Cosmology of Kyoto

released on Mar 01, 1993

Cosmology of Kyoto is a visual novel adventure game developed by Softedge and published by Yano Electric. It was released for Japan in 1993, and then in North America, for the Macintosh in 1994 and then for the PC in 1995. It is a game where the player, from a first-person perspective, explores ancient Kyoto city during 10th-11th century Japan. The game lacks a clear goal, but is instead nonlinear and emphasizes open exploration, giving players the freedom to explore the city and discover many pathways, buildings, situations, stories and secrets. The game deals with historical, horror, religious and educational themes, and features karma and reincarnation gameplay mechanics. Released on CD-ROM, the dialogues in the game are fully voiced in Japanese, with English subtitles in the localized North American version. The game was not a commercial success, but was critically acclaimed and attracted a cult following. The game is set in the medieval city of Kyoto around the year 1000, during the Heian period of Japanese history. The game lacks an overall plot, but it instead presents fragmented narratives in a non-linear manner, as the player character encounters various non-player characters while wandering the city. These narratives are cross-referenced to an encyclopedia, providing background information as the narratives progress and as the player comes across various characters and locations, with various stories and related information appearing at distinct locations.[9] Many of the characters in the game are based on real-life characters from the city and their appearances in the game are often loosely based on tales from the Konjaku Monogatarishū. The game deals with religion and philosophy, particularly Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy, as well as myth and legend.


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I plan to revisit it from time to time. I thought it would last about an hour, but there are many things to discover and read. So far, I've managed to obtain a sutra, useful for warding off demons one might encounter around the city.

It's very engaging; it builds a formula for the open-air museum that I really appreciate, mixing architecture, folk tales, religious beliefs and historical characters. The most crucial aspect is the exploration in highly atmospheric settings, both due to the graphic-artistic rendering and the sound design. The exploration comes with descriptions provided on a time to time basis depending on what you find; there's also a viable encyclopedia that you can fully read whenever you want. Additionally, there are puzzles necessary for progression or to gather more information. The puzzles themselves can be a bit challenging, especially because there's a textual component where the player interacts with certain NPCs, writing responses or making requests. I imagine the issues are mainly due to translation issues. Fortunately, in several instances, dialogues progress regardless of what is written, presumably to overcome this problem. Another issue is that instead of the text box there's a glitch: a white rectangle that obscures everything, likely due to emulation.

Graphically, the game is beautiful, and the artworks integrate seamlessly into the game interface. The UI, with its minimalism and pitch-black color, is impactful, although arguably unnecessary. There's a considerable amount of unused space; at most, I would like for a portion of this space to be used for the main artworks and to give more space to the backgrounds; that's just a minor observation though.

Ironically, death occurs in a context where beliefs converge with Buddhist disciplines, introducing an element of rebirth and reincarnation. In this sense, it manages to be very modern, assigning meaning to the player's defeat. It allows exploration of the jigoku (hells) and, after undergoing torture or witnessing a cycle of death and rebirth, returning to the city where the events unfold.

Note: In the game interface, there are two small squares at the bottom, one on the right and the other on the left. These represent, respectively, a depiction of the coins in your possession and the level of karma. If one possesses a low level of karma, they will be reborn as dogs.

this game is such a treasure, a complete immersion in the spiritual world of 700-900s japan! and it even comes with a great index of themes and characters involved in the story as well as research sources used to make the game possible

removed half a star because i thought the part beyond the palace gates was sadly too short compared to the time it takes to be able to get there (a time that can also be kinda frustrating if you’re bad at directions like me LOL). i used an online guide at one point to see if i had triggered all possible scenes and events. played it all in one sitting but didn’t time it so idk how long exactly it took me (2-3 hours is my estimate?)

Cosmology of Kyoto is an odd artefact from an era in which the popularization of personal computers, and computer games, led to a wave of experimentation with the digital medium, which gave us a lot of very interesting pieces that don't always fit with what we currently think of when we think "computer game".

If we look at it with a contemporary lens Cosmology of Kyoto is a horror game, a point-and-click adventure, a walking simulator and an edutainment game. But I don't think that kind of labelling would do it any justice. What I would call it instead is an exercise in form. The odd, fragmented structure; the freeform almost museum-like quality of the play; the functional and mood-driving use of death, are all incredibly interesting takes on how a digital space could be structured. To an extent they feel like evolutionary dead ends, but that's not for any inherent failing of their own, but because adventure games moved from there in totally different (and more lucrative) directions.

But yeah, no, you should probably play this if you like video games.

And, like, content-wise it's super spooky while at the same time being quite interesting and informative. Perfect Halloween game tbh.

But also, I dunno, I look at Cosmology of Kyoto and its very purposeful design decisions, and I think about what could have video games been if that wave of computer games had been allowed to flourish. It feels like we lost quite a lot when the medium became this "ease of use modern fun design" monolith, and left this kind of structural experimentations, not necessarily rooted in videogame-isms, behind.

gave my laptop a virus

proper review whenever i finish it