult that worships you as the messiah, infiltrating the terminal network to supply you with intel and reinforcements. If you can hold out until the final floor, Zion will send their strongest experimental bots to help you take on the final challenge. But while the allies are appreciated, they also cause a lot of collateral, raking up alert, and without your normal hacking abilities, you can't trick the system into lowering it. Soon heavy ARCs start coming at you faster than you can kill them, and the announcer reads "ALERT: High security lockdown imminent, T-100". You scramble to the nearest exit before it gets blocked, but the next floor won't be any easier.
From your last playthrough you've learned a secret password that opens a door to a lab of tinkerer bots that tell you about their latest prototypes they make from scrap. Out of curiosity you steal the Scrap Engine and bolt it onto yourself. This weird machine can be fed spare parts, constructing new random weapons and propulsion. Your struggle through the next couple of floors, eating good prototype parts for mediocre results. Suddenly, your new thermal shotgun has insane range and can pierce through walls and your nimble flight engine now has more integrity than a pile of treads. You plough through the complex, repositioning instantly to blow away groups of enemies. You feed the scrap engine another weapon to patch up your construct, and now it adds 400 heat with every shot, suddenly becoming unusable. Luckily, you still have your OP flight module to escape and try to roll the dice again.
These are just a couple of examples, there are tons of other mechanics that make for unique playstyles. You can hack enemy bots to amass an army, you can help out various factions to bolster their forces, or you can kill them and take their rare parts. Also I recommend trying out different difficulty options because one of the big constants between runs is that the game is REALLY hard. On "rogue" difficulty, don't expect to get a win in your first 10 hours (or 30, or 50... depends on your willingness to look up guides). So, if any of the stuff I wrote about interests you, and you're willing to sink a ton of time into a game, welcome!
Just amazing
First 10 hours are struggle but
The more you play the more fun it gets
this a phenomenal unique turn based game.
After 80 hours I finally beat the game on rogue mode, and I can now safely say that the game is good.
A lot of roguelikes nowadays have a shared issue: power is something you can hoard, store in a safe location for when you actually need it. The further you progress, the more you collect, the less threatening the game becomes, as only the absolute worst that the game can throw at you, or your own mistakes, can really put your run at risk.
Cogmind? The tension grows with every floor you progress, and you can't go back. You can only bring with you what you can carry, and you can't carry enough to truly feel comfortable. Any sense of stability is temporary, and easily shattered when things start to go wrong.
Yet, it's more than possible to put things back on track when it starts to derail; running and hiding is entirely possible, hacking terminals to lower 0b10's alert level while seeking out information. What's around me? Where are the exits? Other terminals? Push it too far and 0b10 will send a squad to investigate your hacking, but maybe you know where they'll come from now, and so giving them the slip is that much easier.
Cogmind is an excellent roguelike, one which keeps up the tension and presents a real challenge. There's a myriad of events which keep the game interesting and each run specially unique, on top of various factions you can align with for unique benefits. I've not yet escaped 0b10, but each run I get closer, even if I die in a completely avoidable way in -10 materials.
Straight up cogging my mind
Love the game feel and lore bits that I experienced. I would totally recommend the game if you like rogue-likes and robots, but as a german player with a german keyboard layout you can't really play when it comes to "hacking" in the game.
The game is missing a system that maps the keys correctly. Sadly even the file that gets delivered with the game that supposedly fixes the issue is not helping. (There are incomplete files for other keyboard layouts in the game-files)
I really hope there will be an update at some point that addresses this issue.
FOUND=COG
GOAL=LOCATE(MIND)
A neat sci-fi rogue-like, where your character doesn't evolve parameters rpg-style, but instead upgrades itself with different robot parts, scattered in tech dungeons.
