One of the most surreal discussions I’ve had as a parent is explaining the concept of Saturday morning cartoons. Yes, there was once a time when kids got up early, loaded up on sugary cereals and watched a variety of toy commercials masquerading as TV shows. No on demand streaming or pausing to get more food while hoping you didn’t see the episode already. I got a look that made me seem like I was describing my youth on a moon base. These cartoons are also on the mind of Diogo Nogueira in his game Kosmosaurs. They are also all over the cover and internal pages with plenty of sticker worthy art featuring dinosaurs blasting off-screen enemies with laser guns. Exalted Funeral sent a copy for review. Does the game make you want to stick around after these messages? Let’s play to find out.
Kosmosaurs resolves actions through a Blades In The Dark inspired d6 pool system where players assemble a handful of dice and key success or failure off the highest roll. Characters are made up of two main traits which comes from John Harper’s other big hit Lasers & Feelings. Kosmo handles anything to do with intellect such as flying a spaceship or arguing with members of The Jurassitron Council. Saur handles things of a physical nature like blasting evil robots or swooping down to save a civilian with your Pterosaur wings. Characters gain additional traits that generally add or subtract dice based on context. Being a Tyrannosaurus Rex is not good for sneaking but good for roaring and intimidating people. Players can choose or roll their dinosaur type.
Conflicts use the main traits as physical and mental health levels with the additional traits available as armor to suck up more hits. Once your character has more than their Kosmo or Saur trait in damage, they roll to see if they are Taken Out of a scene. It’s very simple, fast, combat that mimics those momentary action scenes that exist in half-hour cartoons. This system feels like, with a little hacking, could easily be used to run other heroes from the era like Transformers, GI Joe or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Nogueira is best known for his work on OSR style games. He absolutely nails a late 80s/early 90s art style full of dinos, monsters, cosmic scenes and other setting elements that would look right at home on action figure packaging. Those instincts also apply to the setting elements included in the game which primarily manifest in charts full of evocative ideas like missions for the Kosmosaurs and neat locations for battles. Sketched out setting elements contained in a line is a great way for groups to fill out their own Kosmosaur canon. That’s how the cartoon writers did it and based whole worlds on one or two lines of commercial packaging. The designer pushes Game Masters to think like a cartoon producer when it comes to setting up missions. This is a game built for fast action and cool explosions complete with an evil robot empire, an evil mirror version of the Kosmosaurs and even broccoli loving fascists to all be blasted and trampled by your good guy dinosaurs.
Bottom Line: If you want a game full of high action and dinosaur puns, Kosmosaurs will let you create the best toy cartoon series that never existed.
