Does amazingly much with astonishingly little, Off-Peak is a short 30 minute to 1 hour experience that resembles an art gallery more than a "game", but uses that visage and theming to challenge not only what games are, but what they move in us.

The train station of Off Peak offers food, booze, board games, mysteries, music...the things that move the soul, in abundance, and works to show not only how these things can be leveraged for liberation, but also how labor and ownership can shape them into weapons against the very satisfaction they bring.

Highly recommend for both brevity, uniqueness, and the title's important place as an altar to B-Games and as an evolution of the indie "walking sim" genre many unfairly rallied against during its formation.

Did I mention...it's free?

Off-Peak is a game I probably should have loved, as it is very similar to BABBDI which is one of my favorite indie horror games of all time. The premises, and almost the entire games are similar, in that these are baron worlds, in this one being a futuristic, cyberpunk-esque weird world, as BABBDI is a world that seems left behind in its inhabitants.

Both games feature you exploring this world on your own, feeling the vibes it gives you, talking to the NPCs and characters, and really seeing what these worlds have to offer. Both games are also about finding a train ticket to leave the city you are in, by description, they are almost identical, just with a change of setting, so why do I not really like this game?

I believe it's just not that interesting. It is oozing with creativity, and doing things differently. There are little pieces in this game that are super cool to look at, little art pieces that are very esoteric, and feel super out of place in the real world, but just look so cool.

But this game doesn't have an interesting hook to it, BABBDI had a chilling atmosphere, with AMAZING movement, some of the best I've ever seen in a game. With this game, it's just walking, and running, and talking to people, and finding your ticket. While this game does have a stronger premise and story, it is by far less fun to play, and really feels like a prototype to something like BABBDI.

Maybe I would like this game more if I hadn't played BABBDI to compare it to, but since I did play this after, it does just feel lackluster. I can't say its a bad game, because it does have so much creativity to it. But it's not one I think I will remember.

Overall: 5/10

Off-Peak é um museu de arte surreal em forma de jogo. Após um dos meus primos me presentear com um PC Gamer que ele não usava mais, decidi procurar jogos que o meu PC antigo não aguentava (até criei a minha Steam), e decidi jogar esse por interesse e pra ter um gostinho de como são os jogos do Cosmo D. Nesse jogo, você se perdeu numa estação de trem e precisa procurar pedaços de uma passagem num museu de arte pra sair do lugar e no meio do caminho você conhece gente estranha e aprecia o local. A forma mais fácil de resumir esse jogo, é um walking sim à lá Yume Nikki aonde você explora espaços surreais que é minimalista em tudo (adendo: nunca joguei Yume Nikki, então posso estar falando asneira). Ele tem uma história, mas ela é bem vaga e abstrata e não é necessário entendê-la para aproveitar, já que o negócio se sustenta mais pelas vibes do que qualquer outra coisa. As vibes aqui são imaculadas, com cenários surreais que parecem familiares e um onirismo encantador, e por mais que não seja graficamente lá essas coisas, a direção de arte compensa ainda mais pra sensação surreal do game. Por mais que tenha um objetivo presente, ele não é o que importa aqui, já que ao se passar num museu de arte, tratá-lo como uma exibição virtual o ajuda, então aproveite o passeio e veja o que te aguarda nesse museu. O que mais me encantou aqui foi a trilha sonora, com seu hipnótico jazz eletrônico e um ótimo design de som. Suponho que por ser do início da carreira do Cosmo D, esse daqui não seja um dos games mais bem trabalhados ou profundos dele (eu costumo ouvir de outras pessoas que esse aqui é um dos mais fracos dele), mas ter me dado um gosto de como são as suas obras me despertou interesse. Off-Peak é uma maravilha minimalista e o seu onirismo nessa galeria surreal é encantador, e tendo duração breve e sendo de graça, chega a ser uma oferta difícil de recusar.

Sights & Sounds
- Graphics straight out of 1998, but with a higher frame rate. That's not a knock on the game. It's part of the appeal
- The music (limited as it is in a game that doesn't even take an hour to beat) is excellent

Story & Vibes
- Not much to say. You get dropped off at a train station, but you don't have another ticket to leave. An old man on a bench says he's left one in pieces around the train station. It's up to you to find the pieces and leave
- Zaniness ensues

Playability & Replayability
- It's a fairly basic adventure game in the style of what some would call a "walking simulator"
- You just walk around, steal stuff, talk to people, and pick up ticket pieces
- Not sure that I'd replay it, but I'm glad to have this little intro to the series

Overall Impressions & Performance
- I'm planning to play through the Cosmo D games and figured I'd start at the beginning. The great music and the general weirdness of the experience has me intrigued
- This game seems like it would run on anything. I played it on the Steam Deck with a community layout, and it ran just fine

Final Verdict
- 6/10. Not much to chew on, but it seems like a nice appetizer for the rest of the Cosmo D games

Off-Peak represents the art and value of Collage, a mode of expression that values the substance of what someone is saying vs the means by which they are saying it.

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There is, probably, no way around it: in any other situation Off-Peak could be called an asset flip. As a casual observer its hard to explicitly verify every single assets origins but its clear almost all the images are from real life things - most notably the Cyrk posters, originating for the real “circus poster” movement that happened in the Polish art scene post 1960 (or something like that). There are brewery company billboards, clips of graffiti and street art, real sheet music of classic stuff (or so Ive seen it be claims), quite possibly just straight up illustrations used as wall art, and even besides that I doubt Cosmo D modeled all the people, mushrooms, fish, animals, trains, whatever. I would be prudent to assume Cosmo D made very little here.

And I sort of dont care, at least not in this case.

The key element I think, is that Cosmo D isnt trying to plagiarize these things, youre not made to believe that these are original creations. No, to me the goal is to present culture. Interests. Off-Peak isnt trying to get you to think it invented a beer called “Falco” by Eviltwin Brewing, its trying to get you to think something like Falco would be advertised at a place like Off-Peaks station.

Certainly this could still be infringing - but you know what? I think art should be a lil infringing sometimes. Omelets and eggs and all that. Collage has always been a bit controversial but there is merit and value in curation, where someone weeds through an ocean of possibilities and narrows it down to a collection of meaningful instances, something finite that you can connect with and understand. Something you can wrap your head around - and sometimes something that can present new connections you might not have considered before.

To me this is where all of Off-Peaks personality comes from. The juxtaposition. The framing. The impression, the atmosphere it ecks out. Train stations where lap steel players get tickets to exotic places by tycoon directors that seek to turn places of transportation into commerce and connoisseurship. Cities partially submerged in water like a new age Venice, where things like the circus are enterprising and eccentric art collectives.

I draw alot of energy from the experimental-ness of it all, and as an amateur effort I find it impressive that its half as entertaining and engaging and thoughtful as it is.

Like, heres my thought: if every asset flip was this cool, I could only imagine the amount of art that we would be creating when these people got their hands on some budget.

Completed with 100% of achievements unlocked. After playing through The Norwood Suite, I thought I'd give this earlier game from the same developers a try (it's free, so why not!). It's very much following a similar theme as that later release, but more simplistic, with a surreal atmosphere to the large train station in which it's set - the various exhibits and merchants all at once being mundanely everyday and yet feeling somehow alien. Whilst Off-Peak's direct challenge to the player is to collect all the parts of a train ticket to to allow them to leave the station, the game also leads you to think more about what might lie behind the setting - nothing about this is ever directly answered, but it leaves an impression that keeps this in the mind for some time after its short half-hour play duration.