If you're going in blind, this game might feel a bit opaque at times. Not knowing how the alert system works and over-extending your stay on a floor to try and gather just a bit more powerful loot will likely end in defeat as the dungeon outpaces your build with more and more enemies. There are certain hacks that can dramatically improve the early-game situation that can only be learned within areas outside the main complex with quite subtle hints from which to locate them; and when you do get there, you're beholden to RNG for whether the right NPCs show up to teach them. I might be nitpicking on the latter point, since it's totally doable, though the amount of time spent passing by terminals before discovering the tools to use the complex against itself may be frustrating without any active guidance. On the other hand, if you can overcome that sort of thing, then Cogmind really shines.
It's like a constant battle of attrition inside a layer cake of angry bees, text inputs, alien technology, and big shooty guns. It's like you've been swallowed by some colossal beast and its immune system is trying to kill you up to the point of deadly fever. Recycling bots try to repossess their comrades' remains, engineers repair the walls you break accidentally or on purpose, transport convoys ferry parts through the level's main arteries. Alliances and betrayals alike made on lower floors may drastically shape the situation above. The description "living, breathing world" is usually an exaggeration, but I think this game's earned it.
Cogmind is an extremely well designed and detailed traditional roguelike. Unlike most traditional roguelikes, where you level up a fantasy character, you are instead a robot that attaches parts. As you explore the complex you'll come across better parts with a higher rating, so you're constantly adjusting and tuning your build accordingly.
One of my favourite aspects of the game is the lore. The 'Complex' has a rich story, told by the other robots you run into as well as from chunks of lore from the terminals that you hack into. You can also align yourself with several different factions. Each has their own special aspect that either changes the normal mechanics of the game or introduces new mechanics. Some of them also have a 'quest', where you will meet them on one of the later harder levels and they will help you out. This game is not an RPG though - 99.9% of your interactions are as a 'silent observer', with binary decisions often made by moving into a piece of machinery. Or if you're feeling powerful you could just blast them to bits, which may have its own ramifications...any character and nearly all objects besides the stairways can be killed in this game.
There's many different tactics you can use in this game. You can equip flight units and hacking suites and be a really stealthy guy that can hack terminals and slip past the enemies. Or you can equip treads and blow up anything you come across. Each tactic has been carefully curated by the developer so that nothing is too powerful and everything has ramifications - if you are tanky your parts last longer, but if you blow up too much, your 'alert' goes up and more and more nasty bots come after you, eventually overwhelming you. If you are a stealthy flight hacker, it is much easier to deal with 'alert', but you are very vulnerable and cannot take many hits.
Like many traditional roguelikes, the game has a steep learning curve. There's so many small but important details you have to know to get good at the game. Compared to other traditional roguelikes I'd say the UI is generally excellent - once you learn the basic keys to play (fire, move, pick up parts) and the basic mouse commands (drag and drop parts from inventory to your slots) then you're off.
A few things I don't like so much about the game - there's a bit of meta-progression knowledge, some which I don't entirely agree with, the biggest one being the manual hacks - manual hacks are such an important part of the game, and they are available to everyone no matter what lore you have uncovered about them, but you can only do them by hitting 'z' in a terminal and typing stuff out manually, and typing hints don't appear until you've used them the first time. I guess it was done this way so that new players aren't utterly overwhelmed, which is maybe a good thing. However I have had to set up Automapper hotkeys to save the poor fingers from all this manual typing, since manual hacking is something you do a lot of, especially once you get better at the game and know what you're doing.
Another thing I don't like is that some of the mechanics are non-obvious until you go on the wiki (search 'cogminder' on google) and read up about it, then it becomes an 'aha! of course!' moment. An example is the random chance that being in Heavy sensor range sends reinforcements after you - Cutters if you're a flight build, or Specialists if you're a tank build. I think I was already hundreds of hours in the game without knowing this, and only by actually reading it in the wiki did it all make sense.
Another common complaint is that there's a lot of content that is only accessible to the 1% of very skilled players. This is a true statement to an extent - even with 500 hours I am not skilled enough to take on the hardest content. However the game does have 3 difficulty levels. On Rogue (the default) I'm at the point now where I can get a basic win fairly consistently, and one of the minor harder wins every so often. On Explorer (the easiest) I've experienced a few of the really difficult endings that I could never do on Rogue.
