Cosmic Waves Review

Cosmic Waves is a brick-breaking galaxy-spanning adventure developed by Squirrel Knight and published by Digerati. Inspired by arcade classics like Breakout, this is more than just breaking blocks and achieving a high score; you’ll be whisked away on a journey you’ll never forget… with furries and bouncing balls. Ugh, the internet has ruined me.

The story centres on our protagonists — the former pirate Cinis, the ship mechanic Nix, and the helpful robot C.O.S.M.O. — as they travel across the galaxy to collect the rare mineral Celestium, in order to power a life-saving machine to cure Cinis’ sister. Along the way, they’ll encounter dastardly villains who will do anything to get their grubby paws on their Celestium… b-by playing Arkanoid. It’s a lighthearted story for the most part, but it’s told well here. I liked the characters, the voice-acting properly endears you to each and every person you encounter (even if it is a little crunchy in places), and the soundtrack is quite good. Its sci-fi tunes never get tiring and get you into the mood for breaking some blocks.

As for the graphics, I consider it fine overall. It just reminds me of the ‘80s for some reason. The character art is rather well-done (even if it reminds me of certain areas of the internet), and the stages themselves are vibrant yet still lay out everything in a clear manner. However, it can get a little overwhelming and you can lose track of your ball (or balls) at times.

But enough about that, let’s get into the gameplay. Now, on the surface, breaking bricks with a paddle doesn’t seem all too exciting, but there’s plenty of twists here that will keep you on your toes. To pass a level, all you need to do is destroy a certain number of blocks without losing all your lives. To S-Rank a level, though, you must achieve a high score and do it all under a time limit. This is a lot harder than it sounds, even on Normal difficulty.

As you go through the levels, you’ll unlock permanent upgrades. Aside from the ol’ ball and paddle (the paddle you can change the shape of before tackling sets of levels), you also have towers that you can use to push the ball around, and temporarily powers it up (called Wave Balls) to pierce through blocks and shatter barriers. You can also slow down time, put up shields, and even fire weapons from your paddle.

You also have access to random temporary bonuses you can collect during stages. Green power-ups are always useful to pick up (such as extra lives and reducing your in-game time by five seconds), yellow boosts are situationally useful (like multi-ball and faster speed), and red “power-downs” are definitely bad to get (like a smaller paddle and reducing the multiplier). Finally, purple power-ups act as ammo for your weapons. Hold down the top face button and fire away to destroy blocks that your ball can’t easily reach.

There is a perk system where you can use the resources you pick up in levels to purchase and upgrade various bonuses, like starting with more lives, increasing the range of towers, and making Wave Balls more powerful.

With all this firepower at your disposal, it shouldn’t be that hard to beat levels, right? Well, no. There are plenty of obstacles that will make your life significantly more difficult. There are barriers that need to be broken by specific Wave Ball colours, turrets that can render your paddle inoperable, and sometimes the ball just hates you and decides it doesn’t want to go where you want it. Boss battles are the biggest pains as you’ll need to deal with their gimmicks in order to defeat them, and they’re often packing weapons too. It takes forever to beat them. Still, I never felt like the game was actively screwing me over. You have all the tools to beat every level, but it’s your skill and the manipulation of the ball that will win the day in the end.

Now onto performance. Without futzing with the settings, I had a very consistent 60 FPS with no frame drops. I didn’t encounter any glitches in my playthrough either.

Cosmic Waves is just a fun, arcade-style adventure with a nice progression system that makes you want to come back for more, even when you fail over and over again. Huh, I guess that’s why you could find Breakout in the arcades back in the day. Give it a try, you might be surprised.

Cosmic Waves comes out on the 28th of July 2025.