Overall the game is incredible. If you have any interest in roguelikes at all then buying it is a no-brainer. I highly recommend it. Development is still ongoing and the solo developer keeps on adding great new content with each 'beta' release (though I would not consider this in any way a beta - it really is a fully-fledged game right now).
A great twist on the roguelike/lite formula!
Feels like VI. This is a good thing.
Immensely well designed and presented traditional roguelike with a great atmosphere and unique mechanics. It's a brutally hard game, extremely satisfying to learn, and much more fair than it first seems – every run is winnable and there are no instant death situations common to other games of the genre. It also has a cohesive and interesting narrative to discover.
If you like somewhat esoteric mechanics-heavy strategy/tactics games with essentially infinite replay value and a lot of deep resource management, buy Cogmind (Preferably directly from the developer's website). It's great and there is nothing else quite like it.
It took me a 127 hours to just get one of the endings. A lot of this game is knowledge gathering. Literally just knowing what options there are and being able to make the right choices for your specific scenario. In one sense this can make the game somewhat boring if you're trying to go for the same thing everytime but the great part is that there is so many interesting options (if you look for them [and sometimes if you don't :P]) that you really shouldn't or have to be doing that unlike other similar games I've played. It's good.
The art is really really good. I love ascii and the amount of work put into every single item's art blows me away. It has an indepth manual and tutorial that gives commited players a lot of proverbial ledge to grab onto to start. One of the best rougelikes I've played.
You know what...
it's not even a bad game.
It's a really good game. An exemplary traditional roguelike. Programmed well, gorgeous art, and a very dedicated dev.
BUT IT'S SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PRESCRIPTIVE OH MY GOD
Like, I can hear Kyzrati going "no you're not supposed to play like that" over my shoulder. Shut the ♥♥♥♥ up already and let me have fun!
All the design decisions come from a holier-than-thou place. From 2015 r/roguelikedev thinking that their rejection of DCSS's food clock is revolutionary pragmatism.
Cogmind is, without a shred of doubt, a "nu-roguelike". As in, an offshoot of traditional roguelikes that trades the depth that emerges from having a ♥♥♥♥ ton of content and wacky systems that interact in nontrivial ways... for a very sterile, minimalist, puzzle-like experience that punishes you for experimenting while pretending it doesn't. Like, to me, it's genuinely closer to Rift Wizard than it is to Rogue.
It's not that the content and the systems aren't there... It's that they require massive upfront knowledge, and they don't really interact obviously until you're dozens of hours deep. And your success depends on understanding them completely.
My test for these games is quite simple. "Can a player with zero upfront knowledge but tons of roguelike experience beat this on the first try?"
My answer here would be a resounding "no".
You can't just guess or use logic or apply previous experience from similar games. You have to map, learn, discover whatever the ♥♥♥♥ the dev dreamed up in their shamanic haze when they thought of making this game. And then you have to accept it that *that* is how you play the game, and that any deviation from *that* is *wrong* because of some strawman about optimal plays.
So yeah. It's my personal gripe. Cogmind doesn't fail within its own constraints, but my point is that the constraints themselves give rise to something that doesn't quite match the genre I fell in love with two decades ago. A genre that let me have fun; a genre where every death felt like *I* was *learning* instead of *being taught* by the roguelike expert Mr. Kyzrati.
Because, you see, you were not supposed to play *like that*. You were supposed to play *like this*. Only rookies play *like that*; and you should feel ashamed for even trying. After all, the massive lore-dump mentioned it that one time in that side branch. It's your fault for not reading it, really.
Welp i guess i am thinking about cogs now
she cog on my mind till i evolve
Wait, this guys is still updating his game in 2025?
What a chad dev, you get my love <3
Peak gaming.
